My Life as a Mafia Boss - Michael Franzese
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, Michael Francis talks about growing up in the Colombo Family, how he became a member of the crime family, and how he went on to become one of the most powerful men in the New York City underworld.
Transcript
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You make a mistake, your best friend walks you into a room, you don't walk out again.
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This guy was so afraid that that was going to happen to him, he goes into a phone booth,
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calls his wife, tells her he loves her, and then blows his brains out.
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I have to pray every day not to hate Joe Biden.
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So if you can do it to that powerful an organization, then you can do it with the drugs that are
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coming into this country, but you're not doing it.
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Republicans, law and order, Democrats, corruptible.
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I know you probably have told it a thousand times to most people.
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You're probably the first person from an organized crime background that we've had.
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You've had a long life, and you've gone out the other end now, and you do work kind of to counter many of the things that you used to be involved in.
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My father, Sonny Francis, was the underboss of the Colombo family, one of the five New Yorkers and Oyster families, mafia families, and very prominent figure, very high profile, always under investigation, major target of law enforcement.
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And I describe him as kind of the John Gotti of his day, you know?
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So I grew up with my dad constantly being arrested, constantly, you know, going on trial.
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We had law enforcement around us all the time, you know, surveilling the family 24 hours a day, seven days a week for years.
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So I grew up hating law enforcement, hated the government, you know, hated them, you know, because I loved my dad.
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And initially, he didn't want that life for me.
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He wanted me to go to school, wanted me to be a doctor, actually.
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And I was on that road until he got in some real trouble in the 60s, indicted three times in the state of New York, twice for grand larceny, once for murder.
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And that spanned over a couple of years while I'm a student.
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He beat all of those cases, acquitted at trial.
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But then he gets indicted in federal court for masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies.
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Longest sentence for a bank robbery conspiracy case ever given up to that point.
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1970, loses all his appeals, shipped off to Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas, to do his time.
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I'm a pre-med student at the time, and I'm devastated when dad went in.
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If he had 50 on top of that, he dies in jail, right?
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But Joe Colombo, the boss of our family, he kind of takes me under his wing, very close with him and his family.
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If you don't help your father out, he's going to die in prison.
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If I don't help you out, he's going to die in here.
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So we kind of argued a little bit, because initially he didn't want that for me, but he knew my mind was made up.
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And it was during that meeting that he proposed me for membership in the life.
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Because he said, if you're going to be on the street to help me, I want you to do it the right way.
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And Joe Colombo had been shot, seriously wounded.
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Mike, I hear you want to become a member of our life.
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24 hours a day, seven days a week, you're on call to serve this family, the Colombo family.
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That means if your mother is sick and dying, you're at her bedside.
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If you leave your mother, you come and serve us.
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From now on, we're number one in your life before anything and everything.
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When and if we feel you deserve this privilege and this honor to become a member, we'll let you know.
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It's a subculture from everything else that exists.
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So you're getting, you're sitting there with the boss of this crime family that your father was a part of.
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Do you feel, oh, I'm about to enter something really cool?
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As a young man, I imagine that's kind of how you feel?
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You know, I felt I'm entering something that is special because it's part of what my father's part of.
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So we're going to have another bond between the two of us.
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It wasn't, I didn't aspire to be a mob guy all my life.
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This is an organization that, yeah, I'm going to have, I'm going to be proud to be part of.
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So, and for the next two and a half years, I'm a recruit.
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Had to do anything and everything I was told to do to prove myself worthy.
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And, you know, I get asked the question all the time.
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So even in this initial two and a half year period, you're being asked to beat people up,
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Not so much rough people up, but if serious work had to be done, you're called upon to
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And so after two and a half years, proved myself worthy.
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Halloween night, 1975, I get called into a room with five other gentlemen.
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And that night we all took an oath and became made members.
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That's the expression of the Colombo family, gozenostra.
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It was a very solemn ceremony, dimly lit room late at night.
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They didn't want you to, they wanted you to understand the seriousness of what you were
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The boss was in the middle, underboss, consulieri to his left and right, two official positions.
