weâd go to stores where we were known or places we had. Iâd punch out ten credit-card slips. The guys we knew in the stores would call and get authorization for a $390 stereo, a $450 television, a $470 wristwatch â whatever. The person waiting for the card never got it, and we had about a month before the card was usually reported stolen. Iâd try to do all the heavy purchases as soon as I got the card. The guys in the stores didnât care, since they were getting their money. They would just take the authorized slips to the bank and deposit them like cash.
âThese days they have traps for this kind of thing in the computer system, but back then I was making a lot of money. If I wanted to, I could have run up $10,000 worth of merchandise in a day. Even working strange stores was easy. There are a hundred items in every store, and youâve always got your fake driverâs license all typed out and your backup ID. We used to get fake IDs from âTony the Bakerâ in Ozone Park. He was a real baker. He had a bakery that made bread. But heâd also make up fake driverâs licenses for you while you waited. He had all the forms. You couldnât believe how good he was. Somehow he had the code from Albany, so that even a state trooper couldnât tell it was wrong. He charged fifty dollars for a set, and that included a driverâs license, Social Security card, and voter registration card.
âWhen I finished with the cards Iâd sell them to âunder the limitsâ people, who would take the banged-out card and go out and buy things that were under the authorization limit. For instance, on some cards the store will call up for authorization if the item being bought is over fifty dollars or over one hundred dollars. âUnder the limitâ buyers always make purchases below the call-in figure. Theyâll go into department stores or shopping malls and bang out forty-five-dollar items on a fifty-dollar card all afternoon. You can go out and buy blenders, radios, cigarettes, razor blades â the kind of stuff thatâs easy to sell off at half the price â and in two hours make a good payday for yourself. Stacks Edwards, who wasa tall, skinny black guy who hung out with the crew, was an âunder the limitâ master. Heâd do a day at a shopping center with a panel truck until he ran out of room. Then he had an army of people who used to go out and sell his stuff in factories, or heâd take it to small mom-and-pop stores in Harlem, or places in New Jersey that would buy his whole truckload.
âIt was Jimmy Burke who put me into cigarettes. I knew about them from having been in North Carolina. A carton of cigarettes was $2.10 in the South at the time, while the same carton would cost $3.75 just because of the New York taxes. Jimmy came by the cabstand one day with his car full of cigarettes. He gave me a hundred cartons and said I should try and sell them. I wasnât sure, but he said I should give it a try. I put the cartons in the trunk of my car and drove over to a nearby construction site. I sold every carton I had in ten minutes. The working guys were saving about a buck a carton. It was worth it to them. But I saw I could make twenty-five cents a carton in ten minutes for my end. That night I went to Jimmyâs house and paid him for the hundred cartons he had given me and asked for three hundred more. I took as many as I could fit in the trunk. The next day I sold them in ten minutes again. I said to myself, âAinât this nice,â and I went back and got another three hundred for my trunk and two hundred more for my backseat. This was adding up to a hundred twenty-five bucks for a couple of hoursâ work.
âJimmy came by the cabstand one day with a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache. It was Tommy DeSimone. He was one of those kids who looked younger than he was just because he was
âThese days they have traps for this kind of thing in the computer system, but back then I was making a lot of money. If I wanted to, I could have run up $10,000 worth of merchandise in a day. Even working strange stores was easy. There are a hundred items in every store, and youâve always got your fake driverâs license all typed out and your backup ID. We used to get fake IDs from âTony the Bakerâ in Ozone Park. He was a real baker. He had a bakery that made bread. But heâd also make up fake driverâs licenses for you while you waited. He had all the forms. You couldnât believe how good he was. Somehow he had the code from Albany, so that even a state trooper couldnât tell it was wrong. He charged fifty dollars for a set, and that included a driverâs license, Social Security card, and voter registration card.
âWhen I finished with the cards Iâd sell them to âunder the limitsâ people, who would take the banged-out card and go out and buy things that were under the authorization limit. For instance, on some cards the store will call up for authorization if the item being bought is over fifty dollars or over one hundred dollars. âUnder the limitâ buyers always make purchases below the call-in figure. Theyâll go into department stores or shopping malls and bang out forty-five-dollar items on a fifty-dollar card all afternoon. You can go out and buy blenders, radios, cigarettes, razor blades â the kind of stuff thatâs easy to sell off at half the price â and in two hours make a good payday for yourself. Stacks Edwards, who wasa tall, skinny black guy who hung out with the crew, was an âunder the limitâ master. Heâd do a day at a shopping center with a panel truck until he ran out of room. Then he had an army of people who used to go out and sell his stuff in factories, or heâd take it to small mom-and-pop stores in Harlem, or places in New Jersey that would buy his whole truckload.
âIt was Jimmy Burke who put me into cigarettes. I knew about them from having been in North Carolina. A carton of cigarettes was $2.10 in the South at the time, while the same carton would cost $3.75 just because of the New York taxes. Jimmy came by the cabstand one day with his car full of cigarettes. He gave me a hundred cartons and said I should try and sell them. I wasnât sure, but he said I should give it a try. I put the cartons in the trunk of my car and drove over to a nearby construction site. I sold every carton I had in ten minutes. The working guys were saving about a buck a carton. It was worth it to them. But I saw I could make twenty-five cents a carton in ten minutes for my end. That night I went to Jimmyâs house and paid him for the hundred cartons he had given me and asked for three hundred more. I took as many as I could fit in the trunk. The next day I sold them in ten minutes again. I said to myself, âAinât this nice,â and I went back and got another three hundred for my trunk and two hundred more for my backseat. This was adding up to a hundred twenty-five bucks for a couple of hoursâ work.
âJimmy came by the cabstand one day with a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache. It was Tommy DeSimone. He was one of those kids who looked younger than he was just because he was
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