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| The Stock Market Has Made Inmate 90T1282 a Rich Man |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 02/19/2001 |
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On his tax returns, Michael Mathie writes 'investor' in the blank reserved for occupation. He claims to have traded upward of $8 million in securities since 1998. In 1999 his adjusted gross income was $899,969, all but a sliver in capital gains. He has also invested in a house for his family on Long Island and bought four cars, including a $97,000 Dodge Viper. Plus a garage to keep it in. But here at the Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison where the guards call him 'our resident millionaire,' Mr. Mathie is formally known as Inmate 90T1282, who has completed almost 12 years of a 10- to 30-year sentence for manslaughter. He is also known for advising and helping pay for other inmates' legal efforts, as well as providing free legal advice to his fellow prisoners and stock tips to anyone who asks. Given his successes on Wall Street, people listen. Inmates cannot run their own business from prison, but as a state prison official said, they do not give up their right to free speech. Mathie's investing is not considered a business since he does not actually conduct the transactions. His father does, making this one of the odder tales of America's infatuation with the stock market. Mathie, 33, has no Internet connection, no cell phone, not even a phone in his cell. He makes his trades by calling his father collect from a pay telephone - up to 10 times a day when the market was more vigorous. His father then places trades on the Internet. Mathie was 21 and a high school dropout and former cocaine addict when he and three others were arrested in the murder of Paul Vincent Lamariana. He was hit in the head with a tire iron, choked with an electrical cord, tied up, stuffed in plastic bags, wrapped in all-weather carpet, and dumped on the side of the road in Oak Beach, Suffolk County. |
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