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And then all the Kappa regimes are captains alongside of them.
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I think we had about 15 in our family at that point.
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Walked down the aisle, stood in front of the boss, held out my hand, took a knife right
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He took a picture of a saint, Catholic altar card, put it on my hands, lit it aflame.
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And he said, tonight, Michael Francis, you are born again into a new life, into Cosa Nostra.
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You will die burning hell like this saint is burning in your hands.
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And I started out, you're a soldier when you start out.
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He violated five times and ended up doing 40 years on the 50.
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Michael, can I just, when you were taking that blood oath, was there not a part of you
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thinking to yourself, I'm going to be part of something right now that I'm going to have
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I'm going to be stepping into a life of violence, of crime, where my life is at risk every single
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Was there not a part of you that was worried about that?
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I think for some crazy reason, I had, it was exhilarating.
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It was like, you know, I had gone through this two and a half years of sometimes drudgery,
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sometimes hard stuff, whatever, you know, and now I finally made it, you know, this is it.
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So it was more exhilarating than anything else.
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You don't, I don't know, that night I didn't look at it, even though I experienced a lot
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along the way, you know, and throughout my life, because I still would help my dad.
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But it was just more exhilaration that night, quite honestly.
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Do you think that's a major attraction to that life, particularly for young men who, you
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know, enjoy the adrenaline, enjoy the risk-taking?
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That life is a life where you're going to be living on your wits.
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You know, there's big rewards, but also if things go wrong, there's the ultimate penalty.
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That gives you like a sense of purpose and excitement, doesn't it?
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It's interesting that you say that because I speak to a lot of young people now and I go
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I speak to a lot of these juveniles, a lot of gangbangers, and they're so infatuated with
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You know, oh, Michael, you had the money, you had the cars, you had the women, you had
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power, prestige, and they'll point out Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco.
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And I said, yeah, but did you stay to see the end of the movie?
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Young people don't see that because they think, oh, I can handle that.
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And that's a problem because, yeah, when you're from the outside looking in, it's an attractive
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And do you think that also as well, because young men, they want to be part of something.
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We all want to be part of something, but particularly for young men, they want to be part of a group.
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And that sense of brotherhood, you went, you took the oath, you said you are now part of
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You know, when I get into the life, Michael, wherever you go in the world, somebody will
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Don't ever worry about your wife, your mother, your sister, your daughter.
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You know, and people said to me, Michael, what do you miss about that life?
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I mean, I'm not complaining my life now, but it's that camaraderie among the guys.
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And aside from marriage, you know, you have, you know, a companion for life, there's nothing
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more powerful than this bond or this brotherhood among men.
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And so, yeah, I miss that, you know, in a way, because I was tight with my crew, tight
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Do you ever think it's, I mean, I'm going to ask the question and push back.
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Do you ever think it's almost like an addiction, Michael, in which, you know, you get put into
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You get a high off the adrenaline that you wouldn't get if you were very successful selling
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There is a certain high that you get at certain times.
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So you're a made man now, and this is the point at which I'm guessing your status, your
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power, your income, all of these things start to rise.
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Number one, I had a head for business, and I knew how to use that life to benefit me in
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If you use the life effectively to earn, it's a plus in that regard.
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And I was very aggressive on the street because I was motivated.
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I wanted two things, get my dad out of prison, make money.
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My dad said, in this life, not unlike the real world, money is power.
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So I was very aggressive in that regard, and I brought some new things into the family that
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I hadn't done before and went on to make a tremendous amount of money.
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In 1980, as a result of that, the boss of my family at the time, Carmine Persigal, Mike,
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you're doing a great job, and he made me a Capito regime captain.
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You know, combined, I had created a scheme along with a friend or business associate
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where we were defrauding the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline.
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It's an operation I ran for almost eight years.
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And at the heart of our operation, out of 350 gas stations, I either operated or controlled.
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I had 18 companies that were licensed to collect the tax on every gallon of gasoline.
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The height of our operation was selling a half a billion gallons of gas a month, taking down 30,
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We were bringing in 7, 8, 9, 10 million a week.
