Nothing But Money

by Smith, Greg

  And Warrington really had no interest in getting caught. Not getting caught, of course, involved another level of deception. That was the reasoning behind checks made out to Johnny Casablanca and other ridiculous noms de guerre. And the overseas accounts. If you were going to make the money, you might as well keep it. Only fools handed it over to the tax man. Warrington saw the numbers and dollar signs and wanted to keep them all for his own.

  He stepped up to the Marine Midland window and smiled at the bank teller, exchanged the usual pleasantries. She was probably making about $30,000 a year. He could almost make that with one of Cary’s fat envelopes. There was no way a girl like this was going to rock the boat. She knew how the system works. He signed his name, Johnny Casablanca, with a little flourish on the final “a.”

  She smiled and asked, “Fifties and twenties?”

  The fifth race at Aqueduct featured a Najinsky colt named Glory of Fun. He’d been purchased at auction from a Saudi prince. His bloodline was strong, but this was his first race. His owners included Francis Warrington Gillet III and an old Gillet family friend, Joseph Cornacchia, a major-league name in the world of Thoroughbred horse racing. Cornacchia was a printer from Queens who’d transformed himself into a multimillionaire man-about-Palm Beach with money he made printing up a little game nobody ever heard of called Trivial Pursuit. Cornacchia owned dozens of famous horses. In 1994 his Go for Gin won the Kentucky Derby. Two years later his Louis Quatorze won the Preakness. He’d bought into Glory of Fun because of Warrington’s relationship with his father. It was likely Cornacchia had no clue about the third partner on Glory of Fun, Salvatore Piazza.

  After Warrington started talking up Glory of Fun at the Monitor office, Sal had come around asking questions. Warrington was not entirely clear on what exactly Sal Piazza was all about. By now, he’d become aware of a certain influence at Monitor. The influence seemed to involve guys from Staten Island and Brooklyn in jogging suits and gold jewelry and manicures floating in an out with no apparent vocation. Every Friday, a guy everybody called Robert from Avenue U showed up, went into Jeffrey Pokross’s office for a while and then left. Warrington never actually heard the guy say a word, but he could tell that everybody at Monitor would have listened if he did.

  Sal Piazza was a slightly different version of Robert from Avenue U. He was a congenial silver-haired guy in an aquamarine nylon jogging suit who knew something about buying and selling stocks. And now he wanted a piece of Glory of Fun. This was something of a dilemma for Warrington. Sal Piazza was surely affiliated with organized crime. It wasn’t as if Sal had told Warrington anything like that. It didn’t say “Bonanno crime family” on his business card. But Warrington just knew there was more to Sal Piazza than a passing knowledge of the stock market and an ever-changing set of jogging suits. So when Sal Piazza asked to become a partner in Glory of Fun, Warrington knew that Sal wasn’t really asking.

  Sal wrote checks to Warrington under a business called Chateau Margot. Warrington didn’t ask about this. Warrington didn’t ask about anything. He just made sure the checks cleared, which they did. Now there were three partners attached to Glory of Fun: Francis Warrington Gillet III of Maryland horse country; Joseph Cornacchia of upstate Saratoga County, New York, and Palm Beach; and Salvatore Piazza of the Bonanno crime family.

  At Aqueduct Glory of Fun was running five to one. Sal Piazza had shown up with Warrington to watch, and he’d brought his entire family. His wife, his mother, his kids, his friends from the social club—everyone. It was like a scene from Goodfellas, with Warrington the odd man out. Warrington was very popular with this crowd because he could talk Thoroughbred horses all day and not get bored. He knew what he was talking about. Other than that, he had absolutely nothing in common with Sal Piazza and his entire Staten Island clan.

  At post time it was like a scene from a Rodney Danger-field movie. The Piazzas were hollering like crazy, waving cigars and slapping each other on the back. As the horses sprinted out of the gates, Warrington was torn about the outcome.

