Brokers, Bagmen, & Moles TRANSCRIPTS

[00:00:00] Anjay: Previously on Brokers, Bagmen, and Moles.

[00:00:05] Tim: I was overwhelmed and my first thought was, what'd I get myself into?

[00:00:10] MacNeil Leher News Hour: Four FBI men wearing wires, infiltrated the Board of Trade and the Mercantile Exchange.

[00:00:16] Stretch: These guys had to lose millions of dollars along those couple years.

[00:00:20] John Ryan: There are a lot of people that built their careers as a result of that investigation.

They were down there to expose a big cheating scandal.

I don't think they did.

[00:00:36] Point Break: Why be a servant to the law when you can be its master?

I can't do this.

Sure you can. Who knows? You might like it. It's a killer rush.

Bodhi, this is your fucking wake up call man! I am an FBI agent!

I know, man. Isn't it wild?

[00:00:57] Anjay: You might remember this classic scene from the ‘90s action flick, Point Break. Keanu Reeves plays FBI Agent Johnny Utah, who goes undercover to catch a crew of bank robbing surfers.

[00:01:11] Point Break: Special Agent Utah. This is not some job flipping burgers at the local drive-in.

Yes, the surfboard bothers me.

Yes. Your approach to this whole goddamn case bothers me and yes! You bother me!

Now for Christ's sake. Does either one of you have anything even remotely interesting to tell me?

Caught my first tube this morning, sir.

[00:01:36] Anjay: The movie, of course, is Hollywood fiction, but from its early days, the FBI has used undercover agents to gather evidence and build cases.

In 1920, J. Edgar Hoover sent the FBI's first black special agent, James Wormley Jones, undercover to build a case against Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. Jones worked his way into Garvey's confidence and gathered enough evidence to convict him of financial fraud. J. Edgar Hoover would go on to lead the FBI for nearly fifty years and establish the undercover investigation as a cornerstone of law enforcement.

But in the 1980s when they arrived undercover on the trading floors of Chicago, they did not realize what they were up against. They were entering an entirely new type of arena and just like special agent Johnny Utah, they vastly underestimated the task at hand.

[00:02:43] Point Break: Why can't I just walk around with this thing under my arm and act stoned? Ask a few questions.

Well look at 'em. Like some kind of tribe. They got their own language. You can't just walk up to those guys. You have to get out there and learn the moves. Get into their head, pick up the speech.

Angelo, this is for little rubber people who don't shave yet.

Come on, you're the quarterback jock.

It's all balance, right? And coordination. How hard can it be?

[00:03:19] Anjay: I'm Anjay Nagpal, and this is Brokers, Bagmen, and Moles.

[00:03:33] T-Bun: This guy made 2 million. This guy made 3 million. This guy made 4 million.

How the fuck you make 2 million in a day?

[00:03:40] Tim: Lost a million dollars by 8:30 in the morning. Nothing you can do.

[00:03:45] Stretch: He's making a thousand dollars a day. Five grand a week selling fucking beef jerky.

[00:03:51] T-Bun: Believe me what I'm telling you, they're setting you up.

They're G. They're the FBI.

Timmy, last time I was in a chair like this, I was before the grand jury.

Three times. Three. Once for the Merc, once for, uh, this guy Marco, who's an Outfit guy, and once for Joey Lombardo the Clown when he disappeared.

[00:04:32] Anjay: That's Tony Bonjourno, better known as T-Bun. Though he clearly has some mob ties, he's not a gangster.

During the FBI investigation, he was a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, more commonly known as the Merc.

Tim had some friends in common with T-Bun and knew that at one point he traded in the same pit as an FBI agent.

[00:04:58] T-Bun: My bill at the Merc Club was more my mortgage. Seriously.

[00:05:03] Anjay: The Merc Club was a little restaurant and bar inside the exchange. It was filled with heavy drinking traders before, during, and after the trading day.

[00:05:14] T-Bun: My wife would get the bill in the mail. She goes, really? What the fuck is wrong with you?

