The Interview

Previously on Number one.

Dad.

One day I got a phone call from Rich who was with Manny in the basement, and the marshals came storming.

In good morning, calling the case of AT and T Corp versus Manny veter defendant.

Veter impersonated a New York Telephone company employee stole two night TAEL telephone enclosures and was prosecuted for a class eve felony.

And then down the road as I'd speaking, I say, hey, did this ever get resolved? And I remember one discussion where he said, you wouldn't believe what happened. I had it in a warehouse and somehow the warehouse was broken into and a whole bunch of stuff was taken.

If you had to guess how that evidence became missing, would you put it?

Pat?

Yeah, it's a hard thing to speculate if he was involved in it, but it was just a very good piece of luck for him that they couldn't bring the case forward.

I want to show you something, Give me two seconds of your time.

Yeah, yeah, I got a guy.

Since she's assistant.

What I expected meeting my father to have a surprise or two, but I definitely did not see this coming. I have another sister who's half my age, and she's French.

Lying, stealing.

I got in trouble a little bit in different ways. Everything I had was just street smarts.

Right now, I'm sitting down with my father, Manny Veeter, in my old living room on Long Island, asking him everything I ever wanted to know. Hopefully I'll get the truth, but who knows. I mean, he is a con man.

I went to Baru College during nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy three.

When you're doing well in college in school.

Yeah, I cheated my way through college.

How could you not do well? If you're a bad cheater, then you suck. Yeah, you had to be the best, and I was the best.

A lot of people say colleges where they figured out their path in life, and it turns out my father is one of those people. That's whereas days as a con artist began. Would it have been easier to actually have studied for some people?

Yes, for me, that's not the way it worked out.

Tell me how you cheated in college?

By the way, you know, everything I'm saying is all bullshit and lies, right, Yeah, exactly, good say that to me.

Everything you're saying is all bullshit in lines right, none of the trick right. This is number one, dad?

So how would you go about cheating in college?

I decided that if I wanted to get good marks, logically get a copy of the exam before the exam began.

I figured out how I.

Could do that, and then I would disperse the exam amongst friends of mine who collected money. They made money selling the exams. We had pretty small kids graduating from that school.

How much would you sell the exams for?

Oh, put a price tag on it for three to four hundred dollars an exam.

Wow.

What I didn't tell my father in that moment is I also stole exams in college, which is crazy. I had no idea we had this in common, but I didn't want to give them the satisfaction in knowing it.

How would you get them?

Like?

How would be access to them?

I knew where the exams were being kept.

Any major classes you were taking, whether it was the law accounting, had a department accounting department, law department, and.

I figured out.

That those departments somehow had to get the exams printed.

Back then, they called them mimeograph machines.

And I knew that mistakes are made. And what happens to the mimeograph machines when they make a mistake, They take them back copy throw in a garbage. So I said, okay, I'll pick the garbage. And I took two really smart kids gave it to them so they could get an.

A plus rather than just an A.

They would have to give me all the answers, and I told them they had to be perfect or they'd never see another example.

And I got it.

And it's not like both of us, me sitting here and the guy who's sitting there.

How the hell do we have the same answers? You know? And if anybody questioned.

Who did you say I cheated from?

We don't even sit next to each other. What are you talking about? Right?

You're able to deny, deny, deny, deny because you can't take back guilty.

Was this successful?

I mean it's very successful. I was making more money than a professor was there.

I asked my father about one of his earliest jobs out of college. We're out of all the departments he was hired to work in security.

I got offered a job with Pan American Airlines. I don't know if you ever heard of them. There were big airlines. They were like twa Luftanza. There were one of the big four in the world.

They put me in.

Charge of security. Ordit in security And how long did you work at pan.

Am for until they fired me?

So what led to you getting fired?

Back then?

You didn't come up to the desk and they type in your name, take your credit card?

Okay. They didn't have that technology.

The ticket was handwritten by the woman behind the desk okay. And the fraud was were fraudulent tickets that were being handwritten to get on a plane. See, they didn't even know exactly how many seats were sold till they manually counted the tickets and I slipped into shit, let's put it that way.

