From the Streets to the Street

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 In the fall of 2008, two FBI agents arrived at the front door. They had been expected for three years.

This is the memoir of the forty years that made that conversation possible — and survivable. From Brooklyn collections work in the late 1970s through a federal conviction, seven years served, the trading floors of lower Manhattan, Black Monday, addiction, recovery, and a securities career rebuilt from a handshake and thirty thousand dollars. The Costa Rica chapter came later, when there was every reason to know better.

 The 1980s trading floor has been documented from the outside — journalists reconstructing the excess, prosecutors tracing the fraud. This is the view from inside the machine, told by someone who understood the culture in real time because he had already learned to operate in systems where the written rules and the operating rules were two different documents. What he saw wasn't exceptional. It was institutional. The same math that ran everything else, just faster and louder. That is still true today. 

 "Before I ever made a market, I made collections. The work was simple in theory: someone owed Frankie Doc money, and Frankie Doc sent us to remind them that debt had a physical dimension." 

 Complete at 75,000 words. Currently seeking literary representation. Comparable titles: Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis; Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. A completed six-episode limited series pitch is available upon request. 

Representation and adaptation inquiries welcome. Manuscript available upon request.

bill@billwheelenmedia.com