What do you mean? Because, you know, I'm used to, I was always used to paying cash. You know, you see a couple guys, they send them over there. You know, you just sign. Fuck. I love signing.

My wife goes, our mortgage is $1800 and your Merc bill's $2700.

[00:05:34] Anjay: As he's telling this story to me, Tim and Stretch, T-Bun's drinking a Miller Light. He asked us to bring him a 12-pack for the interview.

[00:05:43] T-Bun: Said, I think you're getting me somehow, you know? Then they send you the receipt and the thing is you know, every day. 82 Miller Lights.

Who the fuck drinks 82? I go, there's five guys. Do the math.

It was like fucking 15 a piece.

[00:05:59] Anjay: That's 82 Miller Lights for five guys in one day.

And it's not even dinner time. To guys like T-Bun, that's just a regular afternoon.

[00:06:10] T-Bun: I go, you drink from 12 to 6, how many think you're gonna have?

My dad was a bookie at Wrigley Field for the horses. You know, all the baseball players.

[00:06:26] Anjay: As a kid, T-Bun spent a lot of time at Wrigley Field, but instead of watching the Cubbies, he was there to take horse racing bets.

[00:06:35] T-Bun: Lou Boudrou, the announcer. I was like 14. My dad would say, go up to Lou and I'd knock on the radio booth, and Don Kessinger leading off. And he'd go, hold on kid.

[00:06:47] Lou Boudrou: Here's the pitch line. Dry downfield, line. Curving, curving. It's a foul ball. Called by the third base umpire, that baby was close. That could have been the ball game.

[00:07:01] T-Bun: And he'd gimme a piece of paper with money with his bets.

[00:07:04] Anjay: T-Bun and his dad were very close. They did everything together.

[00:07:12] T-Bun: Went to college for about, uh, three weeks. Got in a fight. My dad got me a job at the city as a garbage man. Worked there for two or three years.

[00:07:23] Anjay: T-bun's dad didn't want him to be just a garbage man, so he asked an old friend to motivate him.

[00:07:31] T-Bun: Guy picked me up and said, come on, Anthony, get in the car with me. So I go, where do you want me to go? He, I'm gonna show you.

So he was driving around the neighborhoods I was a garbage man at, and everybody was on the corner, you know, on their porch with a beer.

He goes, you wanna wind up like that guy?

Fuck you talking about?

He goes, they're all city workers. You don't belong here.

[00:07:50] Anjay: But T-Bun was a college dropout and his only work experience was as a garbage man. So his career options, they were limited.

[00:07:59] T-Bun: So he said, I got a guy down to Mercantile Exchange. You know, you go down there, it'd be a little, a little future.

He says, I'll start you off as a runner. I said, well, you know how much he goes, $80. I said, $80 a day. He goes, no, $80 a week. I go, Hey, thanks a lot, pal. I said, no.

[00:08:20] Anjay: The guy told T-Bun, the Merc would provide a brighter future than being a garbage man. But his starting salary would be a fraction of what he was making working for the city.

[00:08:32] T-Bun: I said, the fucking guy wants to gimme $80 for the week. I go forget about it.

[00:08:36] Anjay: T-Bun obviously ended up at the Merc, and that's because a week later...

[00:08:44] T-Bun: The snowstorm happened.

[00:08:46] Anjay: Chicago snowstorms are brutal. This one in particular dumped almost three feet of snow on the ground in two weeks.

The city was unprepared to handle it, resulting in unpled streets piled up garbage and halt to the Chicago Transit Authority.

The debacle cost incumbent Mayor Michael Bilandic his job. The new incoming mayor, Jane Byrne, came in with a promise to clean up corruption.

The Department of Streets and Sanitation where T-Bun worked, was cleaned up and under new leadership just like that T-Bun's cushy city job wasn't so cushy, and the job at the Merc didn't look so bad.

[00:09:36] T-Bun: I started off as a runner, then a phone clerk. Then just went up the ladder.

