A Sure Thing

Throughout the 90's I was working at a defense contractor that made submarines. One of the employees at the company invested with a guy named Sam DelPresto. Sam worked for the now defunct New York City based brokerage firm L.C. Wegard & Co. Inc.

DelPresto must have convinced someone at my company to part with an employee directory because he was cold calling everyone with a job title that sounded like they had some coin. Sam eventually called me. He was full of optimism about all sorts of investments like business machines in Canada and earth moving equipment in Alaska. After a brief pitch, Sam asked exuberantly,

"So how much money do you think you would like to invest to risk a relationship?"

Large Impressive Buildings

Sam mentioned two things I didn't like to hear in the same sentence, my money and risk. I asked him to call later. He offered to send me a prospectus on L.C. Wegard. He tried to get my home phone number, but I declined. When the mail from Sam arrived, I looked through the glossy folder containing a seemingly inordinate amount of pictures of large impressive buildings and espousing the many great investment opportunities that were just waiting for me to risk a relationship. There were also a lot of intricate charts with heavy black lines, rising spikily from left to right. Sam eventually called back.

"Sam, my boss is at my desk right now. I can't talk," I explained.

"Bob, I have something you would have to move on right away."

Investment Graphic

"Sam, my boss is standing right over me."

"I have a warehouse full of office machines in Canada!"

"I really can’t talk right now."


"And the deal is we can't lose on this one because companies can't go bankrupt in Canada!" Sam explained with a confident laugh.

"That's fascinating, but my boss is right here."

"This is a sure thing we're offering only to a select few. You'll have to move on this right away Bob."

My boss left to chat with someone else. Sam's urgency as well as his complete disregard of what I was saying really put me off so I followed up with,

"Sam, you're like an old woman. You don't listen, and you keep talking."

There was a long pause as Sam absorbed my observation that he was similar to a feminine senior citizen. This may seem misogynistically ageist, but back then there wasn't any social media platforms to express anonymous rudeness so we were openly rude to each other. I was thinking more about my mother and her friends who all spoke in soliloquy when they gathered for tea and biscuits. They would carry on individual unrelated conversations at various volumes in between sips of tea. One of my mother's friends, Nancy, was so adept at steamrolling over the conversation that when she spoke I would mime a clenched fist holding an auger in front of my chest as I spun my other fist in a circle. My sister would laugh as I whispered, "corkscrew,” conveying the idea that when Nancy talked, it was like a corkscrew drilling through your torso.

"When you want to make money, you call me!" Sam angrily recited as he hung up.

Charles Ponzi

At least I got rid of him, and my boss left too so it was an all round win for me. A coworker explained that Sam was likely greatly exaggerating investment opportunities or running Ponzi schemes. He explained guys like him take money from a bunch of investors and give half back as a windfall. Some people lose their shirt while the winners throw even more coin into the sure thing. Sam then works on replacing the losers with even more suckers. I began posting notices in the office warning my colleagues about Sam DelPresto and L.C. Wegard. My boss saw me pinning the message onto the bulletin board.

"I made a lot of money with Sam DelPresto. He's brilliant," my boss exclaimed.

Another coworker's boss said the same thing. We theorized that they figured supervisors earned more money and might be more influential so they made up the first round investment winners. Eventually when the Ponzi scheme folds everyone loses. A few months later, I got a call from a guy named Jerry. He was not as exuberant as Sam. He spoke calmly about a great many investment opportunities.

"Jerry, you work with that idiot Sam DelPresto, right?" I asked.

Jerry respectfully defended Sam and L.C. Wegard. He concluded with,

"The world would be a better place if more people were like Sam DelPresto."

"What does 'L.C.' stand for anyway?" I asked.

"What? Huh? I don't know," Jerry fumbled.

Probably "Losing Chumps."

Recently I googled Sam, and this is what I learned. First of all, that was his real name. I know because 18 years ago he was busted on what was described as a "penny stock scam." Sam DelPresto swindled $3 million from investors in a "boiler room operation" before the Security Exchange Commission caught up with him. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years probation, six months home confinement and barred from the industry for two years. In 2015 he pleaded guilty to a "massive stock manipulation scheme" that netted him $13 million. He was also convicted of paying kickbacks to a Las Vegas investment advisor. This time he faces federal prison.

I also found Sam's blog dating back to 2010. In one post, entitled "Slow Wheels of Justice," he chronicles the fall of Bernie Madoff and asks why so many people never questioned the lack of any reported losses in Madoff's investment portfolio. He writes,

"I admit to a fascination that borders on awe of the enormity of the fraud."

Looks like Sam will be playing backgammon with his idol for the next few years. His light sentence on the first offense didn’t scare him straight. He committed a worse crime a few years later. By the time he gets out of the pen, he'll probably pick up a real education from the Madoff School of Embezzlement.

Jerry was wrong. The world is not a better place with people like Sam DelPresto.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on March 7, 2017.