Read Online Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street by Gary R. Weiss - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gary R. Weiss
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Mafia, True Crime, Biography, New York, New York (State), Business & Economics, Business, Murder, Criminals & Outlaws, Serial Killers, organized crime, Investments & Securities, Corporate & Business History, Mafia - New York (State) - New York, Wall Street, Securities Fraud, Stockbrokers, Stockbrokers - New York (State) - New York, Wall Street (New York; N.Y.), Securities Industry, BUS000000, Securities fraud - New York (State) - New York, Pasciuto; Louis
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eradicate that way of
talking. Not Roy. Not the kids in the boardrooms.
Years ago the kids in the boardrooms couldn’t have made it into the front office. If they had worked hard and gotten MBAs
maybe they could have gotten assistant-trader gigs at second-tier firms. But these kids didn’t have MBAs. Some of them could
barely read. They couldn’t have gotten any firm to hire them as brokers, not when it was the 1980s and the market was booming
and the Street was filled with ambitious preppies trying to make it in the business. Kids without fancy college degrees could
have made it only to the back office, slogging along as clerks like Fran Pasciuto, or maybe working in the offices where brokerage
trades are executed. But the penny stock era, the era that was coming to an end in the early 1990s, started to put the street
kids in the front offices.
Now the chop house era was beginning and the street kids were everywhere. Hanover Sterling was at the forefront of this socioeconomic-demographic
revolution on Wall Street. In the boroughs and the burbs, word was spreading, fed by word of mouth and ads in the city’s tabloids.
The Street was looking for ambitious kids from the street.
Stefanie Donohue was excited about Louis’s new job.
They had met the year before, in the record-hot summer of 1991. Louis had just graduated from Sea, Stefanie from Tottenville
High School. The Donohues could afford Sea but felt its rules and its uniforms and its discipline weren’t necessary. Stefanie
and her brothers were nice kids. They could be trusted. Stefanie and Louis were about as different as any two people could
be and still be in the same species.
Stefanie’s family was comfortably middle class, quiet, maybe a little repressed in an Irish Catholic way. But a little repression
wouldn’t have done Louis any harm—which might have been the appeal. George Donohue was a retired policeman who ran a bar on
Coney Island Avenue in Midwood, the neighborhood where Roy Ageloff had spent his formative years. By the time George wound
up at the Seventieth Precinct, the Jewish population was being fast supplanted by a kind of polyglot stew of nationalities—resulting
in some interesting grocery stores and a boring array of domestic strife and postmidnight mayhem. There were Russians and
Pakistanis and Arabs and Haitians. George served in plainclothes most of his time at the Seven-oh.
George was a Brooklyn boy himself, and his family wasn’t exactly prosperous, but George did well for himself. He was proud
of what he had overcome, what he had accomplished, but he didn’t boast. He served in Vietnam as a military policeman but didn’t
like to talk about it. George didn’t talk much. He didn’t have to. A glance was enough. Voices weren’t raised much in the
Donohue household. George had a “don’t give me any shit” glance that could sting as hard as the back of a hand. George wasn’t
old-country strict but he wasn’t going to let his kids run around like skells—and they didn’t. Gender roles were unambiguous.
Generational differences were not bridged. The kids weren’t pals. They were offspring. End of discussion.
Well, not really end of discussion. George had another old-fashioned virtue: loyalty. The Donohue kids could get into trouble,
even bad trouble at times, but the love was unconditional. You were part of the family. You made mistakes, you screwed up,
but you could always come home. George had known misfortune in those close to him. He didn’t like to talk about it. But it
showed up in the way he acted. No kid of his, no one close to him, was ever going to be without support.
So as a teenager, Stefanie’s normal rebellion was muted. She worked. She obeyed. She had values. Her life revolved around
close friends and a close family. She did normal things on summer nights. Bars. Clubs.
STEFANIE : “I was at a bar on Bay Street, which is where a lot of kids hung out. I
talking. Not Roy. Not the kids in the boardrooms.
Years ago the kids in the boardrooms couldn’t have made it into the front office. If they had worked hard and gotten MBAs
maybe they could have gotten assistant-trader gigs at second-tier firms. But these kids didn’t have MBAs. Some of them could
barely read. They couldn’t have gotten any firm to hire them as brokers, not when it was the 1980s and the market was booming
and the Street was filled with ambitious preppies trying to make it in the business. Kids without fancy college degrees could
have made it only to the back office, slogging along as clerks like Fran Pasciuto, or maybe working in the offices where brokerage
trades are executed. But the penny stock era, the era that was coming to an end in the early 1990s, started to put the street
kids in the front offices.
Now the chop house era was beginning and the street kids were everywhere. Hanover Sterling was at the forefront of this socioeconomic-demographic
revolution on Wall Street. In the boroughs and the burbs, word was spreading, fed by word of mouth and ads in the city’s tabloids.
The Street was looking for ambitious kids from the street.
Stefanie Donohue was excited about Louis’s new job.
They had met the year before, in the record-hot summer of 1991. Louis had just graduated from Sea, Stefanie from Tottenville
High School. The Donohues could afford Sea but felt its rules and its uniforms and its discipline weren’t necessary. Stefanie
and her brothers were nice kids. They could be trusted. Stefanie and Louis were about as different as any two people could
be and still be in the same species.
Stefanie’s family was comfortably middle class, quiet, maybe a little repressed in an Irish Catholic way. But a little repression
wouldn’t have done Louis any harm—which might have been the appeal. George Donohue was a retired policeman who ran a bar on
Coney Island Avenue in Midwood, the neighborhood where Roy Ageloff had spent his formative years. By the time George wound
up at the Seventieth Precinct, the Jewish population was being fast supplanted by a kind of polyglot stew of nationalities—resulting
in some interesting grocery stores and a boring array of domestic strife and postmidnight mayhem. There were Russians and
Pakistanis and Arabs and Haitians. George served in plainclothes most of his time at the Seven-oh.
George was a Brooklyn boy himself, and his family wasn’t exactly prosperous, but George did well for himself. He was proud
of what he had overcome, what he had accomplished, but he didn’t boast. He served in Vietnam as a military policeman but didn’t
like to talk about it. George didn’t talk much. He didn’t have to. A glance was enough. Voices weren’t raised much in the
Donohue household. George had a “don’t give me any shit” glance that could sting as hard as the back of a hand. George wasn’t
old-country strict but he wasn’t going to let his kids run around like skells—and they didn’t. Gender roles were unambiguous.
Generational differences were not bridged. The kids weren’t pals. They were offspring. End of discussion.
Well, not really end of discussion. George had another old-fashioned virtue: loyalty. The Donohue kids could get into trouble,
even bad trouble at times, but the love was unconditional. You were part of the family. You made mistakes, you screwed up,
but you could always come home. George had known misfortune in those close to him. He didn’t like to talk about it. But it
showed up in the way he acted. No kid of his, no one close to him, was ever going to be without support.
So as a teenager, Stefanie’s normal rebellion was muted. She worked. She obeyed. She had values. Her life revolved around
close friends and a close family. She did normal things on summer nights. Bars. Clubs.
STEFANIE : “I was at a bar on Bay Street, which is where a lot of kids hung out. I
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