Secure Nothing But Money: How The Mob Infiltrated Wall Street Written By Greg B. Smith Readable In Paperback

offers a detailed look at pump and dump penny stocks, The connection to the mob is a bit of a stretch, They were not the guys behind the racket, The book focuses on what are called associates, Cary Cimino, Jeffrey Pokross, and Francis Warrington III are not fun, exciting, or scary like Al Capone or even Donnie Brasco.
They are con men running a con with some tough guys on the side, Smith tries to glitz up the story with "Robert from Avenue U" and Jimmy Labate but the bread and butter of the book is stock fraud.


If the crux of the book is how criminals or shady stock dealers cheated folks out of their money, then one would hope that in such a detailed book, Smith could clearly describe what they are doing.
The basic idea of pump and dump is easy to understand, A worthless penny stock is acquired in bulk, Dealers cold call people to pump up the stock price, As the stock price rises, the manipulators sell it all at once and walk away, They know the stock is worthless, so the crime is fraud, There are some logistical problems, One, is keeping the stock price rising, That means no selling. And that is why the hoodlums are brought in to remind the shady brokers who all know the scam never sell.
The second problem is unloading the worthless stock all at once, That requires some deep pockets,

It appears that Francis Warrington, the scion of Maryland blue country horse racers, was brought on board for his connections to wealthy clients / banks where they could dump their stock quickly.
Smith is not clear that was Warrington's role, Or, if he does explicitly state Warrington's role, I missed it buried in Warrington's selfpity, I would not be surprised if this book was written with Warrington's direct input, There is a lot of genuflection and thought from Warrington about each stage of the conspiracy, especially the remorse.
But not much about his role, How was he necessary I can only imagine he connected Pokross and Cimino to the Bank of Monaco.


The brains behind the scheme were Pokross and Cimino, Pokross is more of a mystery, He was a career criminal walking the border between illegal and legal, well, more illegal, He was smooth and clever, Smith attributes the idea of the scheme to Pokross, who needed Cimino with his access to brokers / salesmen who would happily take bribes to pump and dump, knowing the dangers of the game.
Warrington is the odd man in the group, Smith goes to pains to show how he fell in with them, But his role and his connection are largely opaque, Pump and dump was hardly new, Another mobster, Phil Abramo, was doing it before them, I suspect mobsters were offering muscle, f not directly manipulating stocks long before thes,

Then, there are the hoodlums, Jimmy Labate was the brute who enforced the no sale rule, "Robert from Avenue U" Lino appears to have exerted some authority over Labate, Somewhere above him was his uncle, Frank Lino, Thrown into the mix is Salvatore Piazza, whose role is also a mystery, He was not a heavy hitter like Labate, The Linos were killers. Smith adds their criminal history to the story to give the story that gangster shine, But their role in the pump and dump scam was little more than supplying Labate and collecting an unspecified share.


Considering that Pokross, Warrington, Frank Lino, and sometimes Cary Cimino all cooperated with investigators, it is frustrating to determine how much money was made

and what the shares were.
The book is filled with stories of living the high life but only in rare isolated examples was there discussion of how much they made.
Even then, it is not clear how much they fleeced from retirees and banks, Or, even how long they were operating, It looks like the main stock scam lasted for aboutyears in thes, It is more difficult to follow because Pokross used dummy companies to hide the actual office and move around dodging investigators.
One federal sting operation led to indictments against the group but it appears to have fizzled out,

Or did it When did Pokross begin cooperating with authorities Warrington appears to have begun cooperating with the first indictment even though it was a bust.
Is that when Pokross began cooperating Cimino realized the noose was tightening, But authorities were watching him closely, How does their racket compare with other white collar criminals Prosecutors tried to hinder Cimino when he told a cooperating Pokross they should kill Warrington.
But Cimino was not a hoodlum, Conspicuously absent is much of anything from Frank Lino, He told authorities about two murders his nephew participated in, but neither had anything to do with the Wall Street scam,