[00:09:46] Anjay: Runners and clerks were entry level jobs where you learned the ropes. Most people started that way. It's how I started and it's how Tim and Stretch got started.

T-Bun worked his way up the ladder, and now he had to decide what kind of trader to be.

There's two types in every pit. Brokers and locals.

Brokers stand around the outside of the pit looking in, and they receive customer orders from clerks who sit at desks nearby.

These phone clerks use runners to carry customer orders to the broker who executes or fills the order in the pit.

So how does a broker fill a customer order? This is where the second type of trader comes in.

The local locals risk their own money buying and selling from brokers all day. Their goal, in a nutshell, is to buy low and sell high.

T-Bun decided to become a local. Well, that was T-Bun's main job, but not his only one.

[00:10:52] T-Bun: I was a bookmaker too.

[00:10:55] Anjay: A local trader. And just like his dad, a bookie. Told you they did everything together.

Being a bookie was great training for the floor. You had to be good with numbers, be able to think on your feet and have a fierce competitive streak.

I wish I could take credit for the comparison, but one of my favorite movies, the 1983 Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd classic, Trading Places, beat me to the punch.

[00:11:26] Trading Places: No matter whether our clients make money or lose money, Duke & Duke get the commissions.

Well, what do you think, Valentine?

Well, it sounds to me like you guys are a couple of bookies.

I told you he'd understand.

[00:11:44] Anjay: It's a theme you hear over and over again that traders are just like gamblers. And the more time you spent on the floor, the more it made sense.

[00:11:59] Jeff Kilburg: People would bet on anything, but you would hire a clerk for a variety of reasons and skill sets. But some people would hire a clerk to see how fast that clerk was.

[00:12:07] Anjay: That's former Bond Trader and CNBC contributor, Jeff Kilburg, describing some of the side action that took place on the floor.

[00:12:17] Jeff Kilburg: This was like a Roman Olympic race, right? But at the end of the day, you know, broker is what my clerk's gonna bet. You know, he's gonna beat your clerk.

You know, I'll bet you, you know, a hundred ticks. You know, so all of a sudden, $3125 is on the line.

But those bets there, there'd be side bets. And all of a sudden that broker's like, oh, I know Bobby. Bobby's faster than anyone. You know, I'll bet you 500 bucks. And all of a sudden, you know, there's half a million bucks on a clerk race.

[00:12:43] Anjay: A clerk races exactly what it sounds like. Two traders' clerks would race each other on LaSalle Street outside the Exchange after work, just so the traders could have something to bet on. And the clerk races were just the tip of the iceberg.

[00:13:00] Stretch: Can you drink a gallon of milk in ten minutes without throwing up, like who's faster at a hundred yard dash, that everybody would bet on, or who could throw a softball farther.

[00:13:08] Anjay: Stretch couldn't get enough of that kind of action. He loved all bets, and when you're 22, putting your money in a bank and earning interest, that's just not that exciting.

[00:13:21] Stretch: This one time I was hot with a bookie and I had like $17,000 cash. I also had two uncashed paychecks because I didn't need 'em.

So I had like $20 Gs total, and that the following week I lost $25,000 gambling. So not only did I lose the $20 Gs, I held the bookie $5 Gs afterwards. I had enough of the gambling.

I just, I think I lost $500,000 gambling in my life on the trading floor.

[00:13:48] Anjay: Poor Stretch. If there's an upside to that story, it's that he never gambled again.

Plenty of other guys never learned their lesson. And T-Bun or some other bookie was there to take their bets. And gambling, it wasn't the only vice present on the floor.

[00:14:09] Stretch: The cocaine was very prominent on the trading floor. A lot of drug deals would go down in bathroom stalls.

[00:14:16] Anjay: I know what you're thinking: drugs and gambling. Pretty standard for finance guys in the ‘80s, but it didn't stop there.

[00:14:26] Stretch: So Gino was my trade checker. Gino, he was a good old Italian kid from the city and Gino was one of these guys would come in, Hey, Stretch, you know, he'd look around, hey, Stretch, hey, I, I got some plasma TVs, you know, like it fell off a truck.

