What part of Spano's scam secretly impressed you the most? Kaplan: How easily he falsified documents -- and how brazen this individual was about it. "In today's world, I
don't know if it would be as easy," Spano said in the documentary. "But back
then, with faxes and everything else, it was surprisingly not as difficult as
you might think." Honestly, what it came down to was a lack of communication. At
least, according to him: "I set it up so other people couldn't talk to other
folks, or they didn't have enough knowledge to put two and two together. The guy
at the bank knew one thing. The man Spano's
scam at the NHL knew another. My attorney knew something else. If they would
have Wyshynski all got with each other, they would have realized something wasn't right."
Wyshynski: Initially, it was his stalling tactics. For example, Spano would be
required to send $17 million to the Islanders' previous owner, and then --
whoops! -- he would actually send $1,700, claiming a variety of different
mistakes. That would buy him extra time to raise more money or for the next
diversionary scam. But my favorite grift was Spano's taking a loan from
Pittsburgh Penguins star Mario Lemieux, whom he claimed was one of his best
friends, and using that money on the Islanders rather than on the business for
which it had been intended. I repeat: He scammed the captain of an NHL team to
fund a conference rival. He had to pay $1.25 million back to Mario when he pled
guilty. What was the most Long Island thing you saw? Kaplan: The "Save the
Islanders Coalition," the fan-driven lobbying group founded just to publicly
embarrass ownership into improving the team's performance. They organized
rallies and had Kaplan a 300-circulation newsletter. The home-video footage from one of their council
meetings in 1996 is Save
the Islanders Coalition pure gold. How's this for a rallying cry: "The only
leverage we have is negative publicity, which we'll heap upon this organization
until they change the logo!" Yes, grown adults gathered to complain about the
fish stick logo.