JOE MOLLICONE: A RHODE ISLAND LIFE
Written by Staff Writer Dean Starkman and is based on reporting by him, Dan Barry,
John Sullivan, Tracy Breton and Ira Chinoy.. Providence Journal. Providence,
R.I.: Dec 29, 1991. pg. A-01
Joseph Mollicone Jr. lived a Rhode Island life.
In just 48 hours last year, he dealt with an underworld figure, two top aides to the
governor, the president of a powerful deposit insurance company, the state treasurer,
Rhode Island's largest bank and two money-launderers for the Cali drug cartel.
And that's just Sept. 11 and Sept. 12, 1990, six weeks before he ran rather than face the
collapse of his bank and the drama that followed.
If Mollicone's life were a play, all of Rhode Island would be the stage and the supporting
cast would include the prominent names and institutions that have influenced the state's
public life.
It's a rich cast of mayors, mobsters and governor's men, union bosses, lawyers, doctors,
bureaucrats, senators, bookies, bankers and thieves.
All it lacks is a hero.
Act I
He was a nice boy from a nice family. His mother, Anna Mollicone, used to pay a
neighbor's son to walk him to school, St. Mary's on Federal Hill. His younger sister, Jean,
athletic and studious, would grow up to be a math teacher, and an accomplished skier and
mountain climber.
His father, Joseph Mollicone Sr., was a traditional Italian patriarch. He presided over big
Sunday meals and preached family, frugality and moderation.
Joseph Mollicone Sr., like his father before him, was a banker, the president of County
Loan and Finance. Among the working people of the neighborhood, he stood out: He
could lend you money. He had a knack for names and for defusing a tense moment with
humor. They called him Puppy Dog, a nickname his son never liked.
Puppy Dog wrote normal loans for workers, shopowners and widows, and he ran a
handshake trade with the loansharks and gamblers who drifted in and out of his bank.
"Six will get you five," he'd say, peeling off the bills. The translation: $500 borrowed
now would cost $600 later.
He had a tough side, but he could be a soft touch.
Donald Pastine was a neighborhood kid when he went to the venerable banker for a $360
loan to buy an engagement ring. The elder Mollicone was delighted to hear about the
engagement; of course, he knew Pastine's fiance. He made sure that Pastine left with
enough money.
For three months Pastine paid his $20 installment. But when he came to the bank to make
his fourth payment, the elder Mollicone acted puzzled. The bank's books showed the loan
had been paid in full.
How could that be? Pastine asked. He still owed $300.
"Hey, I don't know," Mollicone answered. Then he said: "Isn't this a great country?"
Joseph Mollicone Jr. looked to his father and learned.
He was accepted to La Salle Academy, a traditional vehicle of upward mobility for the
sons of Irish, French and Italian immigrants. Mollicone wore white bucks and a school
sweater, and excelled as an outfielder on the baseball team. When he broke his leg on a
play at the plate, he joined the spirit squad.
"Joey" Mollicone made a lot of friends in high school. He managed to be a hall monitor
without being a fink, and to drive an MG two-seater without being a snob.
He was elected class treasurer.
After graduating with the Class of 1961, Mollicone pursued a finance degree at Boston
College. As a roommate, he paid his share of expenses on time and even sprang for ice
cream.
He dated Joyce LaFazia, a psychology major at the Newton College of the Sacred Heart
nearby, and married her on Aug. 28, 1965.
After graduation, Mollicone floundered for couple of years, first trying graduate business
school, then law.
Finally, he came home to County Loan.
Inside the bank, Mollicone saw firsthand how his father accommodated organized crime
figures, including the late Raymond L.S. Patriarca, who presided over the New England
underworld from a storefront down the street. Early in the morning, his father would
walk down Atwells Avenue to the Coin-O-Matic Distributing Co. to confer with the
Mafia boss.
Once, an illegal FBI wiretap overheard Puppy Dog complaining that the IRS had been
asking about an unpaid loan to a Patriarca front company. The elder Mollicone asked the
crime boss to sign a new note to justify the books, but Patriarca apparently didn't
understand.
"You don't get what I mean," Puppy Dog said. "I did this for you. You told me to do it. I
got a note in there that's supposed to be straightened out at the time that we took the cash
out."
