Nothing But Money (20 page)

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Authors: Greg B. Smith

BOOK: Nothing But Money
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In the middle of 1996, Warrington Gillet was invisible to the eyes of law enforcement. His rap sheet consisted of a handful of traffic violations in the state of New York. In one incident, he’d drifted through a stop sign. In another, he’d driven a tad too fast. He was hit with a summons that described him as a wanton violator of New York state laws governing the use of motor vehicles on the common byways. That, more or less, was the full extent of nefarious behavior known to the authorities regarding Francis Warrington Gillet III.
Sure, he’d probably lied to his friends and family about certain matters. He’d probably cheated at checkers once or twice. He might have glanced at a fellow student’s test answers in algebra II. He’d certainly lied to his father about how much money he was making as a stockbroker. But these were white lies, good lies. Like his grandfather’s lie about being eighteen to get into the Canadian Air Force. These were the kinds of lies people told every day to make their lives a little easier. They hurt no one. Sometimes he told people he was thirty-six, sometimes he told them thirty-seven. Who really cared? During his so-called acting career, he’d lied about his age whenever possible. Everybody in that business did, too.
That was the toughest part about knowing whether it was actually and factually right or wrong to take envelopes of cash or checks made out to fictional characters to push Spaceplex stock to his customers. He couldn’t really tell, because everybody else at Monitor—whether they were registered stockbrokers or just stock promoters—was doing it, too.
“I was expecting to walk into a legitimate-looking brokerage house or a businessman’s office. I didn’t expect to walk into a town house full of gangsters. I never knew people from Brooklyn. I never knew people with diamond pinkie rings and polished crocodile shoes. The money is so good you overlook these unusual character traits . . . You knew you were doing something wrong when you looked at Pokross and Labate and Piazza. You said, Oh shit. Go look at this office, this tiny office with Labate, Pokross and Piazza in a one-room office, look at what they’re wearing, look at the pinkie rings, look at their polished nails, listen to their anecdotes—come on! But the fact that they’re handing you all these checks?
“You learn to live with it.”
His first trade was a hundred thousand shares of Spaceplex for the Bank of Monaco. He made the trade, and they almost had collective heart failure. He assured Jeffrey and Sal and Jimmy that those shares wouldn’t be going anywhere. He was cutting the banker in on his commission, so the banker would do as he was told. When he met Cary Cimino at the bar at the Rigas Regal Hotel, Cary handed him an envelope. Inside was $25,000 cash.
“Then you knew something was wrong. That was the time you should have gone to the U.S. attorney, gone to your manager and said, ‘I did something wrong.’ It was like the politicians in the Abscam trials. You were tainted by the money. And that overrode your judgment.”
The line at Marine Midland inched forward. Here stood Warrington with his check made out to Johnny Casablanca, headed to the same teller he saw every week. Sometimes he’d sign off on a check made out to Warrington Gillet, and sometimes the check would be made out to Mr. Casablanca. The teller didn’t care. The teller also didn’t seem to care that every broker that stepped up to her window was cashing checks that came in just under the $10,000 red flag. That was the way it was. Everybody knew what was going on, but no one had a real incentive to make it stop. The bank benefited from the Monitor brokers who opened accounts there. Warrington could have brought in a check made out to Jason from
Friday the 13th
. Marine Midland would have cashed it, no questions asked.
Sometimes he deposited the money into secret accounts in Switzerland.
Did he know this was wrong? Perhaps. But there were ways to explain it away until it seemed legal and right. Cary Cimino was expert at this.
The way Cary explained things there was every justification for their actions. It all started with the investors themselves. Investors by nature were willfully naïve. They just wanted easy money. The skepticism required of any competent investor was sometimes overwhelmed by the sight of high-percentage immediate turnaround profit. They saw the market going crazy, so they went crazy. The profits were beyond the pale and would disappear at any moment. They were distorting people’s faculties, but the distortion was deliberate. Cary insisted that the investors—the Wilmas and Chesters out there in Moosebreath, Indiana, the AARP members with their mall-walking sneakers and Sansabelt pastel pants, they knew damn well what they were doing. They had the same information everybody else did. They didn’t have to stay on the phone. They could hang up when they wanted to. Maybe the cold-callers at Monitor took advantage of the fact that some of these people were lonely, but too bad. They were grown-ups. It was their decision to buy the stock and theirs alone.
Cary logic dictated: the investor is greedy, so all you’re doing is capitalizing on that greed.
Plus, you had no choice. Just about everyone else out there was doing exactly the same thing, so you’d better do it or be left behind in the dust. The legitimate firms like Bear Stearns, where Cary once was partner (as he dropped into conversation practically every day), they did more or less the same thing. They promoted house stock in companies whose IPOs they were quietly underwriting. Full disclosure was a joke, and besides, what was the difference, as long as the customer was making a profit?
The first time Warrington was handed that envelope of $25,000 cash, he’d wondered if it was right to keep it. Would his father have done it? Certainly. Would his grandfather the flying ace of World War I have done it? Probably not. Warrington decided it was okay, as long as he reported it to the Internal Revenue Service and didn’t take any more. But then he was handed another envelope. Did he return it in disgust? Feign outrage that Cary would try to bribe him and question his integrity as a registered broker who’d sworn total allegiance to the customer? Certainly not. He took that envelope, and then another and so on. He took them and spent the money.
He spent some at nightclubs. He bought a nice suit. He put some of the money into buying Thoroughbred horses. The red Ferrari was paid for with Spaceplex bribe money. He spent it because it was his money. It wasn’t just a bribe. Somehow Warrington pictured a bribe as dirty money handed to someone to do nothing. This wasn’t true at Monitor. He’d earned his bribe. He’d spent months cultivating high-maintenance complaint-filled customers. He’d had to overcome the reluctance of his overseas banker friend who managed institutional accounts worth millions, by splitting his bribe. He’d worked hard to hold up his end, convincing customers to hold on to Spaceplex long after they should have dumped every cent they owned.
Cary was right. Those customers really just wanted the same things Warrington desired—enough money to live comfortably. If they lost out on Spaceplex, no problem. There were so many opportunities now, they’d make money elsewhere. Warrington could still help them with that. Jeffrey and Sal and Jimmy didn’t care about the rest of his customers’ portfolios, as long as they left the Spaceplex in place until the game was over.
In fact, most of his customers were doing well regardless of Spaceplex, because in these wildly bullish conditions on Wall Street, everybody was doing well. It was like surfing. You didn’t just go down to the beach and sit there until the waves were right. When the waves were right, you got your board down to the beach. The waves of Wall Street were as right as they’d ever be.
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.

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