Nothing But Money: How the Mob infiltrated Wall Street
by Greg Smith.This book is by the author of Made Men and Mob Cops. The title is actually somewhat misleading as in many of the stories detailed the Mob is no more corrupt than any of the Wall Street workers. What the Mob brought to the table was more capital, better connections (a NY mob associate arranges to have would be investors comped at Las Vegas hotels and casinos-the details of which would have been VERY interesting to learn about), and of course the realistic threat of violence. In this story the Mob didn't so much 'infiltrate' Wall Street as it was enthusiastically sought out by rip-off artists looking for well-off partners and the ability to enforce illegal contracts.
Most of the events discussed take place in the late eighties through the nineties. Two of the three primary Wall Street crooks in this story made deals with the authorities and either got probation or disappeared into the Witness Protection Program. The fact that one of them was a scion of an old WASP family and the nephew of a U.S. senator likely helped his case. The only one who didn't was Italian-American and he got the longest sentence.
The book does go into the brutish way that the Bonanno Family (the primary family initially involved with the stock scams) enforced discipline. Word to the wise-if the boss has said do not take any sell orders on a stock, do not take any sell orders on a stock and do not let anyone THINK you have taken any sell orders on a stock, otherwise you might get a beating with an office chair in front of the entire workforce.
The book sub-story also goes into the Lino family/crew subgroup of the larger Bonanno Family and the tensions and rivalries in the group. A few murders and drug deals are discussed. Some of these have not been solved. It is also interesting to see how the Bonanno's react and respond when other Families or groups get wind of how lucrative and almost risk-free the stock swindles, pump-and-dump and other crimes can be. As is usual in such books (and evidently in real life) the actual hierarchy ,title and power of various mob actors is detailed in contradictory ways. The book suggests at different times that Robert Lino was just a soldier trading off the family name of his uncle, cousins and father, AND that he was a well respected captain with his own crew.
Again, though the ideas, brain power and business models for these things were primarily provided by people not in the mob or at best mob associates. Cary Cimino, Jeffrey Pokross and Warrington Gillette were shady (and wealthy) people long before they hooked up with Robert Lino, Jimmy Labate or Sal Piazza. None of this criminality would have been possible without the active assistance of non-mob actors like banks (who set up and paid phony id accounts), institutional investors, realtors, and other upperworld people.
Interesting fun fact: Stock swindlers prefer seniors, men and people from the Midwest to target for nefarious deals.
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The operating assumption was that if you lived in the Midwest you were a drooling rube who might be a genius about cow breeding methods but was surely dumb as a fence post about securities."
