One of the most profitable and time-honored underworld operations has always been stock and securities fraud and theft. Whether the invaluable paper was stolen or counterfeited, this racket brought incalculable billions to the racketeers who engaged in these types of schemes.
New York has always been at the epicenter of all the action. No other city, state, or country has even come close to duplicating the sheer volume of fraudulent paper moved or the amounts of money that changed hands as New York City.
As the recognized and undisputed world capital of finance, playing host to the famed industry of Wall Street, New York City is uniquely poised and situated as the vessel by which untold fortunes are bought and sold, won and lost, on a daily basis.
It’s been that way since the New York stock market was first invented at a meeting of 24 stockbrokers in 1792. In 1817, the New York Stock and Exchange Board was formally constituted and named.
But as with any shiny new, lucrative thing or business that later becomes wildly profitable, criminals are usually also drawn to the mix. And this particular type of sophisticated scheming requires very intelligent, savvy, and organized criminals.
The Italian Mafia, whether by loose association, or blood-inducted formal members, certainly wasn’t the first to realize the larcenous opportunities available to plunder Wall Street. Not by a long shot.
That particular honor, or dishonor, must be reserved for the likes of the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, and the Kennedys of old. In fact, that’s how they and many other business magnates originally acquired their vast fortunes in the first place or were able to significantly increase their massive portfolios of wealth tenfold.
They didn’t make their fortunes simply by playing the stock market. It was by playing the little people for suckers in the stock market that made them their fortunes.
In the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s in America, over and over again throughout the years, lies, deception, false paperwork, and outright boldfaced fraudulent business practices were how many unscrupulous businessmen and stock traders became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams
After these families were each comfortably settled into their respective places as America’s power brokers and firmly controlled this country’s bastions of big business, big politics, and big wealth, they then stuck their collective finger in the cracked dam of potential future upward mobility and made sure to seal up any legal loopholes previously used to their benefit so that others couldn’t capitalize as they had.
They were now in power, and they were gonna do their darnedest to make certain that nobody else would ever gain the lofty wealth and power they had achieved. It would have been too much of a threat to them and their future control over America, and much of the rest of the world for that matter.
Side Note: These wealthy business magnates implemented and put into law the Securities and Exchange Commission to monitor future trading practices in the field of stock trading. From that moment forward, the SEC made sure to govern and tightly control all activity in the stock market.
It designed both civil and criminal penalties to “control” the business and safeguard future trading. But the Vanderbilts and their kind had gotten in “under the wire,” so to speak, before such laws were even set in place. They had already made their fortunes.
From that period forward, the stock market has always been extremely attractive to investors, both large and small, looking to make a quick buck. Whether it’s the local neighborhood blue-collar worker and his wife trying to better their lot in life a bit, a small businessman stepping out a bit to invest some of his money to try and take a shot to build up his assets, or the already wealthy, looking to get wealthier.
The field of negotiable stocks, bonds, and other types of securities has always been a tremendous growth industry.
Enter the underworld!
