Sol Frank Steinhardt and
Michael Steinhardt’s Historic Business Relationships
Much of the money that
Steinhardt used when he first began his speculation activity on Wall Street
during the early 1960s was money that his father, Sol Frank Steinhardt,
apparently gave him. As Michael Steinhardt recalled in No Bull:
“…My father began
loaning me money to start investing. Before long, I had a stock portfolio worth
$200,000, a substantial sum of money for a 20-year-old in the early 1960s…He
would give me, say, $10,000, all in $100 bills (in early 1960s-valued money)…I
never asked where the money came from. I simply took the money…to begin investing
for him. Occasionally, he would come up with more than $10,000. Once, he handed
me a substantially larger amount, which I stuffed in my pockets….It heightened
my consciousness to be carrying stacks and stacks of $100 bills through the
streets and subways of the city…Investing my father’s money allowed me to
invest in the stock market without feeling undue pressure…”
Coincidentally, only a
few years before the father of NYU Trustee Steinhardt, Sol Frank Steinhardt,
began handing his son a lot of cash in envelopes to “invest,” Sol Frank
Steinhardt apparently was accused of enriching himself illegally by
then-Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan’s office. As Michael Steinhardt
noted in No Bull:
“…My father became a
gambler of some repute as an adult. His friends and his business activities,
along with his gambling, drew the attention of various state and federal
authorities…He paid for everything with cash…He did not keep business records
nor seriously prepare a tax return until the federal government finally
discovered this oversight…He knew Meyer Lansky, the…mobster, and right up until
the time of my father’s death, he remained close to Lansky’s partner, Jimmy
Aiello--`Jimmy Blue Eyes,’ as his friends called him. I met Jimmy on several
occasions; he and my father saw each other at least a couple of times a
year…Plenty of rather shady characters were in my father’s circles. When Joey
Anastasia, another acquaintance, was shot in the barbershop of the Park
Sheraton Hotel, the police picked up my father for questioning. The two of them
had apparently been out gambling together the night before Anastasia was
killed…
“My father’s gold-buying
during the war [World War II] became the defining opportunity of his life and
led him into the jewelry business. He became a fixture on Forty-Seventh Street,
in the `Diamond District’ of Manhattan, where cash was often the primary medium
of exchange…Everybody in the jewelry district knew him…I even heard him
referred to as the `jeweler to the mob.’…During my time at Penn, my father was
arrested…In 1958, Frank Hogan, the District Attorney of Manhattan, arrested my
father and announced publicly that he had apprehended the biggest jewel fence
in America, Sol Frank Steinhardt…My father was found guilty on two felony
counts and sentenced to prison. For each count, he received 5 to 10 years, to
be served consecutively, not concurrently…I hired a lawyer who taught at
Brooklyn Law School. He won a second appeal for my father…The court agreed to
release my father on the basis of time served (almost 2 years), if my father
accepted the felony charge. He did.
“At the time, I
believed, totally, in my father’s innocence…Over time, I have come to have a
different opinion…He had certainly engaged in purchasing stolen jewelry at
various times in his life…He did engage in illegal activities…”
(end of part 3)
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