Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street

by Gary Weiss

Book Overview

This is the true story of Staten Island badboy Louis Pasciuto's meteoric rise to the top of Wall Street's notorious chop houses - by the award-winning journalist who broke it. Hood brokers. Monthly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446528579
• ISBN13: 9780446528573
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A scream!!!

Someone loaned me this book--I didn't buy it--so I feel an obligation to the author to come online and tell him that I absolutely, positively, adored this book. It is a scream! Very funny, with an ironic Afterword that was both touching in a way and also comical to boot. The Afterword describes how the feds punished Lou Pasciuto for coming forward with this story. But the main thing about this book is that it is a taut, tensely written book that holds you at the edge of your seat from one minute to the next. It is hard to believe that the writer of this book works for a magazine, as it seems to have been written by a mystery author. The pacing moves to a fever pitch, as we follow the central character, sliming his way from one brokerage to the next. What makes it all so fascinating is that this is a true story, and there are pictures to prove it. Pasciuto was an earner for the mob, and the book is filled with vignettes describing some guys straight out of the real-life Sopranos. My favorite involves a guy I read about as a kid named Sonny Franzese, who used to head up the Colombo family but by the 1990s was reduced to low-rent stock scams. There are also stories of how famous people got sucked in, including cast members from the Howard Stern show. All in all a terrific book!

A fascinating tale of the Mob in decline

I have read just about every book that there is on organized crime, and I have also read my share of Wall Street books. Let me tell you, this one is right up there with the very best of the Mob genre--Wise Guys and the Valachi Papers--but with a searing wit that reminds me of Liar's Poker. I bought this book after seeing its subject, Lou Pasciuto, featured on the ABC News show 20/20. Let me tell you, the story was if anything better than I had expected from watching that show. This is a really outstanding, superbly written book about a young kid from Staten Island who becomes an moneymaker for the Mob on Wall Street. I read it on one sitting. This book grabs you in the beginning, when Pasciuto is sitting in prison, mulling over the shambles of his life. The book then reverts to a flashback in the best film noir style, recounting his early upbringing in a shabby but honest family. He was constantly the subject of attention as a small boy, and perhaps because of that incipient narcissism he became a thief at an early age--hence the title. We follow Pasciuto in his first job, at a very well known boiler room called Hanover Sterling. This brings me to another aspect of the book that I think needs to be mentioned. Unlike the few other books that have explored the shady side of Wall Street, this book names names. We get the actual bad guys and the names of the actual brokerage houses. That gives this book an authority and credibility that adds to the excitement. After Hanover, Pasciuto rises very rapidly and is running his own crews of brokers while still a teenager--before he can go into a bar and drink, as the author Weiss points out. He makes thousands of dollars a week and his life is a whirl of sex, drugs and trips to South Beach. Along the way he becomes the favorite broker for sports figures and cast members of the Howard Stern Show, particularly "Stuttering John," who was really in with that crowd. But then he meets his nemesis, a crude gangster named Charlie, and it his downfall begins. Louis is married to his girlfriend, in a wedding scene straight from the Godfather, and it is downhill from there. Along the way he meets a who's who of characters from the Mob, from half-assed wiseguys in Staten Island to doddering old fools like Sonny Franzese. That this where this book really shines. It is the best portrayal of the present-day Mob--the Mob of today, not the 1990s--that I have been able to get my hands on. The tale of Louis' rise and fall is filled with humor, excitement and tragedy, and it is told in a humorous and accessible fashion that is really a pleasure to read.

