America’s Hedge Fund — Fuck Yeah!

I’m pretty certain I watched this plotline on Season 2 of the Sopranos:

Ten reputed members of the Colombo, Luchese and Bonanno organized crime families made millions for the mob by selling bogus stocks to unwitting investors, coercing stockbrokers into their scheme with bribes, threats and even once chaining an uncooperative promoter to a pit bull, federal prosecutors charged yesterday.

. . .

According to an indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, the 10 men secretly controlled at least 15 branch offices of brokerage firms, mostly in Manhattan but also on Staten Island and in Brooklyn, where brokers would make cold calls to investors to push fraudulently inflated stocks.

Between 1994 and 2005, they bilked investors of more than $20 million, court papers state.

To protect their financial interests, the defendants used their mob ties to intimidate brokerage firm owners and their employees, prosecutors charge.

In addition to the incident with the pit bull, a cold caller was hit over the head with a golf club, and a broker was beaten with a bat and stabbed when he said he wanted to leave the firm, according to prosecutors.

This version of organized crime either says something about the mob or about Wall Street. In any case, we have another idea for a band name:

The case is the culmination of a three-year investigation into the Colombo family’s alleged corruption of the penny stock market — stocks worth under $5.

In their classic pump-and-dump scheme, the accused made vast purchases of low-prospect stocks deemed unsuitable by the Securities and Exchange Commission. They would trick investors into buying in and driving up the price, then would sell off their holdings, according to prosecutors.

Brokers at the agencies were bribed into promoting these so-called house stocks with commissions of 20 to 50 percent of the selling price, the indictment states.

As an offshoot of the scheme, John Baudanza and Jerry Degerolamo, 34, also created a phony partnership called America’s Hedge Fund, L.P., based at 125 Demopolis Ave. in Eltingville.

The defendants lured investors into buying into the fund, then used the cash to buy cars, renovate their homes and pay off their credit cards, prosecutors charge.

(No, not “Pump And Dump” — that’s a terrible name, you sicko! — I’m talking about “America’s Hedge Fund”!)

(My memory isn’t so bad after all — it was season 2!)