Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street (14 page)

That created resentment. Benny and Louis found themselves on the outs, not part of the “inner circle” of brokers usually found
at all brokerages, chop houses and legit ones alike. Louis’s fuck-you attitude didn’t help. He was kind of an alternate-universe
Massood Gilani—a guy who was unpopular because he was trying too hard to do his job, which in Louis’s case was to separate
investors from their money.

And even when there was a product, it was lackluster. Take Pacific Rim Entertainment. It was Louis’s first IPO, and it was
a typical chop house IPO because it was a legitimate company. Generally speaking, companies that issued chop stocks were not
dramatically different from a lot of other small companies. What made the chop stocks different were the premium prices they
commanded and the special way they were sold—the zest, the enthusiasm (or the fraud, as regulators would say much later).

Pacific Rim went public on November 12, 1993, at a share price of $5. And members of the public who examined the prospectus,
with the Robert Todd Financial Corporation logo at the bottom, would not have found any more than the usual red flags typical
for any growing company. That’s because Pacific Rim was not a fraud. It had never been tainted by scandal before or since
the company went public, and in the years to come would not even get the usual shareholder suits that sometimes are slapped
on even the most legit companies. Pacific Rim produced cartoons and operated an animated production facility in the city of
Shenzhen in China. It even had a cute stock symbol, “TOON.”

There was nothing fishy in the financial statements. True, the company was losing money, but it had a talented staff, six
hundred workers in China, and a chairman who was a veteran of the entertainment business. This would have been great stuff
for Louis’s IPO pitch if he had cared. But he didn’t. Only a moron would have pitched an IPO by talking about what the company
did. Wasn’t necessary. In fact, only the worst salesman in the world would need to
sell
an IPO, period. IPOs sold themselves in the early 1990s. Louis didn’t have to read the prospectus, or even know if the company
made cartoons or cigars or underarm deodorant, or nothing at all.

“My clients, I used to tease them. I’d call them up and I’d say to them, ‘I got eye-pee-ohhhhhhhh!’ And they’d say, ‘I’m in.’
These idiots, they thought this was the best thing since sliced bread. So they would send money and most of them would get
five hundred shares, and they’d have to buy more in the aftermarket [after the company went public]. That’s ‘prepackaging
a deal.’” Prepackaging a deal is mighty good for the brokerage selling the stock, as it keeps the share price up after the
company goes public. But it screws anyone who happens to buy the stock, by artificially inflating the price. Or at least it
is supposed to artificially inflate the price, when everything goes right.

Everything didn’t go right with TOON. It never had much of a post-IPO run-up, despite the prepackaging, because Todd brokers
just didn’t have the buying power. The stock closed the first day of trading at $5.25, and after that it imitated a wet rag.
By the end of 1994, TOON was eating dirt.

It was sad, and if Louis had noticed an item on TOON in the papers he might have read it. If he cared. Which he didn’t.

DAH DAH—DAH DAH DAH—DAH DAH—DAH DAH DAH! DAH DAH—DAH DAH DAH—DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH! DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH
DAH DAH DAH DAH!!!!!!!

Louis started every day with the soundtrack from
Rocky
. Three times a day, like antibiotics. BANG. The kids, the cold-callers, would BANG their fists, in rhythm with the music.
BANG. BANG. BANG.

It was that way at Robert Todd. And when Louis and Benny left Robert Todd in July 1994, it was that way at their next firm,
A. T Brod. It would be that way every day and at every firm where they had cold-callers.

Louis would turn up the volume on the CD player and blast the first cut from the
Rocky
CD, the one at the beginning of the movie, every day starting at seven, when the cold-callers started work. In the middle
of the day he would play the training song. And then at the end—the victory song. Louis would hold up the hand of the cold-caller
who opened the most accounts and make him stand up. The champ. It was a good thing for everybody to see.

Playing that music got the cold-callers pumped up. Movies too. Louis would play them every chance he got on the VCR in his
office. But not just any movies. They had to be special.
Wall Street
pumped up the brokers.
Glengarry Glen Ross
did not. Some guy in a car begging for leads. Who’d want to be like that guy?

