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 million dollar paychecks. Thirty-six hour cocaine binges. "Rocky" themed pep rallies. Run-ins with Mafia thugs toting Mac 10 machine pistols. This was the life of Louis Pasciuto, a fast talking Staten Island kid who, from the age of 19 to 25, moved stocks for 17 different brokerage houses - most of the time without a fake license. This inside account of the Mafia's infiltration of Wall Street details Louis' career as the consummate liar, selling phantom stocks to naive Americans and leading a lifestyle worthy of Caligula. To avoid a long prison sentence, Pasciuto eventually became state witness. Now, Gary Weiss shares the inside story of Wall Street's notorious "chop houses", best known as the crooked Mob-run brokerages, where rampant thievery netted several billion dollars from gullible investors.
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Gary Weiss has uncovered financial wrongdoing for almost a quarter of a century.
AYN RAND NATION (St. Martin's Press: Feb. 28, 2012), his third book, began as an exploration of the roots of the 2008 financial crisis. It soon became apparent that Ayn Rand's teachings were a decisive influence, and that her philosophy has come to pervade the national dialogue over the role of government, deficits, and "entitlements" such as Social Security and Medicare. Her teachings have been adopted in large measure by all of the Republican presidential candidates, have a strong influence on the libertarian movement and Tea Party, and pose a challenge to moderates and conservatives as well as the left.
It is a hidden battle for the soul of America - and Rand is winning.
Weiss was for years an investigative reporter at BusinessWeek magazine, where his award-winning cover story, "The Mob on Wall Street," exposed mob infiltration of the market for small-cap stocks. The article won praise from Louis Freeh, director of the FBI, for paving the way for federal prosecution of mob crimes in the stock market. He uncovered the Salomon Brothers bond-trading scandal, and authored some of the earliest coverage on the dangers posed by hedge funds, Internet fraud and out-of-control leverage.
He was a contributing editor at Conde Nast Porfolio, writing about the people most intimately involved in the financial crisis, from Timothy Geithner to Bernard Madoff. He also writes a regular column for TheStreet.com and is a freelance contributor to many periodicals.
His first book BORN to STEAL (Warner Books: 2003), described the Mafia's takeover of brokerage houses in the 1990s. WALL STREET VERSUS AMERICA (Portfolio: 2006) was a detailed account of investor rip-offs.