Yeah, And they got that's it. They could just fire you for that.

They could remember I'm the guy in ordered to in security and.

I'm fucking lion.

And then so, but now you don't have a Tanam job? What are you thinking about doing for a career.

I needed something to do, so I said, Hey, my fall was in a furniture business. I loved selling and bullshitting and putting those two things together.

I asked my father about his fime furniture store Designer's Gallery.

After dozens of buyers claimed they were cheated, the State Attorney General's Office filed suit yesterday against Veter Sales Inc.

What was Designer's Gallery.

Designer's Gallery was the name of a medium to high end furniture business that I started. I did have help in getting into the furniture industry through my father in law, Ben Wolf, at that point, in order to gain more credibility, and this is where a lot of my scams began. I said, well, Manny Veeder in the furniture bill, who the hell is he? But Manny Wolf was the son of Ben Wolf, who had a store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Did you start off in the furniture business as being an honest businessman?

Absolutely? Absolutely.

Now that brings me into the next step which got me into trouble. I became a transshipper. I invented that word transshipper. Now people came through me and they go, oh, I want Ethan Allen or Drexel Heritage.

These were big.

Names in the furniture industry, but they wouldn't sell to me. They sold only to authorize dealers, like you can't buy a Vovo at a BMW guy unless you have two dealerships. So I went ahead and I said, how the fuck am I going to get these big names to sell me? So I needed another scam because everybody already knew who I was as a designers gallery, and they knew me in New York.

So I said, screw this.

I'll set up an address in Boston and I'll set up an address in Maryland.

But I needed a good name. So what was that name?

Armed Forces Sales and Services. What is Enforces Sales and Services do? When I went to introduce myself to these guys who didn't know who I was, I said, well, we are the ones that furnished all the embassies in France in Italy.

That's how the furniture gets there.

You send it to me, I put it in the container, and I send it overseas.

You should never left the United States.

I've never known about any of this before, but I got to admit, this is another brilliant scheme by my dad for his entire life. Using quick thinking and deception, he's been able to come up with a solution to get him ahead.

If I could think it, I could make it work. Okay, it's all about delusion. Like a magician. I was a magician in the furniture business. They were figuring schmucks embassies all over the world. Right, But what they didn't realize how many times are they going to change their furniture?

Right? Exactly?

Umforces sales and services. I may have some business cards still left over. I'll give you nice furniture. However, I got a little greedy guys in my area said, Manny, how the hell did you get Drexel? How did you get this? How did you get that? I said, well, I have a contact. You couldn't get it. Who could get it?

Man? He wolf could get it. So they would call me.

I'd have these things shipped to a bogus address or warehouse where I was doing my trucking with, sent it there, and then take it and send it to the guy who wanted it.

But he got to the point where the.

Guy at the warehouse was also delivering furniture for other companies. So he'd asked me could you do a favor for so and so do it for me? Okay, he's helping me out. I open it and the furniture would come in and I've got four thousand dollars of inventory for Joe Piazza that he ordered from me, and he said, could you send it to me. I'll pay you as soon as I get paid. Well that's where I was stupid, because I got to wait for him to get paid. Fuck, you pay me now if you want the furniture. And

I gonna do?

My goodness, I'm not gonna go after them legally, So I called Anthony, and Anthony got involved and basically had to go down, pay a visit to these people.

And make sure we got paid.

So who is Anthony?

Anthony came from a family of the good old boys, and you wanted to be on the right side of Anthony because if you didn't and you crossed him, he would follow you to work.

And wait for you to get to your job, and then when you'd get into that big elevator that took you up to the forty fourth floor.

He'd step in, punch in the face, walk out the elevator, and the doors were closed.

Nobody could get them.

You're gonna meet Anthony sounds like he's going to kick the shit out of me.

Not unless you deserve it.

And one of my very famous customers was lat Trapeze.

Now you've probably never heard of that.

You kids.

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In the nineteen eighties, Latrapeze was the mecca of sex clubs in New York and my father was responsible for supplying them with their mattresses.