Louis got steamed when his cold-callers complained about the leads. They’d ask him for the “good leads.” The
“Glengarry
leads.” Sally Leads used to ask for them. He was fascinated with that movie. It made Louis hate
Glengarry
even more. The movie didn’t understand salesmen.

“Guys don’t get motivated by you talking to them about selling stock,” said Louis. “I used to not motivate them like that.
Motivating my guys was taking them to the bar at lunchtime and getting everybody fucked up. Wrecked. That was motivating my
guys. Taking them to a strip joint and getting them all blow jobs. That motivated my guys. Playing the
Rocky
song in the morning, that would motivate my guys.

“That’s how Roy did it. He’d come into the room and people would be psyched to see him. It would be good. Just his persona.
A sick guy spending a lot of money. He’s the motivator. ‘Fuck, he’s nuts!’ You get psyched about that. You look at him and
he’s awesome. He don’t give a fuck. He’s making a million dollars a month, he’s smacking people around, he’s wearing pink
suits. He’s fucking nuts. He’s out every night. He’s got a limo driver waiting downstairs for him. That’s motivating. That’ll
motivate you, in that type of business.

“Michael Milken—he ain’t motivating to me. Bill Gates ain’t motivating. I don’t care he’s the richest man in the world. He’s
not motivating. It’s not fun to be Bill Gates because he don’t live it up the way Roy does. In the chop houses you had kids
from the streets. Their fathers probably sat at home and smoked cigars and had their feet up and fell asleep at nine o’clock.
These kids meet guys who are going out, going to strip joints having crazy times, and making money, spending it, doing awesome
things, going away. The cold-callers say, ‘I want to do that. I want to be that guy.’”

Louis played the
Rocky
songs for the cold-callers but he could have been playing them for himself and for Benny. They were the Rockys of Wall Street.
They were the lower-class bums who took on the Apollo Creeds of Wall Street and were beating them. Never mind that Rocky lost
in the end. Benny and Louis were winning. They were mastering their craft, going to places like Scores where important people
hung out. Making friends, establishing contacts, working hard. Raking it in.

Louis was pulling in over $100,000 a month. Not bad for a brokerage firm “assistant” who dropped out of community college.
And that was still small potatoes compared to what some chop house brokers were getting.

At Brod the split wasn’t 60-40 anymore. They were equal partners. They were back downtown now, just across the street from
Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan. An old-fart building, but downstairs was the only amenity that really mattered—a bank
where they could cash their checks.

At Brod, the checks came from a guy by the name of Jugal Kishore Taneja. “Jay” Taneja was fifty years old, of medium height,
and stocky. He was a Cleveland financial exec with a clean record, a former engineer with a varied background. When he bought
the firm in June 1993, in conjunction with a local brokerage firm official, it was noted with approval in
Crain’s Cleveland Business
. “Mr. Taneja owns Bancapital Corp., a holding company in Independence for operations that range from a small intrastate brokerage
house to oil and gas exploration companies,”
Crain’s
reported. The newspaper went on to say that the firm’s Manhattan office will continue operating, “but its focus will grow
to include the sale of stock to retail investors. … At present, A. T Brod specializes in selling securities to institutional
clients. Broadening its scope in New York will mean hiring more brokers there.”

Louis and Benny flew out to Cleveland to meet their new boss.

“He took us out to dinner. It was nice, like in
Pretty Woman
, with the couch seats. Elegant. We didn’t pay. He had a 500-class Mercedes, a huge house. We were psyched, ’cause we were
going to work with somebody who had more money than us. Fallah might have had more money but he didn’t spend it. This guy
had a nice ring, nice watch. He was like a flashy little guy,” said Louis.
^*

The
Crain’s
story was on the mark. Brod was hiring brokers, and the firm’s interest in the retail trade was amply borne out by the generosity
of the deal with Louis and Benny. In a letter agreement with Benny, A. T Brod—“Advisors to the Prudent Investor”—put the terms
in writing, including a provision that “you are ‘Team Players’ and will do all in your power to comply with the regulations
of the Firm, the NASD and the SEC, as well as the New York Stock Exchange.”