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I had a house in Florida, a house in New York, a house in California.
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And I had about 300 guys under me, really ready to do anything I'd tell them to do.
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I also became a major target of law enforcement.
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I had two federal racketeering cases, one state racketeering case, and then four other cases.
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I went to trial five times, and I beat every case.
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I was either acquitted or dismissed at the end of my trials.
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And quite honestly, my dad was grooming me to take over the family at some point.
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So they were grooming us to maybe one day take over the family.
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And so that's what it was all about for me at that point.
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It's so interesting what you're talking about, because on the one hand, you've got this
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incredible life where people are seeing you from the outside, and they're like, what more
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The money, the power, the cars, the houses, whatever you want, you've got it.
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But on the other hand, and this surely must have eaten away at you, that knowledge that
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not only have you made enemies on the street, you've also made enemies within the government.
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So you must have always been aware that you could never truly relax, because the moment
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you let your guard down in any shape or form, that's the moment that someone can swoop in
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and take everything from you, including your life.
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In my case, the surveillance and law enforcement started when I was five, six years old, all
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I, as soon as I got involved in the life, I had a bullseye on my back because of my name.
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And what I found out, I had a number of undercover investigations against me.
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I was, they always sending people to try to get me.
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What I found out is that they had a 14 agency task force that was combined of the FBI, the
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IRS, Queen Detective, Brooklyn DA, you name it.
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And they were meeting in the courthouse in Uniondale, Long Island, twice a month.
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And their sole focus was to bring me down and put me away for life.
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There was never a time in my life when I didn't live with constant knowledge that people were
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And then, of course, on the street, I was a younger guy.
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And you always have to face resentment from the older guys.
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And then, of course, everybody I spoke to, is that a potential cop?
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But I also had legitimate income, so I was able to cover things.
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But, you know, it was just a way of life for me.
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You know, it became unnatural when that stopped.
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You know, I still think people are looking at me.
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I mean, you know, so it was just a way of life.
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Do you think in some ways, Michael, you see, like, for instance, a family of athletes.
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You know, you get, you know, the dad's played football.
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Do you think there was a part of you in a way that was kind of bred for that life?
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You were almost built for that in certain ways.
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The temperament, seeing the way your dad handled himself, the way your dad moved through the world.
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I mean, I, you know, I wasn't, this wasn't what I wanted to do or what I was determined to do.
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You know, I wouldn't have been able to navigate it the way I did if it wasn't in me.
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My younger brother, unfortunately, had a severe drug problem.
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My older brother, he never even got a traffic ticket.
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So, yeah, it must have been in me all the time.
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And Michael, one of the things I found very interesting listening to you talk about this
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elsewhere is the idea that you are now entering a brotherhood and everyone's going to look
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Because it is, from what I understand, your brothers that are going to be there when you're
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If bad things are going to happen to you, they're going to be the ones in the room.
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Yeah, unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of disloyalty in that life.
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And the disloyalty, I always say it's this, you know, you know the movie The Bronx Tale?
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There's a line in the movie when Cologgio asks him, is it better to be loved or be feared?
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And he says, well, in my case, it's better to be feared because I keep people in line.
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And when I spoke to Chas, I said, Chas, you're wrong about that.
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I says, in our life, fear did keep people in line.
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You know, we knew if we broke the rules, we could pay severe consequences.
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But what happened on the street, in our life especially, is that when the racketeering
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statute came out and the government got so sophisticated and the laws that they created
00:19:02.540
to get us, the fear of the mob was transferred to the fear of the government.
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Because now under the RICO statute, you get one count, you go down for 20 years, and there's
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So they put a guy in a room and say, hey, you cooperate with us.
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And you're going away for the rest of your life.
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We'll give you some money, change your identity.
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Well, they got fearful, and so many guys became informants.
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It was the guys that you broke bread with every day that ended up putting you in jail forever.
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He didn't help himself, for sure, because he was so outspoken.
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But it was the RICO statute and the government, with all these new laws that they put into place,
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Very hard to defend yourself from inside prison when you're fighting a major case.
