Stung Read online

  Copyright © 2002 by Gary Ross

  First published by Stoddart 1987

  Mass market edition published by General 1988

  McClelland & Stewart trade paperback edition published 2002

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Ross, Gary, 1948-

  Stung : the incredible obsession of Brian Molony / Gary Ross.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-672-1

  1. Molony, Brian. 2. Embezzlement – Ontario – Toronto.

  3. Compulsive gamblers – Ontario – Toronto – Biography. I. Title.

  HV6685.C32T67 2002 364.16′2 C2002-902210-X

  Lyrics from “Don’t Cry Out Loud,” by Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen, copyright 1978, Irving Music Inc., Unichappell Music Inc., Begonia Melodies Inc., and Woolnough Music Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  The Canadian Publishers

  75 Sherbourne Street,

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com

  v3.1

  For P.J.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  1 The First Time

  2 Las Vegas

  3 Luck Be a Lady

  4 Atlantic City

  5 The Heat Is On

  6 Luck of the Irish

  7 April Fools

  8 The Last Time

  9 Cold Turkey

  10 Settling Accounts

  11 Aftermath

  Epilogue

  Appendix: The Frauds

  The Last Night

  Molony’s Gambling Losses

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  I’m indebted to the many people who shared their knowledge and their opinions of banking, and of the Bay and Richmond, Toronto, branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in particular; casinos, and Caesars in Atlantic City in particular; gambling, and Brian Molony’s compulsive gambling in particular. Some contributions were invaluable, and I thank those who made them: in Toronto, Sherry Brydson, Barb Elson, Mark Osborne, Eddie Greenspan, Jeremy Brown, Craig Law, Ron Andrews, Bob Greig, and Bob Barbour; in Milton, Ontario, Sheila and Sieg Stadler; in Kingston, Ontario, Brian Wallace and Kathleen Lippins; in London, Ontario, Trish Hilton, Barney Rooney, Father John Harper, and Father Joseph Moss; in Buffalo, New York, Maud McCabe; in Baltimore, Maryland, Joanna Franklin and Vic Lehmkuhl; in Wilmington, Delaware, Gerry Fulcher; in Washington, D.C., Robert Custer; in Trenton, New Jersey, John Sheehy, Richard Handzo, and Tony Parillo; in Roseland, New Jersey, Thomas O’Brien; in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Steve Schrier; in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Walt Devlin, Don Russell, Roger Gros, and Dan Heneghan.

  For help that ranged from the practical to the inspirational, I’m grateful to Sheilagh McEvenue, Wanda Wilkinson, Bruce Ramsay, Lucinda Vardey, Michael Levine, Peter Foster, and Sheila Willson. I thank Bill Hanna at Stoddart Publishing for his faith in this project, and Glen Ellis, my editor, for his careful attention to the manuscript.

  This book is a work of non-fiction, accurate in its factual detail. Because several people asked that their anonymity be preserved, however, I have in some instances used pseudonyms.

  “Tomorrow, tomorrow, it will all be over!”

  – Dostoevsky

  1

  THE FIRST TIME

  “Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.”

  – Stephen Leacock

  olony worked late at Bay and Richmond, locked the doors, and drove to the racetrack. He found Colizzi by the concession stand. Molony had a burger and a Coke while Colizzi told him about some crocodile boots he’d had made. “Nice crocodile has to die so you can have new cowboy boots,” said Molony, looking up over his glasses. He finished dinner, wiped his bushy moustache, and borrowed Colizzi’s program.

  “Baby crocodiles,” said Colizzi. “Nice and soft. Who you like in the first? Want to bet the double?”

  Molony bet at the fifty-dollar window and laid three hundred more with Colizzi. His pick, a 6–1 shot, was four lengths in front when it broke stride. Ten races, one winner: he ended the night without enough money for gas. Colizzi loaned him a hundred.

  Next morning Molony drove to Yorkdale Shopping Centre. Yorkdale was one of the few branches of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce open Saturdays, and it was on the way to Woodbine. He wanted to cash a $400 cheque. When the teller asked for identification, he showed his Visa card. The number signified that he was a bank employee. “Oh, staff card,” she said. Molony told her he was an assistant manager at Bay and Richmond and showed his business card. He filled in a countercheque rather than an encoded personal cheque, which gave him until Tuesday to cover it. Not kiting, really, just utilizing his skills at cash management.

  Woodbine was no better than Mohawk had been. He didn’t cash a ticket until the eighth, then won two in a row. His reserves were low and he bet less than he should have. After the last race he was down $3,000 to Colizzi. At least he had $2,500 in his pocket for the harness races. He called Brenda to say he wouldn’t be able to see her after all, maybe tomorrow afternoon? She reminded him she was going bowling with her parents. Would he like to come with them? Molony said he’d think about it — could he let her know in the morning? In the car between tracks he fiddled the radio until he found the baseball scores. Up $1,000 on the afternoon games: he was only down $2,000 to Colizzi. Maybe the night games would bail him out.

