No ‘trading backwards’ for former prisoner Greg Blank

Convicted of 48 counts of fraud and given a jail sentence, Greg Blank, a once legendary stockbroker, took his fate and used it to transform one of South Africa’s most dangerous prisons. Innately positive, Blank argues that one needs to take accountability and then press on when facing adversity.

“In life you can’t trade backwards, you have to go forwards,” he said, speaking at this week’s SA Jewish Report webinar, “Bouncing Back from Scandal”. The webinar, which also featured formerly disgraced entrepreneur Rael Levitt, revealed the power of learning from mistakes and forging a better future.

Building his reputation as a high-flying trader on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange while working for Frankel Pollak, Blank became adept at securing institutional investors in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That’s how he got involved with a crime syndicate working as portfolio managers at Old Mutual who came to him with “a great idea”.

“Institutions don’t want to buy a thousand shares at a time, they want to buy 500 thousand or a million at once to make it easier,” Blank said. “These Old Mutual fund managers would say, ‘We’re looking to buy x number of shares, we don’t guarantee that we’ll take those shares but there’s a good chance’.” So, Blank would buy the shares at his own risk and then offer them to Old Mutual. If the syndicate purchased the shares for Old Mutual, they did so at an inflated price, and would share the profits with Blank. If not, Blank would sell them to someone else.

“As a stockbroker, you couldn’t act as an agent and a principal,” Blank said. “So, if you were selling stock that you had a share in, you had to disclose that you were the owner of that stock.” The practice became legal six months after Blank’s conviction, but by then it was too late.

“In those days, the stock exchange was a plethora of everyone doing something that was incorrect,” said Blank. “And because everyone was doing it, it wasn’t deemed to be wrong until I was seen to do it, and then all hell broke loose.” Initially told that if he pled guilty, he would receive only a fine as had happened to others in similar cases, Blank was in fact convicted of fraud of non-disclosure, and sentenced to eight years in prison.

His biggest regret, he said, was the pain it caused his parents. “When you go to jail, it’s not you, it’s the people who are left behind that face it,” he said.

It was while serving time, which ultimately amounted to 22 months at Krugersdorp Prison, that he confronted his guilt. “The scary part is that when you’re doing it and everyone in the exchange is doing it, you actually don’t feel it’s wrong,” he said. “The first time that I really understood that it was wrong was when I was sitting in my jail cell at Krugersdorp – it took that shock of sitting in a cold cell. You’re so subjectively involved in the situation that you don’t see it. But when you remove yourself from it, you can see things more clearly.”

Yet Blank consistently took accountability, refusing well-meaning friends’ offers to help him flee the country since he held an Irish passport. “I never ran away from it; I made it very clear that what I did was wrong. Even in court, I said to the judge, ‘You found me guilty. I made a mistake. I’m here to face the penalty.’ In this day and age, everybody blames everybody else. Yet the sooner you take responsibility, the easier life becomes.”

That’s not to say he didn’t face an unimaginably difficult road. “I can’t explain going to jail. The loss of freedom is too abhorrent to really understand until you’re there,” he said. As a Jewish guy from the northern suburbs, the reality of prison was petrifying. “At the one and only breakfast I attended, two guys were stabbed to death in a gang fight. Yet, you face the situation you’re in – you have to handle it.”

Blank soon befriended two other inmates, and they worked together to start a recreation programme at the prison. “Step by step, I started bringing stuff into the jail with the help of my loyal friends and contacts who were unbelievable.” They donated everything from televisions to soccer boots to wood and grain. With this help, Blank and his friends built a gym, set up a hairdressing salon, and ultimately managed to help create 21 businesses to keep the prisoners busy.

Yet, as he became more powerful, he became more of a target of prison gangs. Blank and his friends therefore enlisted gang members to work with them, involving them in the prison transformation. He worked on building their self-esteem, awarding donated prizes for boxing and soccer matches, and even arranging for Jomo Sono, the coach of Cosmos, to bring his team to play a friendly match against the prison team.

“I’ve always been consistent,” Blank said, reflecting on his can-do attitude. “I get up every morning trying to be the best person I can be, and being in jail didn’t change that.” Though the Old Mutual crime syndicate never faced convictions, Blank chose not to be bitter. “I didn’t take the fall for anyone, I did what I did, it was my fault. Jail teaches you about yourself.”

Blank feels that his prison experience strengthened him for what he had to handle later in life, including a nine-year cancer battle. He’s now cancer free and working on the stock market. He also buys and races horses, a passion that comes with wins and losses, something that has taught him more about handling failure.

“I refuse to see negativity in anything, it’s a wasted emotion,” said Blank. “Adversity gives you a chance to reinvent yourself. The trick is how you handle it and go forward.”