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They prove you put $1 into buying your house that costs $5 million.
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So they destroyed the life in that regard, and people started to turn, and that's what
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So it's a case of the government and the law enforcement actually doing their job.
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Crime in the street, and you can't even believe what's going on there.
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You wouldn't believe it if I told you, you'd say, come on, Michael, this is a script for
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Now, we were telling you, we go to America regularly.
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It has to be seen to be believed, but it is happening.
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So you know in Los Angeles, you can go into a store and steal under $1,000 and walk right
00:21:00.000
If you want to get toothpaste now, they've got a lock and key.
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You've got to go call the attendant to it, because they've got to lock everything up.
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Was it part of the organized crime families who actually controlled the streets in that
00:21:27.920
they wouldn't let those things happen to the area that they looked after or they commanded?
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You wouldn't let people go in and rob stores like that.
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But we wouldn't prey on our own people that way.
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You didn't come to our neighborhood with drugs, because we were not allowed to deal with
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With some guys doing it on a sneak here and there and there.
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You know, today it's just, it's out of control.
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And on the drugs thing, I mean, obviously part of the plot of The Godfather is there
00:22:20.400
is a fight over whether they should sell drugs or not that leads to all sorts of repercussions.
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Given how much money there is to be made in drugs now, do you think if the mob was around
00:22:32.640
now in the way that it was then, they would have to be dealing in drugs now?
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I think they are dealing in drugs to a degree now.
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And this is based on some information that I have, but a lot of speculation too.
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But you can't compare them to the cartels in Mexico.
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You can't compare them to what's happening in Italy, you know, with drug dealing in Italy.
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It's not anywhere near that in the States among our guys.
00:23:03.580
We're not sophisticated in that regard, you know?
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You know, in my era, we were told straight out, you deal with drugs, you die.
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What you saw in The Godfather, you know, the cops won't forgive us.
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And I knew guys that got killed for dealing with it.
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So, Michael, because you were at your peak of your career in the 80s, that was also the
00:23:33.180
That was when Pablo Escobar in Colombia was so powerful in the cartel.
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Did you sit down, have a meeting with them going, look, you don't get involved in this.
00:24:02.220
You know, we would have chased them out of there if they tried.
00:24:08.240
And so you can't do it anywhere around us or near us.
00:24:13.920
But you saw the impact that, for instance, crack cocaine must have had on your communities.
00:24:19.620
And that must have angered the people within, you know, the family.
00:24:26.740
Soon it will come and addiction will hit people that you know and love.
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Was there not a part of that family who must have been like, you know what, let's just wipe
00:24:49.220
If it wasn't for me and my father, he would have been dead, I don't know how many times,
00:24:52.860
you know, for the stuff that he got involved in.
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Look, I lived 20 years in that life and I saw a lot of bad things.
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My worst things that I got involved in was hurting people because of what they did to
00:25:11.580
I see her in a bar in Queens with some bust out drug addicts in there, you know, putting
00:25:21.260
You know, you want to, you want to kill everybody in a place when they're doing that.
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You know, and unfortunately that was a, I hated anything to do with drugs and don't
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do drugs around me because you would have paid a price.
00:25:40.300
Oh, Michael, the Vito Genovese was a big drug dealer.
00:25:47.100
Maybe because of Vito Genovese and because of some of the things you did that the other families
00:25:53.000
You know, so, hey, I had a good friend of mine.
00:25:56.680
He was a made guy for 25 years, stand up guy all the way.
00:26:03.080
I'm at a funeral and he pulls me on the side and he says to me, I'm in trouble, chief.
00:26:09.840
He said, I got caught in a little drug deal with an undercover agent.
00:26:34.760
Now, one of the horrors of that life, you walk into it.
00:26:44.280
This guy was so afraid that that was going to happen to him.
00:26:49.680
He goes into a phone booth, calls his wife, tells her he loves her, and then blows his brains out.
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Because of a small little drug deal that he was involved.
00:27:00.040
But that's how much fear we had of that business.