I got thousand count sheets, Stretch, you know, hey, I got some imported wine Stretch. I got some sunglasses. You know, he was always like, he always had something that fell off a truck kind of thing.

[00:14:50] Anjay: Some of the clerks and runners were making as much money with their side hustles as traders were making in the pits.

[00:14:57] Stretch: This kid was selling homemade beef jerky, and he had like eight different flavors and shit. It was insane. He's making a thousand dollars cash a day, five grand a week, selling fucking beef jerky cash on the floor. You're not allowed to have, you know, food on the floor, so whatever, whoever he was dooking to bring on a duffle bag full of beef jerky on the floor. But nobody cared because we all wanted the beef jerky.

[00:15:19] Anjay: That beef jerky guy was still around when I was trading. And I gotta tell you that beef jerky was excellent.

The exchange was truly surreal. Drugs, gambling, and a massive bootleg market, pretty much right out in the open on the floor of one of the biggest financial markets in the world.

While Stretch and T-Bun and hundreds of other guys leaned into the good life, Tim was much more focused on getting rich.

[00:15:55] Tim: My first paycheck as a broker was take home was like $15,820. I almost remember it to a dime, but it was $15,800 and something.

[00:16:06] Anjay: Brokers got paid a $1.50 for every contract they filled. As he got better, Tim was getting bigger orders with hundreds and even thousands of contracts per order. Then one day it hit him.

[00:16:21] Tim: I'm like, Jesus Christ, I'm making more than the starting quarterback of the Bears.

[00:16:28] Anjay: In 1985, quarterback Jim McMahon led the Chicago Bears to a near perfect season, capped off by a trip to Super Bowl 20, where they destroyed the New England Patriots, 46 to 10. That year, McMahon made a whopping $600,000. As a reward, he got a huge new contract that would pay him $950,000.

By the time Tim was a few years into his career, he was making way more money than the Bears notorious quarterback. Only then was he ready to lean into the lifestyle.

[00:17:05] Tim: So I found this high-rise close to downtown and, Stretch and I go there. You know, we walk in there, there's a doorman. That's pretty cool. He was a nice guy. We go up 16th floor and we open the sliding door and we look across the way and there's an office building.

In the office building, we look and I look and there's a smoking hot girl that's working right across the way, and I look at him, he looks at me, and the leasing agent's right there, and I'm like, I'm in.

[00:17:39] Anjay: Tim signed the lease and Stretch moved in with him rent-free. At 22 they were already living a life beyond their wildest dreams.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, a couple of other guys moved into an even posher downtown high rise called Presidential Towers.

These two guys, however, were nothing like Tim and Stretch. They were FBI agents.

I wondered how the FBI learned that brokers on the floor might be ripping off their customers.

Chicago's trading floors were such a secluded club. Maybe there was a whistleblower.

T-Bun thinks the answer is a lot more simple.

[00:18:28] T-Bun: So when people make a lot of money, they're thinking there's gotta be corruption.

Oh fuck, this guy made 2 million. This guy made 3 million. This guy made 4 million. How the fuck you make 2 million in a day?

[00:18:39] Anjay: Nobody made that kind of money in a day. I could see how T-Bun would think that, but the FBI doesn't investigate people just because they're making lots of money, unless of course they're making it illegally.

But that's not what T-Bun is saying. It's never been clear why the FBI investigated the floor.

And so far the mystery remains, but T-Bun did meet someone at the Merc who was key to this investigation, and you'll hear about it after the break.

[00:19:26] T-Bun: Randy Jackson. Randy Jackson was like a hillbilly type guy, you know, beard, you know, tried to be like cool. It was like a fucking hayseed guy, you know.

[00:19:36] Anjay: T-Bun noticed Randy Jackson sometime in the fall of 1987.

[00:19:41] T-Bun: The other guy was more polished, Pete Vogel in the Japanese yen pit. They had an uncle who had a lot of money.

