A Tale of Urban Greed

Wedtech's web of corruption stretches beyond New York

Once upon a time the story of the Wedtech Corp. seemed to be a modern urban fairy tale, a kind of parable showing that America was still the land of opportunity. The story began in New York City in 1965, when John Mariotta, a diemaker, high school dropout, and the Manhattan-born son of Puerto Rican parents, invested $3,000 to start a small manufacturing company in a renovated brick garage in a desolate area of the South Bronx. Five years later Mariotta struck up a partnership with Fred Neuberger, a mechanical engineer who as a boy had escaped Nazi persecution in Eastern...

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