My Name Was on a Federal Most-Wanted List. Now It’s Written in the Book of Life.

By amazon Thursday, February 6, 2020 Comment Edit

When the authorities caught up with my financial shenanigans, I went on the run. But Christ caught up with me.

On September 13, 2013, I sat alone on the bunk in my cell, eating a cold egg sandwich at the federal correctional institution in Ray Brook, New York, a medium-security prison in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid. It had been my home for 18 years.

I walked out of the prison reception building feeling almost numb. I was nervous waiting for my daughter Jessica and my sister Donna, who would drive me six hours to a halfway house in Boston. There was a bittersweet reunion in the parking lot, filled with hugging and crying.

I was 69 and had served my time without parole for serious financial crimes, catching the longest sentence ever for a white-collar crime in Massachusetts. Money had become my god.

Living the High Life

Growing up in East Boston, I never realized how poor my family was. My mother needed a job after Dad died of lung cancer when I was nine. She supported us four children working in a candy factory and earning $1.10 an hour.

Following high school, I joined the U.S. Air Force, serving four years and getting married along the way. A budding talent for finance led me to major in business at Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Massachusetts; and then in accounting at American International College (AIC) in Springfield, Massachusetts. After graduating from AIC, I worked for an insurance company before joining the Polaroid Employees’ Federal Credit Union as controller. That decision spelled the beginning of the end.

In 1980, I helped launch the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Employees’ Federal Credit Union (DCU) as president and CEO. The business prospered, expanding to 20 branches, and I began investing in single-family rental homes and the stock market. Living the high ...