00:27:03.720
Well, that's how much we didn't want it around us.
00:27:12.000
Michael, do you think when you look at your sister's addiction and also the effect that it's had, not only on your family, but on other people's family,
00:27:21.040
that is also maybe partly the stress of living, of having family members, mothers, fathers, well, maybe not mothers, but certainly fathers living that life.
00:27:32.400
Because it must impact the children and the wives when you have somebody in the family.
00:27:51.040
But I don't know any family of any member of that life that hasn't been totally destroyed.
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I 100% attribute the troubles in my family to my dad's involvement in that life.
00:28:01.100
My sister, if you talk, my brother's now has been clean for a lot of years, right?
00:28:14.440
And he actually works in a rehab center, you know, helping other people.
00:28:17.860
But I was angry with him because he actually got himself in trouble, went into the witness protection program, cooperated with the government, and testified against my father.
00:28:30.960
And I attribute that to his drug addiction and to some of the resentment he had for my father.
00:28:44.680
And my wife had more of a heart and understanding than I did for what he did.
00:28:50.540
But when he started to talk about, I guess I didn't, I guess I navigated it differently.
00:28:57.780
But the pressure and the turbulence in our life, because my mother was very difficult to get along with.
00:29:14.320
And when my brother started to describe some of his emotion to me, and I started to even think back of some of the things my sister went through.
00:29:22.060
I mean, I walk in the house one day, you know, my sister and my mother were on the floor fighting.
00:29:26.500
I had to pull them apart, you know, because it was just torture for these kids.
00:29:30.700
And my youngest sister, 41, was never mentally stable.
00:29:36.760
You know, my mother, 33 years without a husband.
00:29:38.980
Of course, the way she handled the kids wasn't always right.
00:29:45.280
But when my brother started to make me realize, I said, wow, I never realized the emotional stress that you guys went through.
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If my wife will tell you, as a matter of fact, I didn't even believe her until two days ago.
00:30:02.520
She takes a video of me in my sleep, because I'm fighting in my sleep all the time.
00:30:07.160
And when she took this video, it was like a horror movie.
00:30:19.120
But to answer your question, that was a long form.
00:30:21.280
To answer your question, yeah, it destroys the family.
00:30:25.280
If you can't deal with it or not built in a certain way, it's going to have a tough impact on you.
00:30:32.680
And it's also the people who go into that life, you could say, well, it's their choice.
00:30:42.860
But a kid who's maybe more sensitive, who's maybe more fragile, if you want to use that word, they can't cope with it.
00:30:59.400
He was away most of her life, but she didn't like him.
00:31:03.100
My sister, Gia, who died, she was always in a battle between my father and my mother and the drugs and everything else.
00:31:14.300
It can be a gateway drug because it was a gateway drug with my sister and my brother.
00:31:20.380
They didn't even want to admit it, but I know for a fact it was.
00:31:23.580
So I'm not saying in every case, no, I'm not saying that, even though studies are coming out now and how harmful it can be to your brain and to your system.
00:31:39.380
And I took one time in my life, I was 19 or 20 years old with some girl, and she gave me half a Quaalude.
00:31:51.800
Prescription of, you know, obviously you're sick, you take a drug.
00:32:13.160
Well, I'm trying to understand what you were saying.
00:32:21.260
And we could argue that the war on drugs hasn't worked.
00:32:24.860
So, do you have any ideas about what you would do in order to minimize gangs' involvement within drugs?
00:32:35.340
Well, I would be, this could get me in trouble on the street, but I would be extremely hard on drug dealers.
00:32:45.080
I would set an example where they, because they're destroying, they're destroying our youth.
00:32:52.040
I mean, I am, I want to say this now politically, I don't care.
00:32:56.960
I have to pray every day not to hate Joe Biden.
00:33:01.680
And the reason for that, forget the politics, forget what I think of him as a president, but the fact that our southern border is so porous, and I know this firsthand having spoken to 850 border patrol agents from the state of Texas.
00:33:20.100
I did a seminar with them, and I was a speaker.
