The Poems And Confessions Of A Mad Man Page 12
That very same morning, I had reopened the business but as a sole proprietorship in my name. I had also had Donny sign a form from the bank that released his name from the bank account and I closed the account. I immediately opened a new bank account in my name with a new account number. When I did this, I found that the account had $40,000 in it that wasn’t deposited by me. Mick had been using the bank account to launder illegal money through. He would deposit the money he got from his bookie business and stolen property that he sold in the parking lots of warehouses, and places like this. There wasn’t shit that he could do because I was his muscle. Who was going to muscle me? Besides he was making withdrawals from the business account and forging my name to the withdrawal slips. That’s a federal offense and you can bet if he went to court for that, they would hang him by his balls because they wanted him for something, but could never make anything stick. He was screwed and he couldn’t do anything about it.
When Mick read the newspaper on the following day and saw that I had dissolved the business, he nearly shit his pants. He called me up and asked me what I thought I was doing. I told him I planned on reopening the business in the future. He busted me when he said that the newspaper showed that I had already opened a sole proprietorship in my name. I started laughing and told him that I did open the business in the future, right after closing the old partnership. He warned me not to do this. I told him to never threaten me because I have the keys to his house and would cut up his family if he did anything stupid. I told him that I knew he was using my business to launder money through. I also told him that I knew he was illegally forging my name to the withdrawal slips and that he would do time if I pressed charges. I told him to take this as a lesson that cost him $40,000. dollars and to never try to screw me again, or next time he would pay with his blood. He never spoke to me again.
In May of 1991, my accountant Benny called me and said that he received a letter from the IRS, stating that I owed them money for an Alternate Minimum Tax. I asked him what that was and he said it was a new tax that I was late on paying and that interest was accumulating daily. He said I owed $400. and that if I brought him cash, he would just wire the money to the IRS, and my troubles would be over. Now I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night. I know when someone is screwing me and I didn’t appreciate it.
I called the IRS at the federal building in Utica, and asked about this Alternate Minimum Tax. They said there is an Alternate Minimum Tax, but that it is only for corporations. I explained that my business was a sole proprietorship and that in 1990, it was a partnership. I will never forget when the woman on the line asked me who my accountant was. I told her and she said, “Mr. Green, are you aware that your accountant was indicted 2 years ago for tax fraud and for stealing from his client?” She also said that he was going to serve prison time if he was caught again. I said that I didn’t know he was in this kind of trouble or I wouldn’t have ever used him. She connected me to a federal agent who asked me to meet with him. I agreed and he came to the place I was living.
When he arrived, he was with his partner and was introduced as Agent Mike Dawson and Agent Paul Kerry. These men produced a sheet of things that had been brought to their attention a while back, concerning me. They said that I was being watched and that they had come to the conclusion that I didn’t know the depth of the trouble that I had associated myself with. They asked if I knew that my business had been used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars through. I told them that it was impossible because I did the books every month and I would have known of the activity in my account, if that was happening. I showed them my bank statements and compared them to the copies of the statements they had subpoenaed. Agent Dawson’s had the same activity that mine had, but his had many more deposits and withdrawals then mine. He said there were ways to make deposits and withdrawals and that a few bank tellers at the bank were working for the mob, and were changing the transactions in the banks computers. He said that’s how I would never have caught the transactions, because they didn’t show up on my bank statements. Agent Dawson said he knew that I would eventually find something to be wrong with the people I was dealing with, and would hopefully get the law involved.
He said that I was affiliated with a few state troopers and law enforcement people and that when he had asked them about me, they all said I was a pretty good person and that I wouldn’t get involved with organized crime the way that it looked. He told me that my taxes were screwed, and that the IRS showed that I owed them $97,000 for 1990 from the amount of money that my account had filter through it. I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should stop talking and call an attorney, but I felt that I didn’t do anything wrong.
The agents said if I helped them nail the accountant to the wall, then they would fix my taxes and redo them for 1990. I asked what I needed to do and they hooked a microphone to my telephone and had me call Benny, the accountant. They told me to have him explain again what the tax was that I had to pay. I did what they said and Benny buried himself when he told what it was. Benny was apparently going to get as much cash from his clients as he could, and then skip town and not go to court for an offense he had committed. He was only trying to get $400. from me, but he had successfully collected $110,000 from a mob boss just one month earlier. The boss was asking around to see what this big tax he had to pay was, and the Feds. wanted to nail Benny before the mob found out he was screwing them.
The next thing I had to do, was take the $400. in marked bills, that they gave me, and pay Benny. I met the agents at the Federal Building and they hooked me up with a wire so everything that was said was recorded and they could hear everything as it happened. They said to get him to explain again, what the Alternate Minimum Tax was once again if I could. They wanted him to bury himself so bad, that his attorneys’ couldn’t get him out of this one. It was quite impressive. On the way over there, about 10 black Crown Victoria cars were guarding me as I went. I felt like the President or something. They stopped traffic and blew through stop lights. A Utica police car tried to pull us over, but the agents there, stopped him and detained the cop from warning any other cops, that a federal bust was about to go down. It was believed that the Utica police department, at one time, was virtually owned by the mob.
