Phillip Musica
| Phillip Musica | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Philip Mariano Fausto Musica 1877 Naples, Italy |
| Died | December 16, 1938 (aged 60–61) Fairfield, Connecticut |
| Cause of death | Suicidal gunshot |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Other names | F. Donald Coster |
| Occupation | Swindler |
Philip Mariano Fausto Musica (1877 – December 16, 1938), also known as F. Donald Coster, was an Italian swindler whose criminal career spanned parts of three decades. His various crimes included tax fraud, bank fraud, and bootlegging. However, he is best known as the mastermind of the McKesson & Robbins scandal of 1938, one of the largest financial scandals ever perpetuated by a single person.
Musica was born in 1877 in Naples to Antonio and Maria Musica. He moved to New York City at the age of seven and grew up in Mulberry's Bend, a rough neighborhood in Little Italy. Philip would eventually have three brothers and a sister. As a boy, Musica admired Theodore Roosevelt, at the time the city's hard-charging police commissioner.
Musica dropped out of school at the age of 14 to help out at his father's small grocery store, A. Musica and Son. Within two years, he was running the store. He soon left day-to-day operations to his younger brother Arthur while turning his own attention to building an import-export operation. By importing cheese, olive oil, and spices directly from Italy (as opposed to using a middleman), he was able to underprice his competitors. Within a few years, A. Musica and Son was one of the largest importers of Italian food in New York, grossing a half-million dollars a year. The Musicas moved to a home in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn and became leaders of the city's Italian community.
There was a dark secret to the store's success, however. Musica bribed dock officials to replace the real bills of lading with phony ones listing the weights of their shipments as substantially lighter than they really were. The unpaid tariffs grew to astronomical proportions when the Musicas increased their orders. Combined with the lower prices they paid for importing directly, they substantially outsold all their competitors in Little Italy.
...
Wikipedia