[00:19:50] Anjay: These two traders had a rich uncle who was bankrolling their trading accounts. So like any good bookie T-Bun, saw dollar signs.

[00:20:02] T-Bun: You like betting football? Yeah. I say, here's a number. So then they started betting football.

And so I said, Hey, let me do your out trades, gimme $50 a week. Oh okay, Anthony. They're two nitwits, to be honest with you, but I didn't give a fuck.

I was making money off 'em, but not in football. They beat me every week. Every week they fucking won. But every trade they made was a loser.

[00:20:25] Anjay: Said these guys were making lots of losing trades and that they were involved in a lot of out trades. Out trades are errors that happen when a broker and a local disagree on the details of a trade.

Remember, this is the era of open outcry. Trades were made verbally in the pit and then written down on a piece of paper, and only much later were they recorded into a computer.

Given how busy the floor was at times, mistakes were inevitable and most of the time they were easy to fix, but occasionally they could get costly.

[00:21:08] Tim: I came in in the morning at 7:30. I found out that there possibly was an out trade. I knew this was my problem.

[00:21:17] Anjay: The previous day, Tim thought he executed a client's buy order with a local in his pit. But the local said the trade never happened, and Tim never double checked it because he had hundreds of orders to fill. The problem was Tim's customer was told his order was filled.

Since Tim was a broker, he was responsible for the error and had to buy those contracts as soon as the market opened. But there was another problem. The market was moving against him.

[00:21:52] Tim: I just watched that tick, that ticker of the cash just go up and up

and every tick was $5,000. $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $30,000.

[00:22:04] Anjay: A tick is slang for a small change in price.

[00:22:09] Tim: Nothing you can do. Lost a million dollars by 8:30 in the morning.

[00:22:15] Anjay: I don't know what's crazier, making a million dollar mistake at work or actually having the money to cover it.

This story may be extreme, but it illustrates the risks of being a broker. They don't risk their own money like locals, but they do have to pay for their mistakes or out trades when filling customer orders.

Until that is, brokers figured out a way around that. What they did was ask locals to absorb their losses for them. But why on earth would a local take a loss for a broker's mistake?

[00:22:53] Tim: If I had a big order, I might sell 'em a majority of that order and then sprinkle the infield, but this guy was here for me when I needed them. There was nothing wrong with the way I paid them back.

[00:23:03] Anjay: Tim's describing one way a broker could pay back a local for helping him with his error. There's several ways brokers could do that. Some were legal and others were not.

We won't go into all of them, but what we do need to understand is that brokers had the ability to manipulate certain customer orders and could easily direct profitable trades to the locals who helped them avoid out trades.

[00:23:31] T-Bun: It was normal, you know, a guy who had an error you give it to, you know, the guy would take him off the error and then the order filler will look favorably toward the guy, because the guy helped them.

[00:23:43] Anjay: I know this sounds complicated and maybe even a little shady, but here's the important takeaway. T-Bun, Tim and most other traders say that when locals helped brokers out of mistakes, they did it to make sure customer orders were filled properly. They had to keep customers happy, and they had to keep the markets moving.

Now let's get back to the hayseed-looking guy who was good at betting football and terrible at trading, T-Bun's new buddy Randy Jackson.

[00:24:18] T-Bun: As they're we're trading in a pit. You know, they're always looking around and "You know you need any help? You got an error?"

And I'm like, What the fuck?

[00:24:26] Anjay: T-Bun noticed Randy Jackson walking around the pit and saying to a few brokers, “Hey, if you guys need someone to help you fix an out trade, I'm your guy.” To T-Bun, that was a huge red flag.

Because locals didn't want to take losses for brokers. They saw it as a necessary evil, just part of doing business like a restaurant owner having to comp a few meals here and there.

So when the new guy with the rich uncle from Uruguay kept walking around blatantly offering to give money to brokers who made mistakes...

[00:25:04] T-Bun: "You know, if you need any help, you got an error?"

And I'm like, What the fuck?

[00:25:08] Anjay: That's when he knew something was up.