When I went into Benny’s business, it was business as usual and I got him to sing like a Canary about the tax and all of the stuff they wanted. He even said that some of the mobsters would be in soon to pay the amounts that they owed. This guy was a real piece of shit. If the Feds. hadn’t got involved, he would have been killed. Anyway, I paid him and left. As soon as I left him, they all moved in and seized everything in his business. They had all of the tax information of every person affiliated with organized crime in the city of Utica.
I met up with the agents at the federal building and they took back all of their wires and equipment they had hooked me up with. Benny was booked and sent to prison for 32 months out of state. I’m told that the information they seized help nail the people that were hurting small businessmen like me all over the state. I was awarded a citation from the Governor and given a very nice letter from the Federal Government. Agent Dawson said, “It’s a real nice get out of jail free card. Use it if ever you get into a jam.” He said if I ever get into any trouble, or need a favor to call him. I told him my New York State Pistol Permit was being held up because of a minor conviction I had in Texas, and he said he would make sure it went through within the month. He kept his word and I received the permit within 2 weeks.
Agent Kerry was responsible for fixing my tax problem and for redoing my taxes for 1990. In 1991, I was sent a letter from the IRS saying that my taxes for 1990 weren’t filed properly. I called Agent Dawson and told him about the letter. He pulled my name up and had another tax person in his office fix the problem. Agent Kerry has never lived it down since.
Mick Ferro was arrested for possession of over $3,000,000 of stolen property and was sentenced
to 4 years in prison. He had been having an affair with another woman and when his wife found out, she divorced him while he was in prison. The New York City crime boss was told that Mick had been skimming money from the organization. Mick was spared his life in prison, but was daily raped by the Skin Head gang members that were in the same prison that he was in. In May of 2003, Mick was released from prison and was never seen again.
Losing Hope To The Death Rose
By: Andrew J. Green
In October of 1995, my family and I moved to a small town in upstate New York. My kids weren’t very excited about leaving the village we were in at the time, but the drug problem in the school district they were going to, was bad and I didn’t want that around my kids. Earlier that year, my son was offered cocaine by another 10 year old student. After we found out who the student was, we reported it to the authorities and they arrested the boy along with the 16 year old who was in charge of distributing the drugs to the student in the first place.
Ever since I was a young boy, I had dreamed of living in this small town in upstate New York. The beautiful trees and rolling hills, the lakes and streams, were all an escape that I wanted for such a long time. I purchased the framed house along with 21 acres for only $40,000. My wife had a great imagination and said that with help, we could make it a beautiful home. The house needed a lot of work but within a couple years, my wife made the house beautiful.
The forest was loaded with White Tailed Deer and Black Bear, along with all sorts of small game for us to hunt. My kids had a great time playing in the forest with their new found friends that they had made very quickly. The best friends that they had done everything with were David Hope and Billy Coons, also known as Hope and Coons. The boys were great kids who were trusted by their parents to run the heavy equipment that their fathers’ owned, for their excavating companies. The boys were kind of spoiled within their households and had all of the cool toys like 4 wheel ATV’s and jet skies and all of that stuff.
My wife and I came to love Hope and Coons and the boys had a lot of fun with my kids. They would come over at night and play Hide and Seek with my kids and would play Tag. The only thing different when playing with Hope and Coons, was that they played these games using ATV’s. We owned an ATV also, so when my kids got to play the games, they thought these were the coolest games ever. The small town had a large unemployment rate and the jobs that were offered were low paying. I had one of the highest paying jobs in the area, so my kids were brought up with the finer things of life, like the ATVs’ and the motorized toys. They appreciated my wife and me more for allowing them to play on the ATVs’, knowing that many other kids in the area didn’t have it as good.
One time my daughter had her friends over and Hope was hanging out with my son. It was a stormy night and the lightning was hitting all around the house. We could hear trees being blown apart from the lightning striking them. My daughter’s friends were hysterical, being that most of them were only 13 or 14 years old at the time. Hope came out of the room after a close lightning strike and told the girls that this storm was nothing and that he had seen storms that were much worse. Somehow, that calmed the girls down and the rain subsided after an hour or so. The lightning had moved away also, but we could still see the flashes in the sky and hear the distant thunder. By the time that night was over, I would look at that young boy more as a young man then anything else. Hope was a brave kid and I appreciated him for the bravery he would show us as the night progressed.
At 9 p.m. we were all in the living room of the house and one of the girls screamed. She said she saw a man looking in our window from the forest. I had said that she had just seen a reflection in the window, but Hope would prove me wrong. When I was trying to calm the hysterical girls down, the lightning flashed and Hope saw the face of a man who was wearing a black coat. He alerted me and said, “Hey Mr. Green, there he is!” That was the last straw. I told the boys to stay here and I was going to deal with this guy. I ran up stairs and grabbed my gun.
