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This week, the Law and Order crew pass through the looking glass into an upside-down world of Internet stock investment in which mobsters become fraud victims and Wall Street brokers take up murder for hire. Even if you aren’t the sort to tune out when people talk stocks at cocktail parties, this convoluted episode was more difficult to follow than usual.

Take a deep breath. Here I go: Sean Alvarez, a 24-year-old stock salesman, is shot and killed in the halls of the brokerage firm Braddock and Todd. Seems Alvarez had discovered that stockbroker Bruce Valentine and firm founder Braddock were involved in a hot and heavy stock fraud scheme involving "pump and dump": Valentine would set up shell companies, tout the stocks in Internet chat rooms, wait for the prices to rise, and then sell the stocks at a big profit. (Braddock, by the way, is played – and poorly – by Michael Gross, erstwhile hippie dad from Family Ties. More proof that the world is topsy-turvy: wasn't his t.v.-son Alex/Michael J. Fox always the scheming capitalist?)

Alvarez threatens to go to the Securities and Exchange Commission to report this activity, which is -- not surprisingly -- illegal. Valentine agrees to quiet him down with a large cash payment. To avoid paying Alvarez out of the firm’s pockets, Valentine and Braddock rig a fake lawsuit and insurance settlement. It seems that as a college student, Alvarez had showed off his non-cash assets during a photo session for a calendar entitled "Boys of Brown." Valentine and Braddock get one of Alvarez's risqué pictures and e-mail it to him (back-dating the e-mail), presumably with some lewd comment or request for a favor. Alvarez files a sexual harassment lawsuit, and Braddock tells the brokerage firm's insurance company to settle the case for $2 million.

But wait, there's more.

Valentine had set up the shell companies with money belonging to a mob family -- the D'Antonys. Since these things never work out quite right, Valentine's timing on some of the trades had been less than optimal, resulting in losses of several million dollars for "the family."

To get out of this mess, Valentine hires a drifter to kill Alvarez. Valentine then lures the shooter out to a parking lot at Kennedy Airport and shoots him in the head, making it look like a suicide. So Alvarez is dead, Valentine can pocket (invest) the $2 million intended as hush money (remember, dead men don't talk), and, when the scheme goes bad, Valentine can blame the mob (since everyone knows mobsters don't like to lose money). (Not bad for 350 words, if I may say so myself. Challengers may post their own, briefer plot summaries on the message board.)

Thus we have good old-fashioned fraud, blackmail, and murder, updated for litigation-obsessed lawyers and Internet-obsessed brokers. The updates, however, require a little explanation unless you are a commissioner at the SEC or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. First, "pump and dump" really happens and really is illegal. You're not allowed to give false information in connection with the purchase or sale of a security, or to manipulate the price of a stock to get others to buy or sell. Indeed, L & O beat the headlines on this one: an article in The New York Times on March 3, 2000, reports that four Georgetown University law school students settled with the SEC for engaging in such a scheme. In what some described as a "slap on the wrist," they got to keep their money - over $350,000 - but are not supposed to trade stocks anymore. My alma mater had no comment. I can only conclude that the students were unsatisfied with the skyrocketing salaries being flung around at large law firms and decided to make some real money.

Second, the sexual harassment insurance fraud scheme works, in theory, because companies have insurance against all sorts of claims beyond getting your tie or Hermes scarf caught in the copy machine's automatic feeder. These policies have restrictions (an insurance company might not pay if one employee assaulted another, for example), but clever lawyers can often figure out how to get insurance to pay for their clients' mistakes. However, while Valentine’s and Braddock’s scheme is plausible on paper, it's a stretch to maintain that any insurance company would pay out a policy limit of $2 million, without any investigation, just because Mr. Family Ties calls up and talks to a supervisor. (If anyone knows of such an insurance company, please do let me know discreetly.)

Abby Carmichael oversimplifies the law more than a little when she tells Briscoe that a sexual harassment claim can be proved by showing that "work is upsetting you, sexually." (Because isn't it always, in one way or another?) Judges have labored mightily to have this not be the standard, since were it the standard, it would render every water cooler conversation a federal case. However, since this was a "virtual lawsuit," Abbie gets away with a little "virtual law." (This sexual harassment plot line, by the way, has its kernel of truth in a story that broke in the spring of 1999. As reported by The New York Times, a 24-year-old employee of a large Wall Street brokerage firm was fired for expense account abuses. He was later accused of attempting to tamper with the firm's computer system to insert an e-mail that would bolster a claim of discrimination.)

You can't have a tangle like this without losing a few strings, however. First, what's the real story on Alvarez's sexual preferences and the pin-up pictures? He's engaged to be married, but one of his clients suggests that this might just have been for show. When Alvarez's mother (of all people!) turns the risqué pictures over to the detectives, she dismisses them as a college prank. The detectives are not so sure, but we never find out where they came from. Is this just L&O’s excuse for showing a brief buff body shot?

Second, why does it take Carmichael and Jack McCoy until the last day of trial to figure out that Valentine never paid the $2 million in hush money to Alvarez? This makes for a high drama – McCoy gets to confront Valentine on the stand, Valentine is caught off guard and looks guilty, the jury convicts – but this was a key fact in the investigation that should have been nailed down earlier. Indeed, the A.D.A.s had previously speculated that the settlement money was not a motive for the murder, since it would go to Alvarez's estate after he died. When did they change their minds?

The mob and Adam Schiff, however, more than make up for the Byzantine story and occasional plot holes by showcasing the L&O writers’ sense of humor. While there are plenty of widows and orphans in mob families, the victim of the snake oil scheme here is none other than the godfather himself. Even Abbie cracks a joke: when boss Joseph D'Antony, Sr., refers to his son as a moron but not a murderer, she quips, "Then he's only half a chip off the old block."

Nostalgia for the mythical mob is tangible when D'Antony takes the stand at trial. There once were rules. Order. Honor. The old ways are all behind D'Antony now, though. He's paid his debt to society and just wants to be able to invest his $4 million of racketeering profits like every other average Joe. "You've come a long way, baby."

So while McCoy whines his way through the moral dilemma of being on the same side as the D'Antony crime family, Schiff masters the Zen of "I've been around long enough to see everything." His insights steal the show. When McCoy tells Schiff D'Antony wants to cooperate in order to get the death penalty for Valentine, Schiff comments that this will be their first hit for the mob. On the eve of McCoy's cross-examination of Valentine, Schiff encourages him: "Time to make your bones, Consigliere." Finally, after the death penalty is imposed as Valentine’s sentence and McCoy says it's time to tell "the family," Schiff dryly asks "Which one?" These are more than just clever jabs; they succinctly capture the deep irony of the prosecutors’ teaming up with the godfather to execute an upstart broker who started out pumping stocks in chat rooms and ended up pumping bullets in a parking lot at Kennedy Airport.

Is execution any different when the state does it? D'Antony gets the last laugh, because he has McCoy as his triggerman.

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