In 1973, his father's ties to organized crime made must-reading of My Life in the Mafia,
a book written by mobster-turned-informant Vincent Teresa. He wrote that Mollicone's
father was in Patriarca's "pocket" and "coughed up ready cash" for him.
Puppy Dog knew it was important not to snub such men as Luigi G. "Baby Shanks"
Manocchio, who as a 35-year-old mob soldier in 1962 had gotten a $7,000 loan to buy
property worth only $500.
Friends say the ambitious son was uncomfortable with his father's connections. But the
discomfort came from social embarrassment, not moral qualms. He never broke the ties.
He just tried to hide them.
Puppy Dog's son was setting his sights higher than Federal Hill.
Act II: The Natural
His first step was to get a better address.
In 1971, he bought a house in East Greenwich, eventually moving his family, which
would include four children, to a bigger one on Kent Drive, on which he took out a
$270,000 mortgage.
The second step was to get his own bank.
In 1975, Mollicone and his father created the Heritage Loan and Investment Co. from the
assets of the old County Loan, which was shed like a snake's skin.
The new bank was put in Mollicone's name, but his father kept a watchful eye from
retirement.
Now in his mid-30s, with a financial base, Mollicone widened his circle of contacts:
Edward A. Iannuccilli, a doctor who lived nearby in East Greenwich; Benedetto A.
Cerilli Jr., a developer he knew as a chum from La Salle and Boston College; John R.
Renza Jr., an accountant; Paul J. Pisano, a lawyer; Richard J. Cardarelli, an architect.
Mollicone fit easily into a social milieu of young, professional men, many with deep
roots in Providence's ethnic neighborhoods. Like their fathers, they often felt compelled
to seek upward mobility outside Rhode Island's Yankee enclaves of the Hope Club,
Brown University, and the downtown banks, brokerage houses and law firms. They had
their own banks - called credit unions, and loan and investment companies - their own
law firms, their own clubs.
Almost inevitably, Mollicone gravitated toward the faster pace of Rhode Island real
estate development, where, especially in the 1980s, you didn't need an Ivy League degree
to make money. You just needed the right kind of friends.
Mollicone was a natural.
He put together one of his first deals in South Providence: a medical office
condominium. Then he brought a group of friends into an 18-unit time-share resort on
Attitash Mountain in New Hampshire. A harbinger of the future, the ski lodge project
was a tangle of confusion. Friends say all they got for their investment was a free week
of vacation, and they never really understood what happened to their money.
In 1983, at the age of 40, Mollicone raised the stakes and ventured into the bruising
world of downtown development. He chose a risky and expensive project: the
rehabilitation of the historic but timeworn Old Providence Journal Building at 60 Eddy
St.
His timing was perfect.
Interest rates were falling, a recession had ended and the 1980s land rush was about to
begin. The city's tug-of-war between the neighborhoods and downtown had moved
decisively in downtown's favor. Historic rehabilitation was favored by everyone from
East Side matrons to the IRS.
And, Mollicone had two advantages - friends and a bank.
His partner, Joseph M. Cerilli, was the brother of a high school pal.
He had an important contact in Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., the Providence mayor
who had appointed his father to the Providence Redevelopment Agency.
Mollicone worked hard on the Old Providence Journal project, as hard as he had ever
worked on anything. He worked nights, weekends, sometimes around the clock to meet
deadlines. "We lived the project," Cerilli recalls.
When it was done, the building looked good. It was filled with tenants, and the partners
were hailed as downtown saviors. They flew to Kansas City to accept a national
redevelopment award. It was a heady moment.
But after the initial euphoria, the project lost its luster.
City Council members claimed that a fixed deal had prompted the city to move into
Mollicone's building as a major tenant. They pointed to Mollicone's purchase around
then of Cianci's Blackstone Boulevard house for a high price, $345,000, as evidence of
the fix. They claimed that Cianci had rigged the bids to give the lease to Mollicone.
Cianci insists the transactions were separate. If anything, he says, the $345,000 sale price
was low. The mayor says he accepted because he was under pressure to settle an
expensive divorce.
And, he says, cities across the country have used municipal leases to help downtown
development.
A year later, Cianci bought two units in a medical condominium owned by Mollicone by
putting down $1,000 and borrowing the rest, $155,000, from Heritage. Heritage sold
those loans to the Marquette Credit Union. After Marquette was closed this year in the
banking crisis, its receiver claimed that Cianci's loans were never repaid.
