"An old-time gumshoe, with a soupcon of little-guy champion Jimmy Breslin and a dash of 1950s bad-boy comic Lenny Bruce."
-- Barron's, May 1, 2006
Gary has been uncovering Wall Street wrongdoing for nearly two decades.Wall Street Versus America is his second book. His previous book, Born to Steal (Warner Books: 2003), described the Mafia's takeover of brokerage houses in the 1990s.
A native of New York City, he attended public schools and the Bronx High School of Science, and graduated from City College and the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. After working as a reporter for The Hartford Courant and news services in Washington, D.C., Gary joined the staff of Barron's in 1984. He moved to Business Week in 1986.
Gary has scored a succession of news beats and exclusives involving all manner of chicanery. He exposed trading improprieties at Charles Schwab & Co. and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. In 1991, he wrote the first stories revealing Salomon Brothers' manipulation of the government bond market. Weiss received numerous awards and honors for these stories and others.
Gary wrote some of the first articles exploring the Internet explosion and its impact on investors. He also wrote profiles of major figures in global finance, including George Soros and Edmond Safra.
It was in the midst of the bull's ride on Wall Street, in December 1996, that Gary uncovered the Mob's infiltration of Wall Street. In "The Mob on Wall Street" and other Business Week stories over the next few years, Gary revealed for the first time how shady brokers, and their organized crime masters, were ripping off investors for billions of dollars a years—under the very noses of regulators and law enforcement.
These stories led to dozens of indictments and convictions, and are widely recognized as a seminal achievement in investigative reporting, in the crusading tradition of Malcolm Johnson's 1950s probe of organized crime on the waterfront.
Journalist and author Chris Byron observed that after the junk bond scandals of the 1980s, "it wasn't the SEC that exposed Wall Street's next big mega-scandal - the Mafia's takeover of the penny stock market - 10 years after that, it was a reporter from Business Week."
Gary received unprecedented -- and, today, nearly unimaginable -- recognition for this achievement.
In a letter that was published by Business Week in its issue of Dec. 25, 2000, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh heaped praise on Gary's work—unprecedented recognition for the work of an investigative journalist.
Freeh said, "Gary Weiss has done our Nation an invaluable service by reporting the manipulation of the stock market by elements of organized crime. By outlining specific stocks and stock brokerage firms that were controlled by organized crime, he opened the door for FBI investigations in Florida and in New York, and for that we owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude."
The full text of the letter can be found here.
In Born to Steal, Gary continued his expose' of Wall Street's criminal underside. He explored the Mob's takeover of brokerages through the eyes of Louis Pasciuto, a Staten Island youth who made millions of dollars for the Mafia on Wall Street.
In Wall Street Versus America, Gary broadens his focus to all of Wall Street, describing in detail how brokerages, money managers have systematically ripped off investors, with regulators doing little to stop them.
Gary is a founding member of Project Klebnikov, a consortium of investigative journalists, organized in July 2005, which is probing the murder in Moscow of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Gary has made numerous appearances on CNBC, CNN, CNNfn, PBS and Fox News Channel, and also appears before corporate and university audiences.
He lives in New York City.
