The Important Matter of Cold Callers

It was January of 2001 and my business was spiraling lower, post dot com bust. At the time, I had two cold callers, one partner and the very worst sales assistant money could buy (more on that at a later time). One of my cold callers aka Brandon was a childhood friend. He entered the business with dreams of getting rich. After all, when we were younger we’d throw wooden chinese stars at each other and threaten strangers with our wooden swords, all made with our own hands. If I could make a million in 2000, so he could he, no?

During his New Year’s eve party he met a man named “Gordy.” Gordy was a Russian immigrant, who was at Brandon’s house because Gordy had a mistress and she was there, the mother of one of my better childhood friends. It was a typical Brooklyn New Year’s, with all sorts of degenerate shit going on.

Brandon was being trained to procure clientele for my Titanicesque of a business, where millions of dollars were being shaved off my moneyline on a monthly basis. It was rather sublimely absurd, if I might say so. Anyway, Brandon got Gordy as a client on that fateful January eve of vagrancy. Shortly thereafter, he told me the news that some “big guy” Gordy wanted to invest $100k. At that point in my life, I didn’t give a shit about piker new accounts, but was glad Brandon was making contacts. After talking to Gordy I knew he was going to be a pain in the ass, so I gingerly gave the account to my partner to handle and manage.

The account was opened and running. My partner made a few solid trades for Gordy and the account surged ahead by 10%. Then February of 2001 came. If you are unfamiliar, February of 2001 was God’s way of punishing stock brokers and anyone else remotely related to the market. We’d just sit there, in a stupor, watching stocks fall to laughable levels, then we’d go get drunk during lunch and resume watching tragic comedy unfold into the bell.

Well, it just so happened, during February of 2001, Gordy was loaded the fuck up with a lot of tech stocks. Apparently, he liked that shit. His account fell from 110k to 75k like an anchor in water. All of a sudden, Gordy became frazzled and began to call my partner 20 times per day. If there was one thing my partner was bad at it was customer service. He was the antithesis of good service, opting to “fucking fire” clients rather than make them feel good. After a few weeks of pestering, my partner snapped and told him to “take his fucking account out of here.” Alarmed by this situation, stemming from the fact that Gordy was cheating on his wife with one of my childhood friends mother, I stepped in and offered to assuage the situation. Gordy wanted to meet for lunch, so we did.

He came to the office dressed like a fucking gypsy, an older man of about 55 years old, clad in an all black sweat suit with gold trims. I took him and Brandon to a deli down the block and we all ordered the pastrami. During lunch, Gordy told me “Fly, you can do better” and started to wink his eyes at me, as if to imply he knew that I was in total control of the stock market, but had lost him money because I was punishing him. I told him “the fucking NASDAQ just fell 30% for the month, what did you expect?” The conversation went into his previous investment experience, where he personally lost $700k trading in and out of Janus mutual funds. I asked him to be patient and I promised him I’d take over the account from my irate partner.

Brandon and I left lunch feeling victorious. Gordy seemed happy, albeit delusional, and he promised to send in more money when things turned around.

I told my partner “let me handle this jackass from now on.” He just nodded.

The next day the market fucking cratered and Gordy’s account was getting punched in the cock hard. I told Brandon to “call him and give him the good news,” as I was busy dealing with 500 other clients who hated me and wanted to skin me alive. Brandon told me “don’t worry about it bro. He is cool.” I said “okay” and then proceeded to write a personal check to cover a margin call. The margin call clerk was literally hovering over me as I signed it.

Two days later Gordy called my manager and alleged Brandon and I were taking money out of his account. Anyone in the business knows this is a serious implication and can easily get you a starring role on American Greed. He told my manager that we’d been siphoning money out of the account, obviously, for there could be no other explanation as to why the account value was $66k. Remember, Gordy thought Fly was all powerful Master and Commander of the stock market, able to control it with his magic wand. The idea of seeing the account down 30% made no sense to Gordy, despite the fact that the Nasdaq itself had gone down 30% in 20 days.

Immediately, the account was liquidated and all activity frozen. I told my manager to “take this nutjob off my hands” and he did, much to his chagrin. Our Chief compliance officer looked into the matter and called us in for a preliminary interview. Just so you know, all compliance officers are douchebags, always hating on brokers because they made 10x their salary.

While in his office he offered a multitude of platitudes to my partner, Brandon and me. He then strayed off the plantation and started to accuse us of “improperly managing the account.” That’s when my partner snapped and told him “to go fuck yourself.” He barged out of the office and I explained to the Chief that “this guy is just an asshole. Look into the matter and you will see we did nothing wrong.”

The next day we were vindicated from stealing from Gordy. The guy had gone off his rocker and was calling my manager every 10 minutes for stock quotes. It was especially amusing to watch my staid, boring, manager deal with the superfluities of Gordy, declining his requests to “trade a little bit here or there.” That’s the way Gordy spoke.

After six months, Brandon quit working for me, after my partner had the head of IT replace his computer screen with a sticky, with quotes written on them. Apparently, my partner thought Brandon spent too much time watching the market, too little getting new accounts. A letter was delivered to the firm, introducing a lawsuit from Gordy, only addressed to me. I was dumbd-founded. After all, I never managed the fuckers account and certainly didn’t open it. I found out later on that Gordy thought I was the boss and felt his odds of “getting back a little bit of money” were higher by targeting me, as opposed to Brandon and my partner.

This was my first lawsuit ever and the other brokers came around to congratulate me, saying idiot shit like “now you popped your cherry” or “you can’t work in the mine without getting dirty.” I just scowled at them and said “thanks.” Coincidentally, our firm was being sold and the Chief counsel was trying to get all lawsuits off the books. The firm was getting sued about 30 times per month and the shit was out of control. To mitigate costs, they were settling all suits, no matter how frivolous the claim was. The attorney assigned to me said “this is nothing. Let’s just settle and make it go away.” At first I was against settlement because it meant this suit would be pasted onto my record for the world to see, effectively branding me a criminal. After a few months of sheer distraught over the market, my business and life in general, I told the attorney “if you guys pick up 100% of the cost, go ahead and settle it.”

They ended up giving Gordy $20k. I heard he lost it all in the market, shortly thereafter. Two years later he died, most likely due to the pangs of anguish– accusing an innocent man of egregious crimes.

To this day, that fucking mark is on my license and I have to explain it to people who question me about it. The accusations were absurd, something one might see on American Greed. I deeply regret settling that suit and if I could do it again I’d spend a gagillion dollars defending my innocence.

At the end of the day, however, Gordy is dead and I’m typing this shit from my space rocket. Karma works in grandiose ways, indeud.

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