Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street FROM THE PUBLISHER
"During Wall Street's big bull market, there were brokers in $3,000 suits, billion-dollar IPOs, and twenty-year-olds making $500,000 a month. And then there was Louis Pasciuto, who came from Staten Island at the age of eighteen and discovered an indelible truth: He was born to steal. And The Street was made for him." "This is the astounding, true story of the rise and fall of a fast-talking stock hustler, as well as a shocking portrait of the insidious ways the Mob infiltrates and fleeces Wall Street. From outrageous scams to out-of-control strip-club parties, Born to Steal takes you inside the lives of brash young men who flaunt their ignorance of stocks, bonds, and PE ratios even as they become the perfect foot soldiers in a vast campaign to separate honest people from their money." "Trading his jeans and T-shirt for a $90 suit, Louis Pasciuto arrived on Wall Street in 1992 to join a "chop house," a crooked brokerage firm set up by a charismatic Mob-connected overlord. Working out of seventeen brokerage firms, Louis sold often worthless or nonexistent stocks to gullible retirees in Phoenix, naive farmers in Nebraska, and profit-chasing millionaires in California - right under the nose of financial regulators. Stuffing his money into a mayonnaise jar - because he didn't have a clue how to invest it - he was quickly making thousands of dollars a day, and ready to strike out on his own. But a shark wanted a piece of Louis's action. Enter Charlie Ricottone, a mobster straight out of The Sopranos, who pummeled people in public, painted his bald spot in private, and was just the advance guard of a money-hungry army of wiseguys." Suddenly Louis's lifestyle - the stripper girlfriend, his looming marriage to an entirely different woman, the Rolexes, Armanis, celebrity friends, orgies, and three-day cocaine binges - was about to go up in smoke. When the violence escalated and the FBI finally stepped in, Louis had to pull off the ultimate heist: join the Feds and steal
SYNOPSIS
This account of the Mafia's infiltration of Wall Street uses as its chief source a fast-talking Staten Island kid named Louis Pasciuto who, from age l9-25, moved stocks for l7 different brokerage houses-most of that time without even a fake license.
FROM THE CRITICS
St. Petersburg Times - 7/14/03
"...a remarkable glimpse into the essentially lawless, virtually unregulated turf of easily manipulated penny stocks...and...broker strategies..."
The Washington Post
Written in wry and witty prose by Weiss, and already slated to be a movie starring Mark Wahlberg, Born to Steal is structured much like a gangster novel. It's "Goodfellas on Wall Street," a fascinating study of the disintegration of a bottom-feeder. Would-be stock market investors, after reading this one, might wind up keeping their money underneath the mattress. — Les Roberts
AudioFile
Follow the checkered career of one Louis Pasciuto, a New Jersey nobody who falls in love with sleazy junk stock dealing at age 18 and begins cleaning up by cleaning suckers out. Before you can say Rolex, he's driving slick cars and living the high life of a lowlife who has more money than he can deal with. The story arc is reminiscent of Scorsese's GOODFELLAS, with the protaganist finding himself in over his head with the Mob. It's all gripping work by actor Frank Whaley, who effortlessly downshifts to Pasciuto's Jersey whine whenever it's called for. Fast-moving, tragic, funny, highly entertaining. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Before the masters of Enron and WorldCom ripped off innocent investors, there were the connected "Guys" in bucket shops and chophouses. Here, Business Week reporter Weiss follows the adventures of one hustler on the shady side of Wall Street. Louis Pasciuto, a Staten Island boy, pulled down thousands a day in cash, tax free, by lying to rich people. Without a broker's license, he easily dumped securities of scant value at invented high prices. (He got the license later-by hiring a ringer to take the exam.) The money flowed abundantly, and Louis couldn't spend it fast enough. Limos at the ready, women even readier, fine raiment, and many Rolex watches (not the common Oysters, but top-of-the line Presidentials) couldn't exhaust the torrent of dollars; Beemers, strip joints, and drugs couldn't use up the take from naﾽve marks. Louis's fanciful free enterprise was below the regulators' radar. But his disorganized crime did not escape the notice of organized crime. The made Guys, the family capos, and the underboss skippers moved in, and soon Louis was under the arm of Charlie, one dangerous Guy. Charlie owned Louis, who had learned how to spend his money. He gambled and lost, big time. In the psychotic world of payoffs in paper bags and regular beatings administered by Guys like Charlie, what was a husband, father, and debt-ridden crook to do? Louis went to the Feds. The refugee from the underclass went undercover and wore a wire. With the mounting heat from a government now attentive to racketeering, with more media scrutiny and a nasty bear market, a lot of Guys sported prison stripes instead of pinstripes, and the game was pretty much over. Who knows what scam is next? Inevitable allusionsto The Sopranos aren't necessary. The cautionary saga of gangsters on Wall Street, told with insight and great wit, grips as tightly as a loan shark. Film rights to Warner Brothers
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