  Colizzi had left after the sixth race to pick up his son. Molony had booked three races with him on the evening card, and he bet them again that night at the windows. One decent win and he’d be back on his feet. But he had another bad night at Mohawk, and when he caught the late scores on the car radio, heading home at midnight, he wanted to scream. He’d lost every game but one. He had $120 and owed Colizzi and Beck almost $14,000.

  He stopped at the cash machine, timing it perfectly. He got his limit before midnight; when the date ticked over — new week — he punched in his numbers again and got another $300. Sunday was usually his day. A week earlier he’d aced the NFL games, winning eleven of thirteen. Another big day would make up for the baseball. Things were tight, but they’d been tight before. Couple of weeks earlier he’d gone to Atlantic City owing Beck and Colizzi almost $6,000. He could scrape up only $3,000 cash. So he took the day trip to the new casino, Caesars, with a couple of card-game pals and tried his luck at craps. He didn’t know how to play, but he was a quick study. For an hour he practically told the dice what to do. The dealers paid everybody and the table turned into a party. The others on the junket wore Velcro dice on their lapels. Molony, entranced, looked up to find a dozen guys from Toronto cheering him on. They told him he had to quit or miss the plane. On a $2,000 buy-in he cashed out $13,000. They’d been holding the bus for him. When he climbed aboard he got a round of applause. He was not only back on his feet, he’d found his lucky casino.

  In Toronto, his streak had continued at the races. The bookies didn’t like r
aising his limit when he was losing but were happy to bump it when they owed him. In his second good week he called Colizzi to say he wanted to double up. Colizzi said no problem, long as we settle every Monday. Molony went up to the dining-room before the first race and found Beck there, too, nervously chewing his program, spitting out little wads. Some nights he ate the whole thing.

  “Here comes The Banker on the outside,” said Beck, in the dramatic tones of an announcer. Molony had once bet a horse called Banker Fretz, and the announcer called the horse two or three times. Beck loved it.

  “Sure you want to go double?” said Colizzi.

  “Starting tonight,” said Molony.

  “Here comes The Banker, moving up between horses.”

  Colizzi made a pistol of thumb and forefinger and pretended to shoot Beck in the head.

  That was the night Molony had started losing the photo finishes, betting the place horse to win, boxing the exactors and watching fifty tickets turn into confetti. Things kept sliding downhill. He lost all week, lost at both tracks on Saturday, hit rock bottom Sunday. He lost ten of thirteen NFL games, took a beating on baseball, and didn’t cash a ticket at Woodbine. Should have gone bowling with Brenda and her parents after all — he would have lost to them, too, but at least it wouldn’t have cost anything.

  When he got home at two o’clock Monday morning and crossed his name off the list in the hall — in a family of nine children it was the only way to keep track — he owed $22,300. The house was silent. Everyone was sleeping. Twenty-two three. Not a number he dared think about. He’d get back on his feet during the week. He wasn’t tired, but there was nothing else to do. He turned off the outside light, looked in the fridge, then went upstairs and climbed into bed with a pen and the early edition of Monday’s paper.

  Funny, actually, to think of himself as The Banker. If you’d suggested such a thing in his boarding-school days, he’d have been as surprised as boyhood friends were, a few years later, when they heard he was with the CIBC. One day Molony bumped into an old schoolmate who told him he was a fool. “Guy with your smarts? I can’t believe you’d get into the banking system. It takes so long to get anywhere. It’s so boring.”

  Molony’s idea had been to try it for a short time after university. He had really wanted to be a financial writer. At the University of Western Ontario in London he took honours journalism. He paid as much attention to the trotters at Western Raceway as to his studies, but did well. He wrote a piece on the provincial health insurance plan and sold it to the local radio station. Having worked on his father’s dairy farm in Milton, he knew cattle and sold a piece about an evolving breed to The London Free Press. In history class he did a particularly good paper on the American Revolution. One of the causes of the revolution, so the books said, was the onerous stamp tax imposed by the British. Molony decided to look at the economic argument, calculate the dollar relationship between colony and mother country. It turned out, in his analysis, that the British were heavily subsidizing the Americans. The taxes Britain was collecting were minor compared to what she was spending to support the colony. The stamp tax, though it may have had symbolic implications, was a mere pittance. Molony’s prof told him it was a fine paper, excellently argued, a fresh way of looking at history.

  The business press was in its infancy, and Molony saw a future for a good financial writer. When a notice went up one day at the placement centre that the CIBC was conducting interviews, he dropped around. He hitchhiked to Toronto for the aptitude test. The bank intended to place him in the officer-in-training program, but he scored so well he was moved up to the management-training program. At the end of the school year he had planned to sell teaching aids in Nova Scotia, as he’d done the previous summer, before joining the bank in the fall. But the bank wanted him to start in July. Why not? After slugging furniture and driving a truck part-time at the university, $10,000-plus seemed a decent salary, especially as he could live at home. Couple of years in the bank — direct experience — and he’d be better trained than most people writing about business. “I thank you,” he replied in his letter of acceptance, “and look towards a rewarding career with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.”

  For the first six months he was posted to a small branch in west-end Toronto and given a general introduction to banking. He spent a few weeks as a teller before working in savings, current accounts, loan accounting, and foreign exchange. He then went on relief, floating among different branches, which gave him broad exposure and a chance to consolidate what he had learned.