Gross the Jersey Mob opened up latrap Pees. Well, they came to me and they say, come down to our place, which was off Park Avenue and twenty something Street.

I walk in.

It's like what you would refer to maybe as madam who is the manager there.

It was like a big empty almost warehouse.

But with lights, you know, he goes, well, we're going to need carpeting, and we're going to need mattresses. I said, what kind of mattresses you're going to put in here? Ones I go on the floor.

That are waterproof or sperm proof. I said, what are they going? They're going to fuck here?

She said to me here, I am listen to this woman who was like twenty years older than me. Yeah, this is going to be a fuck house. Most of these girls were like cookers, and when it came time to get paid, they told me, go fuck yourself, Anthony, you better get a hold of your dad.

Who is Anthony's father, Anthony.

He was a tough guy.

I don't know if my father is telling the truth here, but I am loving this story. So you told Anthony Jr. That you have an issue that you're getting paid up.

And he said, don't worry about it. I'll hold my father. He'll take care of it. His father sent some people down there, which, from my understanding was that day two men walked into the Latrapeze and.

The guy who told me to fuss myself was there with a couple of his buddies.

And the story, Anthony calls me my father just took care of everything. He wants us to go down there tomorrow to pick up our money.

So I meet with Anthony.

We go down there, and I told your mother, I'm walking in now. That was I had the first cell phone, which was a motor flip phone. I said, if I don't call you back for bullshit in five minutes, donal nine one wanted to tell him to come to that thinkers, I'm getting locked in a freezer somewhere.

I have to pause here to say how insane it is that my father would put my mother through this kind of stress all because of, in his words, greed. Plenty of people have legitimate furniture businesses that provide for their family, but legitimate was never enough for my father. He needed more, even if it put him, my mother, and his kids in danger.

So we get there and the guy who refused to pay me is now wearing big sunglasses.

Like he's a movie star.

The reason why I had the sunglasses while he took off this, he says, you didn't have to call anybody.

Just look what they did to me.

You know, he had a big black eye and nose was cut up here. They made sure I got my money on top of that, they took an extra fifty percent added to that. Okay, so now I had another two thousand dollars which I had to give to Anthony to give to those guys collection fee.

What did my mom say when you call her to tell her? I mean, you're a guy who's in the furniture business. You're telling her, if you don't hear from me in five minutes, call the police.

She just went along with it.

And if I told this is what we got to do with, this is what we got to do because I got to collect that money.

We need it.

Hearing this really made me feel for my mother because she clearly didn't have much of a choice in the matter. She was a stay at home mom raising three kids and relied on her husband to provide. But unfortunately that husband was a crook.

She was trapped.

What was the downfall of Designers.

Gallery New York State Attorney General.

They had enough complaints where they needed to put a stop to me legally, and that's how they do it. They do it through their legal machine that they have and trying to fight The Attorney General is trying to fight New York State because their resources, to a.

Certain point are unlimited.

But I found out that the Attorney General has a budget and they got to make things pay. So the longer I can fuck them over and drag them out, they're going to realize that they're not getting any bang for their dollar.

And that's what I did.

So they were going to wear me down by me having to pay for a lawyer to come and represent me. But I never went to law school, and I became a lawyer overnight.

And your mother can tell you that she saw how I worked.

And I went to court and I sat in on different things in court, and I listened and I made notes terms that I would use, and things that other attorneys were doing to fuck other attorneys, and I picked up on it, and I knew the way I was going to get around this was to drag this out as long as I could.

For loopholes my father used against the Attorney General managed to keep him out of jail, but eventually he was forced to close up shop.

They put a order in on me that I can never be in a furniture business again.

They're even allowed to sit in a chair like you're doing right now, only.

If it's a toilet seat. Well, let's put it this way somebody like yourself. I would never try to scam.

And I never went after the poor people who didn't have money. I went after the big companies. But it wasn't something I intentionally did. I unfortunately got into a situation where the money wasn't coming in and I couldn't pay my bills, and they pulled the rug from underneath me.

It's as simple as that.

