An angry late-night phone call to a lawyer’s office looks to be the worst bet New York Stock Exchange broker Edward A. Reiss ever made.
Reiss surrendered to the police yesterday and was charged with aggravated harassment over a threat he allegedly left in June on the voicemail of the lawyer for dissident NYSE member William Higgins.
On the tape, Reiss allegedly told Higgins’ lawyer, Jay Eisenhofer, “If this deal doesn’t go through, he better have somebody start his car because he is out of his mind.”
A call to Reiss’ lawyer, Adam Ford of Morvillo, Abromowitz, was not returned, nor was a call to Reiss’ apartment.
While tough poses and bombast are nothing new on the corner of Wall and Broad streets, that the call allegedly came from Reiss, who has a lengthy disciplinary record for temperamental behavior at the NYSE, struck a nerve, Higgins said.
“When my wife and I went somewhere, I always started the car and had her wait in the house,” he said.
“It was no secret that he has a short fuse,” Higgins said of Reiss.
Higgins and two other seat holders have sued the NYSE, charging that conflicts of interest – especially those of Goldman Sachs, which advised both sides – have cost seat holders.
The deal valued seats at $2.3 million; Higgins, citing a study by Willamette Associates, said seats should have been valued at $4.3 million to $5.1 million each.
Reiss has been disciplined five times by the NYSE for unprofessional conduct. In 1991, he accosted eight reporters on a guided official tour of the NYSE and berated them for their dress.
He was censured and fined $2,500. The disciplinary hearing panel noted that he had been sanctioned for similar violations in 1981 and 1986.
In 1996, the NYSE fined Reiss $5,000 and censured him for a profanity-laden tirade against a specialist over a trading dispute.
In 2001, the Big Board nailed him for $10,000 because he took trade orders from a customer who had not been approved to trade on the NYSE.
According to a transcript of the taped threat, Reiss said Higgins’ demand for a higher price could have left the NYSE members with no one to buy their seats.
“We were sucking wind with no bid for the seats and no money for the lease. Now we got money, and he wants more?” Reiss asked, according to a transcript of the tape.
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Death threat net
Police charged Edward A. Reiss, a 62-year-old NYSE seat holder, with aggravated harassment in the death threat
case involving colleague William Higgins.
Voicemail excerpt: ‘[Higgins] better have somebody start hiscar because he is out of his mind.’