  Sal had put big money down and it was a $50,000 race. He was trying to impress his family. If Glory of Fun lost, Sal would lose all his money and possibly be mad at Warrington. But he might also be soured by the experience of owning a horse, which usually consisted of dumping piles of money into a burning pyre to watch it turn into smoke. If Glory of Fun took the fun out of owning horses, maybe Sal Piazza would call it a day, and Warrington’s father’s old friend, Joseph Cornacchia, would never have to know he was business partners with a gangster.

  On the other hand, if Glory of Fun won, Sal would probably be delirious and want to invest even more. Then what would Warrington tell Cornacchia, the big-name owner of a Kentucky Derby winner?

  The horses rounded the turn and headed into the final stretch. The crowd began its usual roar.

  In a minute, the race was over, and Glory of Fun won it all.

  Sal and his entire family jumped in the air cheering and hollering. Warrington began thinking of a way to get either Sal Piazza or Cornacchia out of Glory of Fun as soon as possible.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Spring 1995

  The stockbroker lay sprawled on the floor of the conference room, his tie askew, his eyes shut tight, not a sign of movement in him. Jeffrey Pokross couldn’t tell if the guy was alive or dead. Jeffrey was furious.

  The offices of DMN Capital were supposed to sparkle with legitimacy. That’s how Jeffrey wanted it. If the NASD guys came sniffing around, they’d find nothing but law-abiding citizens going about their business, contributing to the economy. No sign of criminality anywhere. The brokers all wore shirts and ties; the support staff dressed professionally. An investigator buzzed past the three secure doors into the office would see brokers diligently filling customers in on the latest bargains, phones ringing cheerfully, computer screens blinking with the latest market updates. This was no typical Mafia Wall Street rodeo. This was legit.

  Jeffrey knew all about the rodeos. There were some boiler rooms downtown that had more in common with the World Wrestling Federation than the New York Stock Exchange. There was one where there were fewer phones and desks than there were “brokers,” so whoever got there first in the morning got the phones. If you got there late, you could always try to beat the hell out of some guy who was already at a phone. It was dog-eat-dog, with guys parading around in full Staten Island regalia—nylon sweat suits, gold chains, the works. There were holes in the plasterboard at this place. A biker guy built like a mountain range stood by the trading window. If a broker showed up with a sell order, he’d grab the guy by the neck and shout, “Somebody show this guy how to run his business!” Not at DMN Capital.

  Except, of course, for the stockbroker sprawled on the carpet in the conference room.

  It was the guy’s own fault, of course. The number one rule at DMN was simple and easy to understand—no sales, period. This guy, this broker they were bribing to the tune of $25,000 a hit, had gone and violated that rule. They hadn’t noticed it at first, but when they found out, Jeffrey knew they had to do something about it. So he called up Jimmy Labate and had him come into the DMN office and wait in the conference room. Then he’d summoned the broker by telling him there was a staff meeting.

  The idea was just to scare the guy. The guy walked in, and Jimmy got up from his chair, walked over and hit the guy as hard as he could square in the forehead. The guy had gone down like a piece of frozen meat falling off the back of a truck. And now, unfortunately for all concerned, he wasn’t moving.

  “Get a rug,” Jimmy said. He said it the way you say, “Pass the salt” or “What time is it?” Jeffrey didn’t know what he was talking about. All he knew was that he had a dead guy lying in the conference room of a company that had his name on its letterhead. The aroma of legitimacy was seeping out the windows like air from a punctured balloon.

  “To wrap him up,” Jimmy explained.

  “Oh. Right.”

  They started scrambling around, cons
idered ripping up the rug from one of the rooms, but figured there’d be all these little carpet tack things flying everywhere and that would just add to the mess.

  Suddenly the guy sat up.

