"Today's hearing might sound like an episode of The Sopranos, but it is not HBO. It is real. We are going to hear the true stories about people getting bilked out of their hard-earned money by the Mob. I know from my own experience as a special agent in the FBI that the Mob will go wherever a dollar is being made. Today that is Wall Street. So it is really not surprising that organized crime is trying to suck some of the life out of the blossoming securities markets. The M-O-B has gone back to school and gotten an MBA. The wiseguys are getting smart. They used to play ponies. Now they are playing the markets and investors for everything they are worth. When I was in the FBI investigating the organized crime in Boston, the Mob was in shipping, racketeering, garbage, loan sharking and good old-fashioned shakedowns. Now they are moving from the old economy to the new, but using the same old tactics of intimidation, extortion and manipulation." --- Congressman Michael G. Oxley