Entertaining look @ the REAL Seedy Side of Wall Street

I'm in the investment business but this book amazed even me. This is a story of a Staten Island teenager who signs on at a chop shop set up to bilk customers of their money. While poorly educated, Louis Pasciuto finds he has a knack for selling and can easily talk these people in to investing with him. But since this is a scam where the brokers make massive money and the customers lose, it's hardly investing at all. Giving an uneducated 20-year-old massive money is dangerous. As he doesn't trust banks, he develops a better use of him money, spend it. Spend it on toys, women, trips, and drugs until eventually his monthly living expenses are so high he has money troubles that end with a mafia guy entering his life for a monthly taste. Now that's a whole other problem. Louis Pasciuto's personal history is a perfect overlay for a demonstration of how the mafia infiltrated the investment business. Stories of mafia guys coming in and slapping their brokers around for money are unsettling at best. As always, this doesn't end happily. I strongly recommend this book for an entertaining educational read of what can go wrong in the investment world. For further info on this subject, see the DVD, Boiler Room with Ben Affleck for another perspective of this 1990s phonemen. Although starting a little slow, once you are engaged in reading this book you cannot put it down.

AN INCREDIBLE STORY, COMPELLINGLY READ

Even the most inventive fiction meister would be hard pressed to come up with a tale as astounding as this true story. In this reading movie and television actor Frank Whaley literally becomes the protagonist, a cocky young man from Staten Island. The young man previously noted is Louis Pasciuto, a former gas station attendant, who built a fortune by bilking the credulous. He talked fast, lived fast, and eventually lost big time. In 1992 Louis appeared on Wall Street to become part of a "chop house," an unsavory brokerage firm overseen by a Mafia boss. He trafficked in worthless and nonexistent stocks, cramming his hefty earnings into a mayonnaise jar. Then, just when Louis feels indestructible, on top of the world, mobster Charlie Ricottone wants a part of the take. It's not too long before Louis is caught in a vise - blood thirsty, money hungry Charlie on one side and the FBI on the other. In exchange for the Witness Protection Program Louis joined the good guys. An incredible story, compellingly read. - Gail Cooke

Great Weekend Read - Hard to Put Down

If you've ever received an insistent telephone call for an investment opportunity that is guaranteed to make you a lot of money from someone you do not know at a brokerage firm that sounds, well, impressive if not familiar, you will want to read this book. The bucket shops and chop houses that employed cold-call cowboys pitching plausible, fraudulent, can't miss ground floor opportunities to the gullible, the greedy, and the insecure were not just a toxic waste product of the last bull market. An internet search of SEC Litigation Releases shows that greed and naivete are (surprise, surprise) in evidence today. Nonetheless, penny stock peddler Louis Pasciuto's rapid rise and fall on this crooked avenue of Wall Street does say something about the past decade's willingness to believe impossible things.Some of this territory has been visited in fiction (BOILER ROOM, New Line Cinema, 2000), but author Gary Weiss' true account of Pasciuto's world has it all: cash, sex, drugs, gambling, violence, humor. Did I say cash? Louis and his barely out of school buddies were pulling in a hundred, sometimes two hundred thousand dollars a month in the 1990's peddling dreams and phony hopes. Weiss is at home writing about this hard-boiled, street smart world. He captures the dialogue, the profanity, the ironies, and the simple money lust energy that drives it all. He gets inside the relationship between Louis and Charlie Riccotone, a violent, small-time extortionist with a slippery veneer, who comes to represent the Mob's influence in this world as he worms his way into Louis' life. Made for television scenes standout: Raucous teams of telephone pitchmen selling 'hot' new stocks; Louis and friend Buddy on sex and drug benders; a broker thrown through a plate glass window; a party boat adventure that goes badly wrong; Louis hiding his stripper girlfriend from his soon-to-be-his-wife sweetheart; and tense sit-downs with Guys of a certain reputation to arbitrate disputes.In recent years the securities regulatory environment has gotten tougher, the press more investigatory, the public more suspicious. At the end of this fast-paced story corrupt enterprises go out of business, and people go to jail. A lot of people: Bad Guys, a mentor, and friends. Pasciuto's cooperation with the Feds lands him in the federal witness protection program. Where this young man goes from here, Weiss can only guess. It has been quite a ride and Weiss does his readers a service by taking them back all the wiser from this enlightening descent into the muck.