It was a business decision by a lot of these companies, and word got around, don't do business with manny.

Here's how I know my father is a great con artist. In the moment when he was saying all this, I was completely convinced by his justification for all the lies and schemes. But hearing it back, it's clear he's simply a man painting himself as the victim. He didn't unfortunately get into a situation. He put himself there. It was his choice to become a transshipper, to lie about furnishing embassies, and to get involved with the mob. My father isn't

Would you have done anything different?

I would have.

Robbed the bank taken more money on a one shot deal. Yeah, but you know, everything was a learning game for me. I could see what I could do and where I wouldn't be noticed.

I learned that was part of my technique, which I still use to this very day.

I knew my father went from the furniture business to payphones, but I never really knew how it all started. I couldn't wait to get the full story on payphone Plus.

Somehow I read about an article that payphones were going to be available on the retail market. This has got to be about maybe nineteen eighty nine. I threw ten thousand dollars into that business, and each phone at that time cost me eleven hundred dollars, and I bought six phones,

Just to give people an idea of the scope of how large payphone Plus was, can you name different types of businesses that you had accounts in.

I had phones in the tri state area, which included Long Island, five boroughs, Upper New Jersey, Westchester, Rockland County areas, about two hundred phones total. I had phones in Macy's, Jack Laane Sabarro's, Costco Gold Nugget Casino in Vegas.

I had phones everywhere.

Take me to acquiring an account and the perception you would give off of who you were.

Okay, Well, first thing I went out and did was I had a couple of shirts.

Embroidered AT and T.

I have a truck outside that's painted the same color as an AT and T truck, and I.

Have an AT and T logo and business cards.

In fact, I got a helmet for you kids, helmet and I put an AT and T sticker on it.

A few you remember that I do.

Yeah, yeah, you embroidered these AT and T shirts. Right, Are you going into a place and telling people you work for AT and T or No?

No, no, no, that's just smoking mirrors. They made the assumption. Hey, if I went to Night in the Game and bought an Island New Jersey? Am I a goalie for the Islanders? Am I defenseman? Whatever you want to think is okay with me as long as it doesn't come out of my mouth.

Aside from making people think he worked for AT and T. Apparently, another way my dad was able to grow his pay phone business was by paying out larger commissions than his competitors.

In fact, I taught your cousin Mason, I started him in the phone business. So I took Mason with me and we went and there was a phone in front of this store, and I told the owner, I'm going to pay you a higher commission than you're getting. Now, well, we're putting our phone up here.

You offered to pay them a better commission. How could you afford to do that?

Very simply knowing that in four or five months from now they are going to cut my line the phone company for non payment. So you wouldn't pay the phone bill, all right, that I'd have a six hundred dollars phone bill, and they threatened to cut it off. But I was opening up different accounts under different names all the time.

Now they cut the phone line, that phone, now, what happens to that at that establishment?

You just take it out.

What I did was I was two steps in front of them all the time. I would call up the phone company and I would tell the phone company. I'm now transferring this to this and this company. Okay, Now they changed the name from payphone plus XYZ, so a new lease on life, a new lease on life, and you continue.

To do that.

So why not just pay your bill?

Because I was a greedy fuck and I wanted the money and I wanted it.

Now, I'm sure a lot of my dad's answers to my questions have been filled with lies, but this time I know he's telling the truth. Yes, he's a swindler, a schemer, a con man, but at his core, he's simply a greedy fuck. Do you ever remember going around with me and sing a headset for a payphone?

Did I do that with you? Holy shit?

I must have been really fucking crazy. I don't remember vandalyzing somebody's phone or anything.

I really don't, and be a stupid thing for me to do that with you?

There, Yeah, well I remember that, so I went down.

I don't know what to tell Listen, if you remember that, and I don't take your word on it.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like it would be something that you would do.

I probably do worse, but yeah, Okay.

Once we were on the topic of payphones. I had to ask my father about a certain mobbed up strip club in Queen's that was mentioned by his former employees Mark and Rich.

