Mobbed Up on Wall Street

It was one of the most disturbing aspects of the bull market: the Mob setting up shop on Wall Street. Although organized crime had participated in a smattering of stock scams years before, never had "wise guys" actually established and run brokerage firms. In the 1990s, firmly encamped in lower Manhattan, the six New York area crime families took a hefty chunk of the $10 billion-a-year trade in grossly overpriced microcap stocks. By the end of the millennium, Wall Street had become a leading Mafia cash cow.

None of this could have happened without the foot soldiers of the Mob's Wall Street operations -- hundreds of hustling kids drawn by easy money in fabulous amounts. These were ambitious youths from the streets with no real knowledge of stocks and no skills other than the ability to lie. And none cut a wider swath than a skinny kid from Staten Island named Louis Pasciuto.