  He hadn’t realized what a vast and formidable organization he had joined. The CIBC’S 1,600 branches reached from Sooke, British Columbia, to Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, and could be found in virtually every city and town between. The Canadian Bank of Commerce was established in 1867, the year of Canada’s Confederation, and acquired Gore Bank (1870), Bank of British Columbia (1901), Halifax Banking Company (1903), The Merchants Bank of PEI (1906), Western Bank of Canada (1909), The Eastern Townships Bank (1912), The Bank of Hamilton (1923), Sterling Bank of Canada (1924), and The Standard Bank of Canada (1928), before merging with Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961 to become the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Its 36,000 employees made it twenty times larger than the federal department of finance. With $34-billion in assets it was one of the country’s mightiest corporations, four times the size of Bell Canada. It was the second biggest bank in Canada (behind the Royal), and bigger than all but four American banks (Citicorp, BankAmerica, Chase Manhattan, J. P. Morgan). Once you became part of it, you saw it was a world unto itself, governed by its own laws, defined by its own culture, sustained by its own myths.

  Canada — a minor economic power — was home to internationally competitive banks because its banking system was more concentrated than those of other western countries. France had more than 50 banks, Switzerland more than 500, West Germany more than 5,000, the United States more than 15,000. Canada had only eleven chartered banks, and five of them controlled more than 90 per cent of the combined assets. These Big Five banks represented an extraordinary concentration of power. The CIBC’S board of directors included some of Canada’s corporate titans — Conrad Black, Jack Gallagher, George T. Richardson, Galen Weston, Douglas Bassett, Alf Powis — and its international lending gave it a presence from Argentina to Poland, Mexico to the Middle East, New York to Hong Kong.

  The CIBC’s historic and largely unchallenged role in Canadian economic affairs had important implications for the bureaucracy it engendered and the culture it evolved. Molony soon learned that you did things by the book. The Branch Management and Operations Manual, sixteen fat volumes, told you how to complete a money order and how to react to a bomb threat. The bank told you how to dress, how to behave, even how to sign your name — two initials plus surname. Until recently it had expected employees to ask permission to marry. If the regulations were tight and tedious, they were also comforting. Once familiar with BMO you could find the approved way of performing any duty.

  Women in the bank were treated as a sub-species. They held the low-paying jobs; the higher you went the fewer women you encountered. It was 1975 before they were allowed to join the company pension plan. If a man and a woman were equally qualified, the job went to the man. The bank was also virulently anti-union, firing employees who got involved in an organizing drive and withholding scheduled wage increases at branches that became unionized. In one case, the Canadian Labour Relations Board found that the CIBC had interfered with its employees’ right to organize and ordered the president to send a letter to all the branches, explaining that the CIBC had broken the law. If the bank tended to be steadfast, sexist, and conservative, the atmosphere was not discomfiting to someone from a large, strict, Irish-Catholic family.

  The salaries, it turned out, weren’t so hot compared to what other corporations paid, but there were company benefits. And a date’s parents looked at you differently when they learned you were with the bank. You were established. You had prospec
ts, and you would realize them in a prescribed manner. The country was divided up; your salary took into account the cost of living in your region. Each job was graded; each grade had a pay range. You climbed the corporate ladder from one grade to the next. If you were capable and hard-working, who knew how far you might go? The chairman and chief executive officer at the time, Russell Harrison, was an ultra-conservative fellow from smalltown Manitoba who had started as a teller in Winnipeg and three decades later reached the top rung. Like three other Big Five chairmen, he had never worked anywhere but at the bank he headed. The CIBC was an insular system that encouraged conformity, expected diligence, and rewarded loyalty. Molony felt quite at home.

  The next stage of his training entailed a choice: head-office accounting or audit and inspection. He chose the latter and spent nine months working as an audit assistant in Toronto, Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, and Hamilton. He checked dormant accounts, counted Canada Savings Bonds, ensured that the standards of the bank were being upheld. This provided his first insight into how loans were rated, what made one authorized credit look solid and another shaky. It also gave him thorough familiarity with the bank’s working systems.

  A camaraderie developed among the people in audit and inspection, and over drinks the stories got tossed around. One fellow had been on the audit of a small branch out west when the accountant attracted the attention of the auditors. The accountant, in bank parlance, was an office manager who handled the non-credit aspects of branch operation — the updating of BMO regulation books, performance reviews of non-credit personnel, the balancing of the branch’s books, safety deposit boxes, tellers’ cash, and so forth. One of the audit officers noticed this accountant’s habit, before opening the safe, of checking behind the wall calendar. The accountant had a poor memory and had written down the combination. The auditor had a field day with this breach of security, and the accountant’s prospects were dimmed. When the branch was next audited, a year and a half later, the accountant, not surprisingly, was still there. The new audit team, having consulted notes from the previous audit, kept a close eye on him. Sure enough, before opening the safe, he checked behind the calendar. When the new auditor went and looked, he found, neatly lettered, “Not this year, you bastards!”