00:33:22.140
And they confided in me that they're not even getting 10%, not even 10% of the illicit drugs that are coming across the country, right, into our country.
00:33:30.500
We have 100,000 people a year are dying from opioid and fentanyl, not only addiction, but poisoning.
00:33:37.780
Because fentanyl, one little speck, like a speck of salt in an Adderall, and you drop dead.
00:33:43.680
When you know this is happening, you understand that this is killing people in America.
00:33:54.980
How can you allow it to happen when you have the authority right now, say, I'm shutting this border until I rid this country of drugs, and really do it, and put the DEA and the drug enforcement people, you can do it.
00:34:14.900
So if you can do it to that powerful an organization, we practically ran the country for a long time, okay, then you can do it with the drugs that are coming into this country, but you're not doing it.
00:34:26.420
Okay, so I have a real, because I hate drugs, because of that, I have a real resentment towards this guy.
00:34:32.820
So the way to do it is enforcement and education.
00:34:37.760
Prohibition, it's two ways, and if they put their efforts into that, you can severely, severely reduce the amount of drug addiction and overdoses that you have in the country.
00:34:52.260
You can't put drugs and alcohol in the same place.
00:35:03.420
We were a bunch of street gangs until Prohibition, and Capone and all these guys realized, wait a minute, these people want this.
00:35:14.840
Yes, you can get it addicted to alcohol, but it's not the same as drugs.
00:35:23.120
You had, in New York alone, during Prohibition, in New York State alone, you had 36,000 speakeasies.
00:35:31.280
So when you have this amount of places that are serving alcohol to people, you're not going to stop them.
00:35:39.120
Drugs is a bad thing, and it should be stopped, and they could do it.
00:35:43.340
And they know the difference between drugs and alcohol.
00:35:52.860
Drugs kill you, and they can kill you immediately.
00:35:58.660
I had my youngest daughter, her fiance, who's going to be her fiance, 24-year-old kid, wonderful kid, was my videographer, did all my video work, right?
00:36:10.260
Amazing kid, good-looking, strong athlete, whatever.
00:36:13.160
He's living in my house, in my guest house, because he was working for me, and he had lived in Michigan, so he comes out to California.
00:36:37.340
Well, this one happened to be laced with fentanyl.
00:36:42.120
Within 10 minutes, he drops dead on the floor of my bathroom.
00:36:44.940
If you're a decent human being, how do you continue to allow this to happen when you know this is coming into our country?
00:36:54.160
Drugs need to be stamped out, and it needs to be enforced in the toughest way possible, because it's devastating.
00:37:04.740
It used to be, within living memory, that left, right, Obama, Bush, everyone agreed countries need borders.
00:37:20.200
There's no other way to understand or to figure out why is he doing this.
00:37:32.120
They want to bring these illegal immigrants in.
00:37:38.320
If you're an illegal, remember the word, illegal immigrant, you don't need ID now to get on an airplane.
00:37:49.220
You don't have to have a license or anything else, because you don't have one.
00:37:51.740
And they'll let you on board the plane, where we have to go through so much scrutiny.
00:37:57.680
Eventually, they're going to give them the ability to vote.
00:37:59.740
And they're going to say, hey, if you vote Republican, they're sending you back.
00:38:04.920
If you vote Democrat, we're going to keep you here.
00:38:12.540
If you can think of another reason that makes sense, tell me.
00:38:18.660
They want to flood the country with illegals that eventually get them to vote.
00:38:32.540
I guess if there were another reason, and by the way, I don't, your argument's persuasive.
00:38:38.460
It would be, you know, you know this progressive ideology, be kind, be nice.
00:38:43.660
You know, there's no such, no one's, no human is illegal.
00:38:49.720
Maybe they're just so well-intentioned that they do stupid stuff?
00:38:54.140
And then the illegal immigrants that are living on the street, why don't they take them into
00:38:59.520
Do you know when they went into some of the affluent neighborhoods, okay, in Massachusetts
00:39:07.400
They had a busload, I think, of 100 people, and they were in panic.
00:39:12.580
There's no humanity in, but they're not humane at all.
