Publisher's Synopsis
How did a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn wind up running Wall Street swindles for the Mafia, hobnobbing with the big names of show business making and spending fortunes in a week--then turning informer for the U.S. Government and losing everything, including his own name and identity?
It happened to Micheal Hellerman.
the bright, well-educated son of a respected New York Banker. At age twenty-two, Mike was the whiz-kid of Wall Street, handling millions in corporate funds, moving on the fast track with some high class entertainers, rubbing soldiers with top politicians, financiers and mobsters.
Making money was his passion and he didn't care much where it came from. He worked mind-boggling swindles, corrupting brokers in prominent Wall Street firms and using them to turn worthless shell corporations into $50 stocks overnight, calling on his friends in the Mafia for capital and protection. It was a fabulous racket, until the Feds got wise. Then Mike had to turn choose - turn informer for the government or spend the rest of his life in jail.
Hellerman decided to sing. In this book he reveals what he told the government - a staggering tale of crime and corruption reaching into the highest circles of corporate finance and Washington Bureaucracy. He also describes the nerve wracking life of a protected witness with a mob contract out on his life - and his new beginnings under an assumed name and identity supplied by the government. Finally, Hellerman spells out in detail the shaky stock laws still on the books and shows how a clever crook can get around them to make millions under the table - all at the expense of small time investors.
This is a book that unfolds like sensational fiction - but it's all true. What you will read here - Mike Hellerman's personal testimony - has already sent droves of men to jail and made Mike a fugitive from himself, and his past forever.
