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.

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