These are made mafia guys, and every time we would enter, Nanny was greeted warmly. He would hang out, they would catch up, they would talk, they would joke.

It made me uncomfortable with to the owner. There was like his owner guys.

And he was real. He was just like Sketchy. Tell me about Wiggles.

Wiggles was a topless and bottomless strip club located on Queens Boulevard.

He has sixty third Drive and.

I always made sure I put a phone right next to the dressing.

Room for the women.

Who owned it.

A fella I knew by the name of Vinnie.

Vinnie. What gumbats?

Could you say his name?

Do we have to You're walking on dangerous ground here.

Any We're fine, We're fine.

What are in? We're fine, We're fine.

If the only people that listened to this or the FBI and the police.

All right, we'll leave it. We'll leave his name, we'll call it, We'll call him Vinnie. My father was hesitant for good reason. The Vinnie. I'm asking him to talk about was the former head of the de Cavalcanti crime family.

So how'd you meet him?

Well, I was there one night and who comes in but Vinnie. We started talking and he asked me what am I doing here? I told I'm the guy who does the telephone and he had a problem with his phones and I fixed it and we started chatting, and what was.

This situation with his phone?

The guy who hooked it up before I ever looked at it, didn't do such a good job. He was very sloppy and wires were not properly punched on as they used the term to the block. And I just redid it and things were working fine.

When I spoke with Mark, he told me my father found a tap in Vinnie's phone.

He found taps and he was able to take those out and also inform them that they were actually being spied on, and so he's like a hero in this circle.

I had to ask my father if this actually happened, Was there anything ever that you noticed in his phones, like say, anything that was ever like bugged or you.

Wouldn't see a bug because the bugs were not bugged directly in the location, although sometimes that may have been the preferred way to do it. But a few miles away is where the Queen's district attorney had his offices, and usually when they were bugging somebody, they would bug it in that particular building, which was across the street from the courthouses, and this way nobody would ever see

So how would you know? Just curious, how would you know that that's where a district attorney would bug a phone?

Like I watched a lot of movies.

Did you ever help Vinnie out?

Let's put it this way.

If Annie would ask me to help him out, or I would have no problem doing it. I don't think you'd want to be on his bad side.

My father may be a great liar, but sometimes you have to look at what he's not saying. He doesn't say that he never found a bug in Vinnie's phone, and he doesn't flat out say he never helped Vinnie out. I kept pressing him for more information, but that was all he was willing to give me. I'm trying to remember as much as I can from when I was a kid. I'm only between probably like eight to eleven at this time, while you were doing the payphone plus business.

Well, I had to stop because AIGHTE and T sent me a letter saying that I shouldn't be walking around what a AIGHTE and T had on or a logo since I'm not an employee, and I basically told the guy, the vice president from AT and T who called I told him to go fuck himself.

I guess word got around that you were wearing this stuff or accounts were under the assumption that they were dealing with AT and T rightly.

And then you know they were probably filming me and taking pictures of me walking around like that.

So you get this vice president who called you up, you tell him to go fuck himself, and what happens after that?

I get served with papers to cease and desist otherwise they'll take further action. And me, being the prick I am and the hard ass, I told them I thought I told you to go fuck yourself last time.

What happened next?

AT and T got an order from the federal judge the US Marshal and some AT and T employees arrived at the home at about five thirty am in the morning.

And demanded entrance, and I let them in.

They started gathering things along with their attorneys. They started gathering a lot of my personal stuff and anything that might incriminate me, anything that might be evidence to show that I was acting as an AT and T employee, which meant anything with an eight and T logo. And they basically ransacked my office and the downstairs area of the house, taking items that would put me out of business, wouldn't let me operate anymore. And they had a truck

I think one of the most crucial elements to being a great con artist is the ability to ignore all the possible consequences of your actions. Most people can't do it, but my father was the master. All the switching of names on accounts and fake at and t gear. You have to ignore it, the very real possibility that it all might blow up in your face. Like my dad said, he's a greedy fuck. He wants the big house in the nice neighborhood, the extravagant vocations to California and Europe. Frankly,

Well, because it was a very hurtful time and which led up to other things later on in life shortly after, and I wanted to forget about it as quickly as I could put that behind me. Which it didn't go behind me because I was dragged into court and I told your mother, if you don't come to court and fight this with me, they had your name on the papers. You got to be cleared. What happens to me doesn't matter, but you have to be cleared.

