Futures Trial Is Simply About Fraud, Jury Told : Commodities: The prosecutor, in opening remarks, says the three defendants are common thieves. The defense will state its case today.

“Good things happen to those who help out.”

That simple sentence, allegedly said by commodities broker Robert Mosky to an undercover FBI agent posing as a fellow trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, lies at the heart of the government’s case in its highly publicized attack against corruption on Chicago’s big commodities markets.

The case is the first to come to trial in the government’s massive sting operation at both the Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.

In opening arguments Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Pollack told jurors that Mosky and two other traders charged with fraud and racketeering in the case were common thieves, conspiring to rip off their unseen customers to benefit each other, while hiding behind the complexities of the commodities futures markets to mask their crimes.

“Stripped to its barest essentials, this is a case about fraud,” said Pollack. “The crimes they committed were simple, but the context in which they occurred certainly was complex.

“But just because a thief wears a white trading jacket and does business with a deck of trading cards, doesn’t mean he is any less a thief than a cat burglar.”

Wednesday’s opening salvo by the prosecution--to be followed today by an opening statement by the defense--came nearly a year and a half after the government’s undercover operation came to light in January, 1989, with a series of indictments against 47 brokers, traders and a clerk on both exchanges.

In a controversial move, the government sought to charge the traders under the RICO, or racketeering, statute, which had been originally designed to fight the mob, rather than white-collar criminals.

Using at least four undercover FBI agents who had been trained to act as traders, law enforcement officials penetrated the confusing world of commodities futures for the first time, after reportedly receiving complaints from customers on the commodities markets about fraudulent activity.

Since the indictments were first announced, at least 18 traders and brokers have entered plea bargains with the government, agreeing to lesser charges in exchange for their cooperation and testimony against other traders.

At least two traders, Mark Fuhrman and William Walsh, who worked alongside Mosky in the Swiss franc pit at the Merc, are expected to testify against him and the other two defendants in the case, David Zatz and Danny Scheck.

Zatz and Scheck were local, independent traders who allegedly helped Mosky, a broker who worked for a number of large firms, in his efforts to bilk customers and skim profits from his trades.

The trial, expected to last at least six weeks, will focus on the Swiss franc pit at the Merc, where the FBI stationed undercover agent Randall Jannett, posing as trader Randy Jackson, for 10 months in 1988. Trials covering brokers and traders from the Japanese yen pit at the Merc and the soybean pit at the Board of Trade are slated to begin in September.

Jannett and his taped conversations with Mosky and others in the Swiss franc pit will thus represent the heart of the government’s case. The later trials for yen traders and soybean traders are also likely to hinge on the testimony of undercover agents and their taped conversations, as well as on statements from traders who have agreed to act as government witnesses.

Meanwhile, the defense is expected to challenge the government’s definitions of what should be considered illegal activity on the exchange, and also the introduction of Jannett’s tape recordings, which Pollack admitted were hard to decipher because of the loud and chaotic background noise on the trading floor.

He warned the jurors that they will have to sift through the background noise to “listen to the quieter, softer conversations that Jannett was listening to, in which the defendants were arranging secret, noncompetitive trades.”

Jannett won’t testify for at least another week--the prosecution and defense first hope to provide expert witnesses to help educate the jury on the intricacies of the commodities markets.

But Pollack, in a detailed description of some of the fraudulent trading practices allegedly used in the Swiss franc pit, revealed some of the highlights from the evidence gathered by Jannett during his undercover stint.

In one case revealed by Pollack on Wednesday, Jannett recorded Mosky and Scheck attempting to make one large side deal for a noncompetitive trade of 147 contracts for Swiss francs. But just as they were about to complete the deal, another, unidentified trader saw what they were doing and complained; his objections can be heard on the tape, which will be played in court later in the trial.

Mosky and Scheck were allegedly forced to back off when publicly attacked by the fellow trader. They later completed a smaller side deal, Pollack said.

In another example, Pollack said Mosky asked Jannett to change the price of a trade they had just made in order to increase their profits.

When Jannett started to cross out the price on his trading card, which is turned in at the end of the trading session to record deals, Mosky scolded him to conceal his work better.

“You’d better write up a new card, that’s not going to fly,” Mosky told the undercover agent. Later, Mosky again warned Jannett of “increased scrutiny” of trading at the Merc and told him to be careful in their side dealings.

“I’d hate to see you go to jail,” Mosky said to Jannett.