Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street Read Free Page A

loved. Stealing.
    Louis went to Arizona to steal from Joe Welch just a couple of months before he was arrested. He went to steal but not to
     rob. There is a difference. A robber uses a gun. Louis never used a gun when he stole. He didn’t have to.
    Joe Welch lived in northeast Tucson, on a side road off a side road off a side road. A dirt road. Since this was the desert
     Southwest, the street where he lived had a weird-sounding name—Tonolea Trail. When Louis heard it he thought he had misunderstood.
     Tana-what? Tana-lay? As in fuck? Louis hated the Southwest. He hated the desert. He hated dirt roads. He hated dirt. Period.
     He liked clean things, objects and places that were tidy and familiar, and people whose reactions were predictable. Large,
     clean apartments. Old men.
    Joe Welch was an old man. Old men liked Louis and he got along with them, joked with them, cursed at them, let them curse
     at him. Knew what made them tick. You had to have that kind of knowledge, that kind of rapport, if you were going to steal
     from old men who had a lot of money—the only old men worth knowing.
    Louis hated the desert but he loved the people of Arizona, as long as they lived where the cacti outnumbered the people. Phoenix
     was bad. Tucson was small enough to be good. Small towns, ranchers—they were the best. He loved rural America. Their young
     men and even their professionals were fine. His kind of people. But the World War II generation was, for Louis, truly the
     Greatest Generation. And when they died—well, that could be awesome. It was so easy, so utterly cool, to steal from the dead.
     He had done it before, and he hoped, and prayed, even though he was an atheist, that he would do it again.
    Soon Joe Welch would die. But Louis didn’t know that as he arrived at Tucson International Airport and waited for Joe Welch
     to pick him up. Most clients wouldn’t have picked up their brokers at the airport, but Louis and Joe had a special rapport.
     They were friends, almost. Father and son, or grandson, almost.
    Joe Welch was eighty-five years old. He had a $10 million account at Smith Barney. Louis wanted all of it.
    Louis knew the financial needs of men that age—particularly men old enough to die soon. He knew what kind of investments would
     meet their special requirements. He had plenty of experience.
    By the time he met Joe Welch in the summer of 1999, Louis had been a broker for the greater part of seven years and had worked
     at seventeen brokerage houses. The bull market had been constant background noise for most of his life. It had begun when
     Louis was in grade school. He never knew a bear market. And since he rarely put his clients’ money in anything resembling
     an investment, he never really knew the bull market either. But he knew how to sell stocks. When it came to selling stocks,
     no one was better.
    He knew precisely the kind of stocks to sell to Joe Welch and the other persons who had the misfortune to be clients of United
     Capital Consulting Corporation. Certificates of deposit, mutual funds, and other easily liquidated, conservative investments
     were not for them. Louis preferred moneymaking opportunities that would appeal to the youthful zest in even the most wizened
     old fart.
    Walt Disney Company, for instance. Great company. Louis had designed a superb trading strategy for Welch, and his other clients,
     involving that particular stock. They were not aware of this strategy, though Louis was such a terrific salesman that he probably
     could have sold them on it anyway. What he did was simple: He took their money. That was it. How much more superb could you
     get?
    Louis applied that same straightforward if not honest approach to every aspect of his brief career as United Capital’s chief
     executive officer and sole employee. For example, every small brokerage firm must have a larger firm to handle client accounts.
     So Louis informed his clients that United Capital’s accounts were in