Later, Randy Jackson and his polished friend from the Japanese yen pit walked up to T-Bun and offered to buy him a drink. T-Bun obliged.

[00:25:33] T-Bun: After about maybe three months, I just had my son. It was February of ‘88. They said, Hey, you got, you know, you got some time to, you know, come down to the bar with us, we got a proposition for you.

We'll be honest with you, our uncle needs to show some money coming in because you know, he's got a lot of illegal money.

I'm thinking, I'm listening. I go, go ahead now. I'm drinking. They're drinking right along with me. We're only down there for six months, eight months, and we don't know anybody.

Well, you know everybody. You get like one of your buddies. That made, say a hundred thousand dollars.

I go, Yeah, and you know they don't wanna pay taxes on it.

So what you do is you get them to lose a $100,000 to us in a trade.

So it shows my uncle's account making a $100,000.

I'm going, Yeah, and every time you do that, we'll give 'em $90,000 cash back.

So you know, they're saving a lot of money on taxes and every time you do that, we'll give you $10,000 cash.

Because we know you just had a baby. You're a good guy. We wanna help you. I go, really? I like this. Keep going. Right?

[00:26:44] Anjay: Let me simplify that. Through a series of prearranged trades, Randy Jackson and Peter Vogel were offering to help T-Bun hide income, thereby reducing his tax bill.

This is called tax evasion and it's illegal. T-Bun wasn't dumb. But he also wasn't ready to call it a night just yet.

[00:27:09] T-Bun: So now we're drinking till like 5:30 at night. 6:00. I got 'em both fucked up.

Now we're gonna go. Now think about what I to what we talked about. I said, I'll get back to you.

And I came home and I'm laying on the couch and she goes, what's matter?

[00:27:24] Anjay: He's having this conversation with his wife.

[00:27:27] T-Bun: These fucking guys. They gimme $10,000. Had people lose a $100,000 to him, they'll give him back $90,000.

I go, Don't sound right. But my dad goes, uh, what's going on? I know Dad, you know, two guys that bet to us?

[00:27:42] Anjay: As in the football bets.

[00:27:44] T-Bun: I go, they hand me down in the bar and I can make $10,000, you know, give his, you know, give him my buddies to lose money to him.

And he goes, you stupid cocksucker!

I go, what? He goes, Didn't, I raise you right? They're fucking G!

I go they're what? I go, no, you're nuts.

He goes, Believe me what I'm telling you, they’re setting you up. Don't talk to them cocksuckers again.

First thing tomorrow, go there and tell 'em that you closed down shop at the football.

I go, dad, they're, they're from Nebraska. They, they, they got money. They belong to the East Bank Club.

They're, he goes, they're G you stupid cocksucker.

[00:28:26] Anjay: G as in G-men. As in FBI agents.

[00:28:33] T-Bun: So I go to work the next day and I'm doing the out trades, and Randy Jackson comes up to me.

Good time yesterday, huh T-Bun? I go, Yeah, I said by the way, I said, my guy got shut down. I said, no more football.

What? I said, No, I'm done.

[00:28:48] Anjay: T-Bun listened to his dad and told Randy he couldn't take his football bets anymore.

[00:28:53] T-Bun: There's a kid filling orders behind me. I couldn't stand, couldn't stand him. He was a little jag off.

So all of a sudden it was busy. I'm trading. We're all trading, and Randy Jackson, the FBI, is standing in front of me.

So this kid behind me goes, I hear him. Fuck, fuck.

I go, what's the matter dickhead? He goes, I was supposed to buy 'em and I sold 'em. I got a $60,000 error.

[00:29:20] Anjay: The broker had made a huge expensive mistake. He sold futures for his client instead of buying them. Now he needed a local to help him out of the jam, but T-Bun wasn't in a generous mood that day.

[00:29:34] T-Bun: That's too fucking bad. Call your company up and tell 'em you need a check.

[00:29:39] Anjay: A check for his customer to cover the mistake, rather than asking a local for a favor. Since T-Bun's, dad told him Randy and Vogel were likely FBI agents. He wasn't taking any chances.

