Bikini Bartenders
Payday at downtown brokerages is typically the 15th of the month. One former Blackwall broker said in good times he’d call his cocaine dealer and head for Atlantic City. An ex-trainee at Meyers said his boss would give him $100 to run across Broadway to cash checks for thousands of dollars. Attendance is poor on the 16th, brokers said.
“There’s a saying on the Street: ‘Go big or go home,’” Edgar Repko, a veteran of downtown brokerages, said in an interview at Nassau Bar, a dimly lit broker hangout six blocks from Wall Street where women in bikinis pour shots.
Repko, 30, said at his peak he was making more than $15,000 a month and spending most of it on painkillers. He said he got hooked after a back injury. Three months after losing his last job as a broker in 2012, he was arrested trying to break into a Newburgh, New York, pharmacy wearing a Mike Tyson mask, according to police records.
Pinky Ring
Kevin Chen, Blackwall’s 31-year-old CEO, said he’s teaching the principals of value investing to young kids who wouldn’t otherwise get a shot on Wall Street. He said Blackwall does its best to make money for its clients.
“What we’re doing, or what is done on the street between some of these small firms, it’s not illegal,” Chen said. He said Taboada, his employee who used to run Charles Morgan, is a savvy broker and that he hasn’t dug deeply into his background.
Taboada projects an image of success, according to eight people who worked for him at Charles Morgan. He would twirl his pinky ring as he told new hires about his income and condo at the Ritz-Carlton, the ex-brokers said. Taboada said one day they would all wear suits with the firm’s name in pinstripes, a former employee said.
Taboada kept a supply of soap-filled sponges made by Spongetech Delivery Systems Inc. in the office, three of the people said. He told them he made millions of dollars trading shares of the company, whose chief operating officer pleaded guilty to securities fraud after it went bankrupt.
Sham Company