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worked there two years with the title of national console representative, from which position he redirected incoming calls. Console representatives do not make trades: “They are responsible for watching customer call volume and routing customer calls appropriately,” Loporchio said.

Wanting to run his own firm, Fanning was still in his twenties when he inquired about the struggling computer business of a man he met playing squash at Boston’s University Club. Around 1990, Fanning bought Ed Walter’s Cambridge Automation on credit. The company took in big general-purpose computers from manufacturers and resold them to laboratories and other customers. But the business models were changing then, and large computer makers started making more of their sales directly. Under Fanning, Cambridge Automation limped on for two more years. Fanning spent much of his time there trying to strike new deals with creditors, from the phone company to the computer suppliers that were the firm’s lifeblood. When some businesses demanded their money, Fanning would call up and sound outraged, insisting on speaking with superior after superior until the creditor gave up and offered new terms.

“He learned how to look the big boys in the eye and not blink,” said company manager Jack Martin. Fanning’s style of running the company was unorthodox. “John was crazy,” Martin said. “He would call a meeting for 6 A.M. on a Sunday, because that way he could tell who gave a damn.”

Martin brought in a friend, Jack Nevil, as controller of the company, a sensitive position given the firm’s precarious finances. Nevil, who would also play a key role in Fanning’s next venture, had made a lot of money in real-estate deals. But his history still left something to be desired. In 1985, for example, Nevil had been fired after three years as treasurer of Aunyx Corp., where the majority owner accused him of spending company money for a Cadillac used by Nevil’s family and other conflicts of interest. He sued for wrongful termination. “Until the termination of his employment by Aunyx, Nevil engaged in a pattern of breaching his fiduciary duties,” the company said in Nevil’s lawsuit, which was dismissed by agreement in 1987.

That dispute was just a taste of things to come. In 1989, some of Nevil’s real-estate deals went bad and resulted in massive defaults to lender Rockland Trust Co. Rockland won a judgment of more than $7

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