[00:29:53] T-Bun: Two seconds later, Randy Jackson. Fred, what's the matter?

I fucked up. I was supposed to buy him. I sold them. He goes, I'll take him off ya.

With that, my heart went right to my feet. My dad was right.

[00:30:07] Anjay: Randy Jackson offered to just give that broker who he didn't even know and who didn't even ask him for help. $60,000.

[00:30:19] T-Bun: The kid came in the order filler. He goes, huh, man, Randy Jackson took me off that error.

I said, you know, I don't like you.

Yeah, I didn't ask you for nothing. Randy took me off and I'll give it back to him off the paper.

I said, you can't sell paper, number one. Number two, you better get out. I don't like you, but I'm telling you for your own good.

Go on your, go on their phone and call Rev Co up and tell him you have a fucking error and give him a fucking check.

[00:30:49] Anjay: Rev Co was that broker's clearing company. Clearing companies finalize trades and oversee all the money that changes hands.

So again, this is just T-Bun telling that kid to make it right and handle this error legally.

[00:31:05] T-Bun: I said, I'm just telling you that, take it for what it's worth. I left the pit. I'm like, I went smoking, you could smoke then. I walked in the, I was having a cigarette. I go, my dad's right.

This fucking guy's they're G, they're the FBI.

[00:31:24] Anjay: Once again, T-Bun's dad came to the rescue. I told you they had a great relationship.

On a serious note, T-Bun just gave us some huge new information. He told us he discovered there was FBI agents in the pit months before the investigation was announced.

The FBI blew their cover, but that wasn't the only mistake they made.

This case was supposed to be about brokers cheating customers, so T-Bun’s story of the FBI agents trying to prearrange trades in order to lure him into tax evasion. Besides it being entrapment, it had nothing to do with brokers ripping off customers.

Stretch always told me the FBI had no idea what they were doing in the pits, so maybe they got desperate and tried to lure traders into breaking the law, even if it was just good old fashioned tax evasion.

After all, that is how they got Al Capone.

It was time to go straight to the source. I tracked down FBI agents, Peter Vogel and Randy Jackson online and hand wrote them letters. So far no response.

On the next episode of Brokers, Bagmen, and Moles: We might not have the FBI agents yet, but we did track down another trader who had a lot more interaction with the FBI than T-Bun.

In fact, he faced more indictments in this case than anyone else.

[00:33:05] Ray Pace: You don't think what you're doing in there is illegal. You don't think you're breaking a new Oz in there? I sat there and I said, something's not right here.

[00:33:17] Anjay: Before you go. If you or someone you know might have a hot tip or just a funny story related to our show, we have a hotline for you. Call us at (646) 820-1452.

That's 646 820 1452. And please follow us on social media. Our handle is @entropymediaco. That's at Entropy Media Co where we'll be posting additional information about the case and awesome behind the scenes action.

This has been a production of Entropy Media in association with Stretch Productions.

This is Entropy's very first show, so if you've enjoyed it, please follow wherever you listen to podcasts and rate us there too. Every follow rating or even a personal recommendation to a friend or family member really helps.

I'm your host, Anjay Nagpal. Our showrunner and senior producer is Danielle Elliot.

Our producer is Jenn Swan.

Our executive producers are Tim Hendricks, Kevin "Stretch" Huff, and Dennis Stratton. Original music, sound design, and editing by Gerard Bauer.

Music clearances by Deborah Mannis-Gardner from DMG Clearances.

Production legal by Bruns, Brennan, and Berry.

Legal clearance/Fair use by Rachel Strom at Davis Wright Tremaine.

Fact checking by Delilah Friedler.

Show art by Rebecca Hendin.

And from Entropy Media, our in-house executive producer is Josh Fjelstad. Our head of operations is Nuna Eboe. Our project manager is Sebastian Perry. Our associate producer is Heidi Roodvoets. Our development coordinator is Simona Kessler.

And I wanna send a very special thanks to Laurie Morse and David Griesing.