The story of the Legends Seats at Yankee Stadium. Evil. It’s evil.
Inevitably, one group of equity traders — they worked at Fidelity — got caught. The thing that finally brought the whole thing to a close was a 2003 bachelor party for one of the traders. Everyone heard about it: private jets to Miami, a yacht, a bag of Ecstasy, a warren of rooms at the uber-exclusive Delano Hotel, some hookers, some strippers, some red meat, medium-rare. Oh, and one midget, named Danny Black, to toss off the boat. All told, $160,000 for a weekend at the beach.
“It wasn’t like a three-ring circus,” groused the father-in-law of the groom, disgraced Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski, to the tabloids at the time. “It was a nice party. There was only one dwarf.”
When the Securities and Exchange Commission looked into the midget, the hookers, the drugs, they found something less hilarious but more pervasive: the corrupt culture around tickets. This is how it works: A broker wants to sell something, but the trader doesn’t want to buy it. So, as happened in May 2002, a broker sends an e-mail: Are you aware of a guy who delivers Yankee tix to your desk faster than me? Seller of good size CSCO [CISCO Systems].
In exchange for tickets, the trader orders whatever the broker is selling. Everybody wins. The broker gets his sale. The trader gets his seat behind the dugout. Well, almost everybody. You, I’m afraid, get screwed with your pants on. Wall Street was not only trifling with our financial future but also driving up ticket prices.
NOTE: Please read the comments for a correction to the quote above. The quote above (directly taken from the ESPN story) is incorrect.
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