00:39:17.060
You put them under his doorstep, he'll be moving them out faster than anybody else.
00:39:20.580
Yes, this is a scheme on their part, I'm telling you.
00:39:27.440
If they were humane, I don't think you really know what's going on in the United States.
00:39:31.580
These people are living like animals, half of them.
00:39:36.980
They don't have a place to house them or anything else.
00:39:40.760
Even now, the blue state mayors are revolting against this because they have no place to
00:39:47.400
I just wanted to put that argument to you to see what you said.
00:39:50.100
And obviously, America is about to have another election.
00:39:54.520
What do you make of what's coming and how this conversation goes?
00:40:02.280
The stakes, another four years of what we have now, America, you won't even want to visit
00:40:20.100
Because the chaos that we're going to, and it's just starting now.
00:40:25.520
I mean, for the next couple of months, right up until the election, who knows what's going
00:40:33.520
I believe our president and our administration is so weak that the rest of the world is going
00:40:39.140
I think China may go into Taiwan before Biden goes out of office.
00:40:42.460
I think Iran may pull something because now they got money.
00:40:48.120
We don't know what's going to happen in the world as a result of the weak.
00:40:58.560
So who knows foreign and domestic, you know, what's going to happen.
00:41:02.380
But I know this election cycle is going to be crazy, you know.
00:41:13.580
You know, he was bad with women way back when, all of that.
00:41:20.940
His policies for the United States were good during that time.
00:41:28.140
The rest of the world was at peace because they knew, don't mess with him.
00:41:37.660
Thanksgiving dinner, I had less people at my house and spent $200 more than I spent the year before.
00:41:46.160
You know, it's every gas prices through the roof.
00:42:09.900
Because, you know, when they're on the street, I want them to be protected.
00:42:13.580
And where I live, they're robbing people in affluent neighborhoods now.
00:42:25.580
So whether it be Trump or anybody but Biden, you know, I don't care.
00:42:32.020
You mentioned Trump and you mentioned earlier that the mob used to basically run the country.
00:42:36.860
There has been a lot of talk that it was kind of hard to build any buildings in New York without dealing with your boys.
00:42:43.440
Does Donald Trump have mob connections from his past?
00:42:53.640
No, you had to deal with the unions and you had to deal with us because we control the unions.
00:42:57.720
Whether you're Donald Trump, the Helmsleys, the Guttermans, you had to deal with us.
00:43:03.880
See, if people look at that as, well, he's involved with organized crime.
00:43:11.360
Roy Cohen was, you know, who he was attorney and he represented Donald.
00:43:15.060
And he represented Tony Salerno, boss of the Genovese family, tried to represent me on a case.
00:43:20.420
So we had ties, but he wasn't controlled by organized crime.
00:43:27.960
But, yeah, did he pay, you know, somebody to get a sweetheart deal with the union?
00:43:32.780
That was the way of doing business in New York.
00:43:37.280
I mean, I had to deal with the boss of the Jersey family where every window that went into every building in Manhattan, you had to pay us a fee.
00:43:50.940
But, you know, we didn't control Donald Trump at all.
00:43:57.940
Michael, did you ever control people in the higher echelons of government?
00:44:02.220
And maybe somebody who was sitting in the Senate would just go, you know, maybe you need to bring this up.
00:44:11.480
I had I had 18 licenses for Panamanian companies that I had to collect tax on every gallon of gasoline.
00:44:20.700
I had a political connection with the strongest politician in all of New York.
00:44:54.740
Look, I attended many fundraisers and, you know, we helped him.
00:45:03.100
So when you look at the Senate and you look at these people coming out and they're talking about America and, you know, the American dream or whatever it may be.
00:45:27.440
I understand that these politicians come in as blue collar people and they go out as multimillionaires.
00:45:36.060
She's the best stock trader in the whole world.
00:45:39.420
Maybe she has some inside information that you and I would go to jail for if we had it inside of trading.
00:45:45.300
You know, they use their position to make themselves set up in life.
00:45:51.500
But when you do that, OK, and you do that and you're hurting the people that put you in office, that I don't like.
