During Wall Street's big bull market, there were brokers in $3,000 suits, billion-dollar IPOs, and twenty-year-olds making $500,000 a month. And then there was Louis Pasciuto, who came from Staten Island at the age of eighteen and discovered an indelible truth: He was born to steal. And The Street was made for him.

This is the astounding, true story of the rise and fall of a fast-talking stock hustler, as well as a shocking portrait of the insidious ways the Mob infiltrates and fleeces Wall Street. From outrageous scams to out-of-control strip-club parties, Born to Steal takes you inside the lives of brash young men who flaunt their ignorance of stocks, bonds, and PE ratios even as they become the perfect foot soldiers in a vast campaign to separate honest people from their money.

Trading his jeans and T-shirt for a $90 suit, Louis Pasciuto arrived on Wall Street in 1992 to join a "chop house," a crooked brokerage firm set up by a charismatic Mob-connected overlord. Working out of seventeen brokerage firms, Louis sold often worthless or nonexistent stocks to gullible retirees in Phoenix, naive farmers in Nebraska, and profit-chasing millionaires in California - right under the nose of financial regulators. Stuffing his money into a mayonnaise jar - because he didn't have a clue how to invest it - he was quickly making thousands of dollars a day, and ready to strike out on his own. But a shark wanted a piece of Louis's action. Enter Charlie Ricottone, a mobster straight out of The Sopranos, who pummeled people in public, painted his bald spot in private, and was just the advance guard of a money-hungry army of wiseguys.

Suddenly Louis's lifestyle - the stripper girlfriend, his looming marriage to an entirely different woman, the Rolexes, Armanis, celebrity friends, orgies, and three-day cocaine binges - was about to go up in smoke. When the violence escalated and the FBI finally stepped in, Louis had to pull off the ultimate heist: join the Feds and steal back his life.

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.

Weiss, a business journalist, tells the fascinating story of Louis Pasciuto, a man "born to steal," who grew up in the Wall Street Mafia, was caught by law enforcement at age 25, and then turned against his former accomplices. With engrossing detail, we learn about the degraded life of Pasciuto as he moved from a gas station attendant to a Wall Street stockbroker in 1992. With lies and schemes that bilked naive investors of untold sums, he worked for chop shops (which looked like brokerages and were registered but sold usually worthless stocks) and bucket shops (which pretended to sell stocks), and in turn was bullied by gangsters who wanted their share. This description of the Mafia's infiltration of Wall Street is a tale of thievery in the 1990s on a scale never before seen. When caught by federal agents, he joined their efforts against the "Guys" in exchange for the government's Witness Protection Program. This story clearly illustrates that truth is better than fiction.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Mary Whaley

Follow the checkered career of one Louis Pasciuto, a New Jersey nobody who falls in love with sleazy junk stock dealing at age 18 and begins cleaning up by cleaning suckers out. Before you can say Rolex, he's driving slick cars and living the high life of a lowlife who has more money than he can deal with. The story arc is reminiscent of Scorsese's GOODFELLAS, with the protaganist finding himself in over his head with the Mob. It's all gripping work by actor Frank Whaley, who effortlessly downshifts to Pasciuto's Jersey whine whenever it's called for. Fast-moving, tragic, funny, highly entertaining. D.J.B.

Gary Weiss lives in New York City.

Height (mm) 229 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Width (mm) 152