Cianci says he did repay the loans, and he produced a check to show it. He says he
doesn't know what Mollicone did with the money.
Meanwhile, the jewel of downtown Providence did not wear well.
The city's big tenant, the building inspector's office, started griping to its landlord in
1989. Merlin DeConti, the building inspector, complained that the ventilation was poor,
the air conditioning didn't work well, sewage from upstairs bathrooms dripped into his
office, and the stairs were a wreck.
The conditions are now being fought over in a lawsuit.
Mollicone managed to fill the Old Providence Journal Building with tenants only by
sleight of hand. He enticed them with loans and subsidies, which, investigators say, he
provided by secretly raiding Heritage.
When, for instance, the Atrium Health & Fitness Center, which occupies the entire fourth
floor, had trouble paying the rent, Mollicone gave it a Heritage loan and bought stock in
the company. Mollicone's cash bought him a seat on the board of Atrium. When board
meetings became heated, Mollicone often soothed tensions with money from Heritage.
" 'Not to worry,' " he'd say, according to E. Colby Cameron, the fitness center's lawyer.
Mollicone never looked back. His career was launched.
Act III: The Golden Touch
Puppy Dog Mollicone often dropped by the bank to chat with his son. He found that
Heritage was changing. His son was always on the phone, always with another deal. Now
there was an accountant and a property manager working in offices on the second floor.
"How many pairs of shoes do you need?" the aging father would ask his son. Mollicone
would laugh, and shrug.
Then, on Jan. 25, 1986, the new year still rich with promise, the family lost its patriarch.
At age 74, while vacationing in Sunrise, Fla., Joseph Mollicone Sr. suffered a heart
attack and died unexpectedly. His body was brought back for rites at the Holy Ghost
Church on Knight Street, Federal Hill.
His son grieved.
"He took that hard," says Robert A. Perrotti, a college friend who attended the funeral.
And after his father died, something changed.
Mollicone began a remarkable, almost maniacal progression of land deals and business
ventures, one on top of another, more than he could ever keep straight, so many that
auditors could not untangle them after a year of investigation.
He invested in a car dealership in South County, a travel agency in Providence, a pizza
company, more medical condominiums, a bottling company, several jewelry companies,
parking lots, subdivisions, condominiums, commercial developments, a mini-mall in
North Providence, office buildings in downtown Providence, an office park in East
Providence, and more. He organized stock offerings, tax-credit syndications and complex
financing packages.
In all, he got involved in more than 65 corporations and partnerships, sometimes as an
investor, but often as the managing partner charged with handling zoning issues, building
permits, loan applications, all the details, and all the money.
The boss was so busy, his employees joked, he had a telephone receiver "growing out of
his ear."
He seemed to be everywhere in Rhode Island, at once. His reputation as a businessman
began to feed on itself. Doctors, lawyers and other small investors, all flush with cash
from the prosperous '80s, wanted to get in on a Mollicone deal.
When Sen. Thomas A. Lynch, D-Warwick, now vice chairman of the powerful Judiciary
Committee, invested with Mollicone in a Warwick office condominium, his friends
congratulated him. He says Mollicone had a reputation for "the golden touch."
And Mollicone had more than money. By the end of the decade, the La Salle Academy
class treasurer had grown into an impressive man, with dark, expressive eyes and a
warming smile that made people feel special, just like him. When he entered the Capital
Grille, heads turned, and grown men hoped he would wave. People wanted to know
where he bought his suits and got his hair cut. When word got out that he had bought
stock in South County Motors in Wakefield, car sales there went up, says George
Seigmund, the dealership's president. "They watched what he drove and what he bought."
He sat on the executive committee of the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity
Corp., Heritage's regulator, which earlier had made him a director.
And, in a major advance, Mollicone came to know Terrence Murray and H. Jay Sarles,
top executives of the Fleet Financial Group, the New England powerhouse. And Fleet
(now Fleet/Norstar) became Mollicone's main lender, granting him millions in
commercial and real estate loans, and personal lines of credit.
Mollicone shed old friends in favor of newer, even more successful ones: Edward F.
Ricci, an heir to the Duro textile fortune, who lived across the street; Matthew T.