So what ended up happening with AT and T?

What was the end result?

The end result with AT and T was that the case was dismissed. Oh and the other thing that happened was the evidence that they took. They came back with a story that the truck that they used was broken into in the night and a lot of their evidence was taken out of the truck, which the judge said, who drove that truck and they said it was eighteen T employees. Okay, so where was the truck? They said it was brought to a secure AT and T facility.

Do you believe something like that?

Can you believe something like that?

How the fuck am I going to break into a truck?

What do you believe happened to that evidence?

How to funck? Should I know?

Would you say you took it?

Never? That's important?

How the fuck am I going to get on a secured facility that had cameras all around? How could I have possibly have done it? I mean the truck left with us marshals.

I guess the only way to get into a secured AT and T facility with maybe being looking like somebody.

Who worked for AT and T.

Sure, do you think you would have been screwed if that eviden instant to go missing?

Absolutely?

Hey, on my deathbed, you can ask me the question and my memory may come back to me.

What was I expecting my father say yes, I stole the evidence. If I learned anything from him, it.

Was deny, deny, deny because you can't take back guilty.

So you're stealing exams in college, you're moving money around. When it comes to the furniture business, you know, not even delivering furniture to people. Then you get involved in the phone business and you have AT and T logos on your sweatshirt, you're passing up business cards. At any point where you're like, why don't I just do a legit business, make this payphone business legit and see where that goes.

Well, everything started out legit. It's just unforeseen reasons. I may have made a left turn instead of a right turn. And you know, when money's good and it's coming in, you just don't want it to stop, you know. Yeah, I had money okay, until we were spending it, you know, quicker than we could make it. So that's just just the way. When it was poor planning on my side. Sure I made mistakes, but for some reason I was able to rectify things and move on with my life.

So things are winding down at the house and we headed back outside, and then something unexpected happened. My father out of the blue face times. My half sister Miriam, who lives in Paris and who I've never met.

That's a You're going to say hi to your sister. She wants to say hi to you.

Actually, hey, somebody wants to say hello to you.

You look pretty. Don't bite your nails please, honey. Okay, I don't know.

Hey, how's it going. You know what I am? You know who that is?

I am your half brother.

Very nice, right, I heard a lot about you, and I know this is like the first time I'm talking to you, but I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself and then if you ever come to the United States, I'd be happy to, you know, meet up with you. And I have Instagram and stuff, and you know, you could always message me on there and stuff if you want to know anything or anything like that. I'm super you know you're you're my half sister, but you're my sister. You know, I don't mean say half you're

Thank you.

Thanks for doing that.

Yes, you're very sweet.

As I stood on the front lawn of my childhood home. I couldn't believe I spoke to my sister, Miriam. Miriam and I may not know each other, but even over FaceTime, I could tell she had a million questions she wanted to ask me about our father, probably a lot of the same questions I had when I was her age, and we couldn't talk about any of it because Manny

I care for.

Thanks great. On the next episode of Number One Dad, I am on my way to New York City to Madison Square Garden. I'm gonna be seeing a Rangers game with my dad. I can't believe I just said that we have actual access. We don't need to jump lines, jump ropes. Everything's good. We got legitimate tickets with fun.

Yeah, but it's no phone when you come in legally.

Number One Dad is a production of Radio Point, Big Money Players Network and iHeart Podcasts, created and hosted by Gary Veeter. Executive producers are Gary Veeter, Adam Lowett, Alex Bach, Daniel Powell, Houston Snyder Kenneth Slotnik and Brian Stern. Written by Gary Veeter and Adam Lowett, Produced by Bernie Minsky. Co producer is Taylor Kowalski, Edited and mixed by Ian Sorrentino at Little Bear Audio. Recording Engineer is kat Iosa.