Sunday June 24, 11:24 am Eastern Time
New York investor plays market, from behind bars
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK, June 24 (Reuters) - Michael Mathie has had the kind of success in the stock market almost any trader would envy.
He turned $75,000 into nearly $1 million in a single year, bought new cars and a house for his family and made generous donations to charity.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trouble is, he's a prison inmate, serving his 12th year of a 10- to 30-year sentence for manslaughter and conspiracy.
Mathie made the money from prison in upstate New York by placing collect telephone calls to his father, who carried out his son's orders to buy or sell via a trading account on his home computer.
Mathie has played the market for only about two years, trading millions of dollars by his estimation. In 1999, his income tax return showed that he made just short of $900,000.
Now Mathie, 33, faces a parole hearing, scheduled for Tuesday, when he hopes the state parole board will look favorably on what he has accomplished behind bars.
``I think about the family of the victim of my crime,'' he said in a recent interview at the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York. ``I can understand why they would be angry, but what they should understand also is that it's not impossible for somebody to change.''
A high school dropout and former cocaine addict, Mathie and three others were arrested in 1989 for the murder of Paul Lamariana, who was struck in the head with a tire iron, choked with an electrical cord, bound, stuffed in plastic bags, wrapped in carpet and dumped off a road in Long Island, New York.
ABUSING A FRIEND'S DAUGHTER
Mathie, then 21, admitted hitting Lamariana with the tire iron, saying he believed the victim had been abusing the daughter of a friend, and pleaded guilty to manslaughter and conspiracy.
In prison, trading stocks came about almost accidentally, as he sought a way to pass time and deal with life behind bars, especially after he said he was raped and sexually abused by the head of security at the Suffolk County, New York, jail.
At first, he traded an imaginary portfolio of $10,000, using information gleaned from newspapers and television. In less than a year, the hypothetical $10,000 grew to a hypothetical $600,000.
``I thought I was doing something wrong, so I threw everything away and then started over from scratch and wound up coming up with the same result,'' he said.
Using $75,000 from a settlement he won in a lawsuit from the county jail after the rape, he started investing for real.
Although inmates are not allowed to run businesses from prison, state prison officials say Mathie can do what he does under his right to free speech. And he's not trading, his father is.
What he has learned, the inmate said, is ``to look at the market almost like a person.''
``Remember that business is run by people ... and it's all subject to emotion,'' he said. "When you make decisions based on emotions, you make errors, and I'm a prime example of that because the decision that I made that landed me in prison was based on emotion and not intellect.
``That's probably one of the most profound lessons I've had to learn, and maybe that's what drives me with the market,'' Mathie said.
AN ATTENTION-GETTING ODDITY
His success made him a jailhouse oddity, attracting the attention of media who have written up his tale.
``He's completely unique,'' said Robert Gangi, head of the Correctional Association of New York, a non-profit group that monitors prison conditions and lobbies for reforms.
``Most prisoners are poor people, most prisoners have very little familiarity with things like the stock exchange,'' he said. ``There are very few inmates who even have the vaguest potential to get involved with the kind of investments that he apparently has.''
But the attention on Mathie may be unwelcome when the parole board makes its decision, Gangi added.
``In my political judgment, there's no chance he'll get paroled,'' he said. "In fact, this publicity around his gathering wealth has only hurt his chances.
``Any high-profile violent offender can almost count on automatically being denied by the parole board and sent back to prison for at least another two years.''
Mathie was denied parole once before, in 2000.
Mathie said he has used the money to buy a house for his father and sister, cars for himself for future use and his sisters and an extension on his mother's house. He also has given money to Meals on Wheels and church programs and set up a reward fund to try to help solve the murder of a friend's son.
Mathie is also setting up a nonprofit organization, called Students Against Violence in Education, hoping ``to maybe stop somebody like me from committing a crime in the streets when they're kids,'' he said.
Members of his victim's family could not be reached for comment.
Mathie's father Maurice, who lives in Islip Terrace, New York, said he'll be happy to turn the trading over to his son.
``I just follow his instructions,'' said the elder Mathie. He said he was more interested in using the home computer to handicap horses.
Mathie's trading slowed to a halt in recent months, due to the market downturn and a stint in solitary confinement.
As to the future, Mathie said he wouldn't expect to become a stock trader when he was released.
``If that was my goal,'' he said, ``I've already achieved it.'' |
