Authorpreneur Dashboard – Julie Schwartzman
Wiseguys, Rabbis, and the FBI: How one man became the biggest loanshark in New York City, went to prison, and escaped.
Biographies & Memoirs
Melvin Cooper was a financier with an edge, making risky loans to New York businesspeople, until he found himself running the biggest loansharking operation in the city. In 1984, he was arrested by then-U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani along with seven Mafia capos and soldiers from four organized crime families. It was one of Giuliani’s first high-profile RICO trials, and he filled the courtroom with notorious informants, lowlifes, rats, and some of New York’s most sought-after crime figures. The trial ended with a 30-year prison sentence for Mel Cooper–from which he promptly and accidentally escaped. But was it the Mafia behind Mel’s loans or a group of Long Island Rabbis and a dentist? This wild true story is a driving tale of criminal mayhem that doesn’t let up for three decades, and it shows what can go wrong when ambition and flexible ethics meet.
Rough-Cut Book Bubbles from Wiseguys, Rabbis, and the FBI: How one man became the biggest loanshark in New York City, went to prison, and escaped.
Why I started with a prison escape
The story begins at one of the high points in the drama - the main character's accidental escape from his 30-year prison sentence. This allowed me to introduce all the important surrounding circumstances: The trial that included top New York Mafia; his partner, a dentist from Long Island; the fact that Rudy Giuliani was the prosecutor; and the crazy claim that it was not mobsters, but rabbis behind all the illegal loans. Not only does it set the scene, it helps the reader understand why someone they never heard of might have an interesting life story. And, at the same time, it allows me to capture the feeling of escaping from jail; the breeze, the light, the shock ...it's powerful.