While I was getting my battle gear together, I could hear Hope calling Coons. I heard him say, “Hey Coons, the Druid’s back. I saw him looking in at us from outside. Mr. Green is going out to kill the guy so get your ass over here and bring the guns.” I was so proud that my son had finally found some friends that I could relate to. Within minutes, Coons was in our driveway and knocking at our door. He came in and told us that he had just seen “The Druid” running across the road from the upper part of our property. Coons said “The Druid” had run between the trees that went on to old man Walkers land.
We all got on our 4 wheelers and rushed off to the last place “The Druid” had been seen. I wasn’t worried that a couple of young boys were with me carrying fully loaded weapons because these boys had been hunting since they could walk, and they could handle a gun just fine. They asked what they should do if they see “The Druid.” I told them to shoot and kill it. I will bury the body after words. Hope and Coons had been around me long enough, that they knew I wasn’t kidding. I knew they had enough respect for me that they wouldn’t fail when the time came.
We couldn’t find anything as we searched, but when I saw Hope, he was shaking like he had just seen a ghost. When I asked him what the hell was wrong with him, he replied, “I touched it first,” and showed me a black rose he had picked up by a tree that was just off of the road. I said, “So, this doesn’t mean anything.” He said that the legend says, if “The Druid” is chased, it leaves a black “Death” rose, then the first person to pick up the rose, will die. I told him that was a bunch of crap and that this was just some guy that was a pervert or something.
We found no trace of anything so we went back to the house. When we all sat down, we sent my daughter and her friends to her room. Hope and Coons started telling us of a witch coven that had a place up the road. Hope said that at night the witches run through the woods and sing to the spirits of the dead and try to raise up “The Druid” spirit. When “The Druid” spirit comes, he lures people out to chase him and will leaves a black “Death” rose behind him. Whoever finds the “Death” rose, will die a sudden death. I told him that the story is a cool story that could scare the hell out of someone at a camp out, but that it was a lie. Hope believed the story while Coons and my son agreed with me.
A couple of years had passed and my job was beginning to dry up. It seemed that the depression of that small town was beginning to drag me down. Sometimes at night we could hear the singing in the forest that we were told about, but when I would investigate the sounds, I would find nothing. I was told by other adults of the witches and the legends of “The Druid” spirit, and all of that crap. These rational people would tell me that they had heard of the incident, and how Hope had found the “Death” rose. It seemed these people wanted to believe in the legends. I couldn’t believe the superstition that had hold of the people in this small town.
The dark cloud of depression and poverty had slowly moved into the region and had begun to cause the locals to look for reasons as to why things would go wrong. My wife and I had gone on a vacation to Las Vegas and were impressed with the amount of wealth that was available to us if we wanted it. After much consideration, we decided that we would pack up our things and sell our house and move to Las Vegas. We were leaving the beautiful mountains and streams behind and going to where the money was flowing like a river.
My kids, now 16 and 17 years old, wanted to stay but there was no opportunity for a future in that old town. I figured that they would eventually have to move out to find a good job, so we moved. I can still see my children as they hugged their friends, especially Hope and Coons. The boys told us not to go, but I had everything ready and our house was sold. We left and were on our way to a new life.
We have been out here for 5 years or so. Everything was going great for us until last year when we received the bad news. Hope and Coons had been drinking with a bunch of their friends. Hope and Coons, now 20 years old, decided to race their trucks, down the sam
e road we use to live on. The police report said that Hope was driving about 100 miles per hour when he hit a wet spot on the pavement and lost control of his vehicle. He crashed into a tree and was instantly killed. Coincidentally he had hit the exact tree across the road from our house that he found the black “Death” rose under. It was reported that a black rose was found at the base of the tree after Hope was killed on that night.
I still wonder if we had never moved, if my kids would have been in the truck with Hope. I remember how they were such good friends and how they did everything together. Hope was the first kid out of the group to get his drivers license. I’m grateful for the decisions I had made to move. I was recently told by an eye witness to the accident, that a man in a black coat was seen placing something under the tree where Hope was killed.
I was recently visiting some friends in that old town that I had once lived. I drove to the tree where Hope was killed. There are still the remnants of a memorial at the base of the tree where his old friends put things that represented him. Things like pictures, a beer bottle, a cross made out of burnt wooden matches and other things like that. I saw a lot of broken glass, and the headlight from his truck. There is still the twisted metal from the truck that is stuck in the tree along with parts of the grill that were wedged in its trunk. There was one thing that shocked me as I looked at the memorial. Mixed in with everything else was a black rose at the base of the tree that had looked like it was recently placed there. When I saw the rose, I took it and drove to the place where I was told the witches had their meetings.