Overall, I was bored, I skimmed sections, especially the pointless passages on Warrington, His failed acting career had no bearing on the story, I did not sympathize with him or anyone, I doubt Smith sympathized with Warrington, Warrington walked away without any prison, Cimino was sentenced toyears, Hardly fair. It is unclear what Warrington even offered the feds, Yes, this book is about a stock broker with a silver spoon who coasted through life, somehow mixed up with a shady stock promoter Cimino, and by extension Pokross and the mob.
Smith tries to jazz it up with stories of gangland brutality but that had no direct relevance to the central scam.
I don't really know why I so disliked this book, I liked the same author's sitelinkMade Men rather well, so I'm not sure what was missing in this one.
There was sort of no central character, or even a small set of characters it was all over the place.
A zillion characters, a zillion events I didn't really see connecting it took a LOT of work to make sense out of.
The information about stock scams is very interesting, but really hard to follow I couldn't tell if it's because I don't have much financial knowledge or because it's oversimplified for people who don't have much financial knowledge, and therefore confusing.
I just couldn't tell, and I wasn't really that motivated to figure it out,

What WAS vaguely interesting is what I like in all NYC mob books the reappearance of "characters" aka people I read about elsewhere.
Here it's Frank Lino, Tommy Karate, Joseph Massino, some other guys, Interesting to connect the dots between stock scams and street crime in LCN, This book attempts to do it, but I don't know that it did it all that well because I was just so bored much of the time.
In context, though, it takes on a greater value,

Another problem I had with it was the obvious contempt the author displays for many of the players in this drama it is a little too obvious that he thinks Warrington is a spoiled brat, Cary Cimino is a sleazy windbag and Robert Lino is a crazed psychopath.
Not that I'm arguing any of those people are okay people I just find it boring to read a book where the author heaps abuse, stated or unstated but expressed in tone, on the characters he's describing.
It just feels icky. This is a reasonably common trait of true crime books, and I find it tedious, I don't remember it from Made Men, so I'm not sure if it's just that these pigdogs are exceptionally bad to the author possibly because the book was published in the midst of the financial crash about the glory days of the lates earlyaughts Who knows.
Overall, I'll be happy to check out Greg B, Smith's other books on OC, but this one to me was an icky, sticky bust, I just feel sleazy. I think I need a shower, one of the rare books about mafia that didn't like it, . . the stile of writing is sarcastic and empty of style, Guys that made millions fought foror forA decent read, I enjoyed reading about how all the main characters ended up actually coming together, After that it's just the usual: someone gets spooked by the law, turns informant, and sinks everyone else.
Wellwritten account of Mob involvement in Wall Street This is not really "How the Mob Infiltrated Wall Street".
Pagestates how Mafiaran pump and dump boiler rooms were already established: "Pump and dump had actually been around since thes, when a handful of gangsters made some money hyping bogus stock.
" What makes this interesting, beside the at time tedious financial industry maneuvers, is a glimpse inside a still functioning sitelinkBonanno crime family post Donnie Brasco.
Forced out of the workhard, playhard world of Wall Street following the Crash of, financial analyst Cary Cimino was determined to maintain his lifestyle of luxury and ease.
Under the guidance of dubious businessman Jeffrey Pokross, Cimino embarked on an illegitimate underground career as a “financial adviser” to naïve investors.


Ciminos smalltime operation soon spiraled into a largescale crime ring when he and Pokross were reunited and met with Mafia wiseguy Robert Lino.
Together, and with the support of organized crime families, the three men devised a highrisk, highreturn scheme to extort millions of dollars from a bevy of unsuspecting stockbrokers and investorsall in the name of the Mob.


This is the uncut, untold story of one of the most elaborate conspiracies to rock Wall Streets rigid foundationa story centered around the Mafia, murder, and a load of money.
Greg B. Smith, reporter for New Yorks Daily News, covers the federal courts in Brooklyn and Manhattan that serve as Ground Zero in the battle to end mafia influence in America.
An investigative reporter for nearly twenty years, Smith has written for The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Examiner, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, and other newspapers around the country.
Hes also a frequent guest on TV and radio discussing everything from racketeering to the Latin Kings street gang to world terrorist organizations.
Mr. Smith lives with his wife and two boys in Brooklyn, New York, Penguin Books .