  Labate was furious at the guy for so many reasons. First he was furious for the sell orders. Then he was furious for having to hit him in the forehead. Then he was furious for him not being dead, but instead getting everybody all worked up. He grabbed the guy and ripped his shirt and started hollering. It appeared he believed that the guy was wearing a wire. The guy looked like he’d awoken in the middle of some bad science fiction movie, the ending of which was surely not pleasant. He put the pieces of his shirt back on and scurried out of the office. He promised he’d never sell another stock as long as he lived.

  Before he began working for DMN, Cary Cimino hadn’t spent much time hanging around gangsters. In fact, he hadn’t met any. He watched movies, of course. Like any other American he knew the Godfather lines: “Make him an offer,” “sleeps with the fishes,” “take the cannolis,” etc. Having grown up in New York, he knew what “connected” meant, but that was about as far as it went. He wasn’t really into that world, didn’t really understand it. He certainly had not sought out business with these guys. Perhaps if he’d thought about it more, he might have walked away from that first meeting with Jeffrey before it was too late. If only he had known certain facts related to this relationship. Legitimate guys who do business with the mob always end up on the losing end. It is a fact. No matter how charming they may appear, gangsters ultimately are looking out only for themselves. And legitimate guys are considered weak links, like extra baggage on a too-small life raft. They’re the first to go overboard.

  When Cary first heard about the incident at the office of his new employer, he had one of those sea change moments. Here were certain facts presented and certain decisions required. A broker had been beaten senseless inside a respectable office on Wall Street. He realized he was no longer working at Bear Stearns or Oppenheimer. This was unfamiliar territory.

  There were different ways to view the incident. One was to see that this was not a good thing and it was time to go. The other was to figure that maybe it wasn’t going to be such a problem. He’d known Sal Piazza for several years and he’d never seen him act unreasonably. Sure he considered Jimmy Labate a thug, but Jeffrey and Sal seemed to have the guy under control. At this time Cary made a choice. He would pick ambition over sagacity. Or was it just greed? How could you tell the difference between ambition and greed? No matter what you called it, the money was fantastic. Cary experienced a thought adjustment, explaining it in his own unique manner:

  “Jimmy was an absolute thug, but the financial remuneration that I was receiving? And Jimmy wasn’t threatening me. At this point in time, he wasn’t. I mean later in the future he does. And I was dealing directly with Jeffrey. Jeffrey was paying me. They were paying and I had had a long-term established relationship with Sal, who to me, never appeared as a thug, who I never knew had crime family ties as Jeffrey alleges. I really want to delineate the difference of how I perceived Sal and how I perceived Jimmy. I perceived Sal as a nice guy that my sister had a long-term relationship with, that I socialized with, that I went out to dinner with and double-dated with I never saw Sal act violent or raise his voice in any manner. Unlike Jimmy, who was inarticulate, prone to rages, and who Jeffrey manipulated.”

  Cary’s thought adjustment had to do with math. For the first time in quite a long time, Cary was wallowing in money. Cash payments flowed to the point where he could now take a supermodel to a top-end restaurant in Soho and not worry about picking up the tab. DMN was taking care of his car payments, so that was no longer a sword hanging over his head. And besides, Cary felt he was being paid well because he deserved it. He had brought in maybe 90 percent of the corrupt brokers needed to make Spaceplex take off. His new friend, Warrington, was using his overseas contacts to make six-figure buys. Sal and Jeffrey were ecstatic. Cary could do no wrong. Cary had brought in a dozen brokers and was getting 35 percent commission on all sales. The math was this: organized crime was not getting in the way of Cary’s net profit. Cary could live with organized crime.

  For Jeffrey Pokross, the gangster presence at DMN Capital was both a blessing and a curse. Mostly the curse involved Jimmy Labate, who had evolved into somewhat of a problem. On the one hand, Jeffrey needed the guy around. Now that the Spaceplex campaign was up and running, enforcement of the no-sell rule was always an issue, and Jimmy was quite good at scaring the hell out of the brokers and stock promoters in the office. He kept a .38 in his waistband and loved to talk loudly about how useful a golf club had been while beating some guy bloody in Staten Island. That same kind of talk, however, added a certain edge to the proceedings and made keeping the place looking legit more complex. Jimmy was a gangster on display. He looked like a gangster, he walked like a gangster, he talked like a gangster. He didn’t hide it from anyone.

