1. Ferdinand Pecora was an American lawyer and New York State Supreme Court judge who became famous in the 1930s as Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Banking and Currency during its investigation of Wall Street banking and stock brokerage practices.
Ferdinand Pecora was born in Nicosia, Sicily, the son of Louis Pecora and Rosa Messina, who emigrated to the United States in 1886.
In 1922, Pecora was named chief assistant district attorney, the number-two man in the office under the newly elected Joab H Banton.
Ferdinand Pecora left the district attorney's office for private practice, where he remained until 1933.
Ferdinand Pecora was appointed chief counsel to the US Senate's Committee on Banking and Currency in January 1933 to replace Irving Ben Cooper by the outgoing committee chairman, Republican Peter Norbeck.
Ferdinand Pecora continued under Democratic chairman Duncan Fletcher, following the 1932 election that swept Franklin D Roosevelt into the US presidency and gave the Democratic Party control of the Senate.
The Senate committee hearings that Ferdinand Pecora led probed the causes of the Wall Street crash of 1929 that launched a major reform of the American financial system.
Ferdinand Pecora revealed that National City sold off bad loans to Latin American countries by packing them into securities and selling them to unsuspecting investors, that Wiggin had shorted Chase shares during the crash, profiting from falling prices, and that Mitchell and top officers at National City had received $2.4 million in interest-free loans from the bank's coffers.
On January 21,1935, Pecora resigned from the SEC and became a judge of the New York Supreme Court, a position he held until 1950, when he ran unsuccessfully against Vincent R Impellitteri for Mayor of New York City.
In 1937, Ferdinand Pecora was a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild.
Ferdinand Pecora died at the Ottendorfer Public Library and Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital on December 7,1971.
In 1939, Ferdinand Pecora wrote a book about the Senate investigations titled Wall Street Under Oath: The Story of Our Modern Money Changers, which has been reprinted twice:.