Of course. Real team players. Particularly that unlicensed “Team Player,” a twenty-year-old guy who wasn’t old enough to sit
at the bar of the private club upstairs from the Brod offices.

“We were the circle,” said Louis. “We created our own circle. There were no other brokers there. We were the only guys. We
went out there and took over the whole fucking place. It was awesome.”

Comfortable too. They started out in cramped quarters on the twenty-first floor of the old-fart building, but after a few
months Brod took over the entire twenty-sixth floor. Louis and Benny had the choicest real estate, a huge corner office looking
to the west. They could see the bay out the window, the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island in the distance. “It was a slick
office,” said Louis. “We had the biggest office there. I remember Al Palagonia, the superbroker from D. H. Blair—he was a
friend of Benny—he came up to Brod and said, ‘Holy shit! This is what they gave you?’ It was huge. It had a couch and a love
seat and a fucking thirty-six-inch TV with Sega, CNN, and cable. Two big monster black desks, with chairs in front of them,
big black leather chairs in back. Then there was a glass window behind the couch that looked over all our cold-callers. It
was awesome.”

What a firm. Members of the New York Stock Exchange since 1958. Brod’s founder could hold his head high anywhere on Wall Street.
Albert T Brod was eighty-one years old. He put his name on the door with pride, and stayed at the firm even though Taneja
owned it now. Brod had a clean regulatory history. Not squeaky-clean, maybe—nobody’s perfect—but pretty good overall for a
firm that concentrated on investment banking for small companies.

Even its building was old Wall Street. Brod was at 17 Battery Place, the Whitehall Building, a carved-stone building of the
kind more likely to be found in Chicago than in New York. It was in every postcard view of Lower Manhattan, just to the right
of Battery Park City and smack in front of the World Trade Center.

Brod was the epitome of the Real Wall Street, the Wall Street of Brooks Brothers suits and private incomes and private clubs.
Clubs like the Whitehall Lunch Club on the top floor. Al Brod was a member of the Whitehall Lunch Club. His record was unblemished.
NASD records said he had even lived at the same address on Park Avenue since his birth in October 1913.

A. T Brod was a class act. Old money. Tradition. Great reputation. All of the things Louis hated. But such things didn’t matter.
Old money could be taken. Tradition could be defied. Reputations destroyed.

Louis hated class. He liked cars. So he bought a Mercedes. He hated old stone buildings. He liked gleaming new ones. So at
about the time Brod moved to the twenty-sixth floor, he moved from Staten Island to 200 Rector Place, due southwest of the
proud and glorious Twin Towers. Not since Battery Park City was built on a mound of World Trade Center construction debris,
back in the 1970s, had such a humongous and high-class building been erected there. Louis’s new home was forty-six stories
high. Louis was on the thirty-fourth floor, in the corner apartment facing southeast. On a clear day, with binoculars, he
could look out of his office at Brod and see Sally Leads in his apartment.

Life was good and getting better. There was much to share. Louis was sharing with Stefanie, with Stefanie’s parents, and with
his own parents. Their trips to Atlantic City were becoming more frequent, more enjoyable. Louis loved playing blackjack.
Sometimes he would go to Atlantic City with Sally Leads, or with Stefanie, or alone. He enjoyed it so much that sometimes
he would come down from his hotel room in the middle of the night, back to the blackjack table. But even if he lost, it just
meant sharing money, meaningless money, fuck-you money, with the casino. He could afford it. It was no problem. The money
was coming in endlessly. Louis had the best job on the planet.

His job was great because his leads were awesome. Great selling required great leads.
Glengarry
leads. In the movie, the old man broke into the office and got caught. That’s where the movie got it wrong. Nobody ever got
caught. Not on Wall Street.

“They made it so easy for you to rob money. It was incredible. How could you not rob and steal? You want a broker license?
Three grand. You need some leads to call, some people willing to get stolen from? Two grand. It was the easiest thing in the
world.

“We had a guy, Ivan, who would go into the places and rob the leads for us. He was a black guy. He knew one of the guys who
ran a crew at Brod. That’s how we got the hook. Ivan was this nigger from Harlem, and he would just rob places. You know how
many places used to get robbed on Wall Street? This guy would go in at night, break in, and rob the place.