Marcello III, one of the state's most successful real estate lawyers; Robert I. Weisberg,
president of Fleet Credit Corp.; and Henry W. Fazzano, an owner of the old Imperial
Knife company.
Politicians flocked to him.
Gen. Treas. Anthony J. Solomon, a Democrat, invited him to fund-raisers. Joseph R.
Paolino Jr., another Democrat, appointed him to the Convention Center Authority.
And he enjoyed a special relationship with the Republican administration of Gov.
Edward D. DiPrete. Mollicone attended DiPrete fund-raisers and donated money.
And in 1988, Mollicone formed a real estate partnership that included Rodney M.
Brusini, who then worked in DiPrete's family business and had served as DiPrete's chief
fund-raiser, and Fazzano, who would become DiPrete's chief of staff. The same year the
partnership won a lucrative state lease worth more than $1 million a year.
The award would later be the subject of a Journal-Bulletin inquiry and a grand jury bidrigging investigation. But at the time the deal sent ripples through real estate circles:
Mollicone was unstoppable.
"It was a huge deal," says John G. Laramee, a competing landlord who loudly
complained it had been tilted to Mollicone. "Huge. Huge."
The big lease, with the Department of Employment Security, was only the first of seven
state leases awarded to Mollicone partnerships in the final two years of the DiPrete
administration. Over 10 years, the leases would yield Mollicone and his partners more
than $24 million.
Another state lease commitment worth more than $3 million over 10 years fell through
after Mollicone's disappearance.
Government officials, high and low, gravitated to Mollicone.
Sen. John Orabona, D-Providence, chairman of the powerful Corporations Committee,
sold Mollicone land on Federal Hill.
The Rhode Island Credit Union League, controlled by Rep. Robert V. Bianchini, DCranston, vice chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, sold him office
condominiums.
And Mollicone made loans to officials, often using Atrium Financial Services Co., a loan
company he started in 1985 with Biaggio Maggiacomo, himself a force in Rhode Island
banking and a power broker for three generations of General Assembly leadership.
Atrium was a private company fnanced in part by Fleet loans. As a loan company,
Atrium was even further removed from regulation than Heritage.
Through Atrium and Heritage, Mollicone - who eventually bought out Maggiacomo made loans to Rep. Frank J. Fiorenzano, D-Providence; Senate Majority Leader John
Bevilacqua's mother-in-law; John C. Simmons, then a member of the Convention Center
Authority; and Mathies J. Santos, a high official in the DiPrete administration.
"It probably doesn't look good," Santos says. "I didn't do anything intentionally wrong."
Simmons says Mollicone was thought to be a reputable banker and asked for nothing in
return. "I would have been highly insulted," he says.
"It was convenient," Fiorenzano says, "It was just down the street."
Mollicone also used Atrium to lend $100,000 to Kathleen S. Connell, the secretary of
state. After Mollicone's disappearance, the state took control of Atrium's loans and found
that the Connells hadn't repaid their loan. The state also found that their loan file lacked
even basic documents, including a loan application.
Connell says her husband, Gerald, who has since been convicted of money laundering,
handled the loan. She says she didn't know it was delinquent, and has begun to repay the
loan since the state took it over.
But Mollicone's connections to politicians were only a part of his aura. He was involved
in all the right events: the Black and White Penguin Ball for the Rhode Island Zoological
Society, a tribute to South Kingstown Police Chief Vincent Vespia Jr., Friars games at
the Civic Center.
He drove around in Ferraris, Porsches, Alphas and Mercedes. He overpaid for
everything, buying his golfing gear at the pricey pro shop at the Alpine Country Club.
He traveled in Italy and skied in Switzerland.
He treated friends to golf-and-gambling holidays in Las Vegas and Bermuda. The groups
at times included Joseph Bellucci, the RISDIC chairman; Weisberg, the Fleet executive;
Ricci, the textile mill owner; and employees.
"I did very, very well this year," Mollicone told them. "I'd like to share my wealth, my
good fortune, with my friends."
Henry A. DelRossi, Heritage's janitor, once reflected: "They ought to give him a medal."
Mollicone lived on Blackstone Boulevard. His children went to elite East Side
preparatory schools. The name Mollicone was on the "A" list of nearly every charity and
society affair.
He had come a long way from Federal Hill.
He was living the Rhode Island life.
KEYWORDS: biography picture Mollicone