Chapters 16 and 17 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 16

Sandy Weinberg began gathering a prosecution team with members from the Justice Department, the FBI, the Treasury Department, Customs Service and the State Department. Weinberg and his team had no idea what the scope of the Rich case might be. In early 1982, a federal grand jury issued indictments for some of Rich's top New York executives as well as several Arco oil executives. Weinberg subpoenaed 200,000 financial and other documents from Rich's company.

During this initial period, Rich was unfazed, conducting business in New York as if the little investigation was meaningless. Pinky convinced Rich that they would never be indicted. Rich and Pinky both thought that their lawyers were being paid enough to keep them out of any problems. But Weinberg was gathering evidence, offering immunity to many of Rich's associates, most of whom took the offer and...