  With difficulty, Jeffrey came to realize that for the scheme to work, he would have to live with his decision about Jimmy. He really needed Jimmy around. Jimmy’s ties to Robert Lino were crucial. Without this, morons from other families would ultimately come knocking on the door demanding their percentage. On the other hand, Jeffrey was increasingly aware that Jimmy needed him as well. Jimmy’s construction business was failing, so he needed the income provided by DMN. Jeffrey knew well how to turn someone else’s lousy situation to his advantage. He’d made Labate an actual partner in DMN and thus Labate was, in a way, indebted to him. And everybody was clear about his role. Labate wasn’t there to draft analysis on the futures market or make buy and sell recommendations to investors. His role, Jeffrey made clear, was simple:

  “He would continue to find mobbed up brokers that could put out our stocks. We bribe and hold on to it. In addition Mr. Labate would enforce the no-sale policy through threats of violence.”

  The effort to keep DMN looking legitimate was a never-ending high-wire performance. The idea was to keep the threats of violence (and the actual violence) to a minimum. The beating of the stockbroker had been a fairly drastic example. Usually all Jimmy had to do was walk up, open his knee-length leather coat, show off his gun and check the computer for sell orders. It was a delicate job, choreographing this friction between Wall Street and the streets of South Brooklyn. Now that Spaceplex was starting up, Jeffrey would have to see if his marriage to the mob was going to make him rich or dead.

  In March 1995, the Spaceplex pump and dump was a going concern. Mostly it was a Jeffrey Pokross production. Maybe he hadn’t gone to the Wharton School and maybe Illinois State College wasn’t quite the London School of Economics, but Jeffrey Pokross was quite creative when it came to making money work for him—especially when it came to finding ways to conceal what he was doing from the NASD and Securities and Exchange Commission.

  First they had to get control of the majority of shares in the company, which was already trading for pennies in the over-the-counter market. They did a reverse split, which shrunk the number of shares, then the company issued a number of free or absurdly discounted shares to Pokross and Piazza. “That would control the amount of shares that were allowed to trade in the market that weren’t friendly or that we would have no control over.” That meant they couldn’t control the rest of the shares, the so-called public pool, but the pool was much smaller now.

  Next the corrupt brokers pocketing bribes would contact market makers, that is, other brokers representing institutional investors, and get them to buy big gobs of shares in Spaceplex. That would drive up the price. The institutional investors had no real incentive to do this and weren’t getting bribes. Instead, they were told by DMN’s troops that they would be guaranteed against a loss. This was completely illegal, but it got the job done.

  Pokross described it this way: “I would call him on the phone and say, let’s say the stock was bid at one, offered at one and a quarter. I would say, Hey Johnny, why don’t you move the stock up, why d
on’t you take out the one and a quarter and move it up to one and three quarters?” I would make a call a half hour later, Hey Johnny, why don’t you move the stock up to two and offer it out at three. I would guarantee them against a loss and give them a small profit.”

  Now with the price on the rise, the retail brokers could go to work. Cold-calling victims all over America, they pointed out Spaceplex’s remarkable stock performance in recent days. They’d then launch into a dog and pony show, claiming Spaceplex was going to be the next Six Flags when, in fact, it was just a creaky little amusement park in suburban Long Island with a handful of crappy rides and games no one could win. It was a joke, but it worked.

  This was supposed to happen on two fronts—in America and in Germany. Here is where DMN had to switch tactics.

  “I had done my job,” Pokross recalled. “I had found the stock, the price of the stock went up and we were waiting for the Germans to start buying it. The Germans didn’t buy it. So we found U.S. brokers and promoters to go buy it and bribe the stockbrokers here in the U.S.”