00:46:06.560
There was a time during my life where the politicians liked to have some integrity, you know, to show that they were above board.
00:46:13.400
Now, because everything is on video, everything, you can see it a minute.
00:46:16.560
They just lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie.
00:46:24.640
And the reason I went on Rumble is because I can't talk as freely on YouTube.
00:46:30.400
But on Rumble, you can talk because I need an outlet for what I believe in because I love my country.
00:46:36.800
And I tell people, listen, I got seven kids and seven grandchildren.
00:46:50.460
You know, public office used to be something of honor, I think, and integrity.
00:46:56.580
Now, you know, I hate to say this like I'm painting, you know, the canvas with one broad.
00:47:01.080
There's a lot of people that mean well and do well.
00:47:03.580
But a good percentage of them are just not in that category.
00:47:07.220
And Michael, we're talking about your background.
00:47:12.200
Like, on the one hand, you call it an evil life that you say destroyed your family.
00:47:16.220
But there's also like, there's a pride to it as well, it seems to me, or a code or a bond with the people that you were with.
00:47:27.700
You know, look, there's a lot of guys there that I had good feelings for, that I really liked, you know.
00:47:35.520
They were, listen, I'm going to be straight out.
00:47:38.420
I mean, there might have been killers because in that life, you make a mistake and your best friend may kill you.
00:47:47.100
And I'm not saying that's right or wrong or whatever.
00:47:50.160
The way we justified that, hey, we all took the oath.
00:47:58.240
I'm not saying that's right, but that's how we viewed it at the time.
00:48:09.260
But I had pride in the life because during my era, I think we were a force to be reckoned with.
00:48:18.940
And it wasn't only, you know, when you take that oath, people think it was an oath to lie, steal, cheat, kill, murder.
00:48:28.800
You're never supposed to even admit that the organization exists.
00:48:33.300
Now, other things happen, you know, as part of that life, obviously.
00:48:40.880
There's some guys on YouTube now, you would think that every day their assignment was go kill somebody.
00:48:50.620
There's a guy there that says, you know, he baseball batted 100 people.
00:48:55.080
If you're in Vietnam, you're not going to kill 50 people.
00:48:57.980
Where are you going to find 50 people on the street to kill?
00:49:07.120
Yes, if you made a mistake and it was severe enough, you may pay for it with your life.
00:49:13.640
But we didn't go around every day trying to do that.
00:49:16.680
The last thing we wanted to do is violence because it's not good.
00:49:23.820
You know, and in our life, murder was taken very seriously.
00:49:31.940
The boss was the only one that could approve it.
00:49:35.420
You just couldn't go around and kill people in that life.
00:49:38.340
And so I guess I get a little upset at times when they look at everybody.
00:49:44.700
All you guys did was murder and kill and steal every day of your life.
00:49:52.780
You had to be really smart because if you think about it, you were running a business.
00:49:56.580
But not only was it a business, it was an illegal business.
00:50:02.960
And you had to hide what you were doing from the government so that they couldn't prosecute you.
00:50:09.300
Whether you're doing it illegally or legally, you've still got to manage your business.
00:50:14.300
And, you know, my whole gas operation was very sophisticated because, yeah, we were laundering money.
00:50:20.800
We didn't want to get caught because we were defrauding the government.
00:50:22.940
So it was a sophisticated system to do all of that.
00:50:26.060
And it took management and putting the right people in place to get it done.
00:50:30.380
So and then obviously you have your legal business.
00:50:39.520
I'm telling you that if they weren't the mobsters, they'd be very successful.
00:50:57.680
If I had to look up to a mob guy, he would be my guy.
00:51:17.700
You know, and and that's the way you approach the life.
00:51:28.780
If you believe that that guy committed suicide, you believe in Santa Claus.
00:51:35.320
There's no way you're going to be committing suicide, especially a guy that high profile.
00:51:42.360
All the cameras went out and the guards went to sleep at the same time.
00:51:53.080
It just particularly when you were talking about the world.
00:51:56.680
You just I had the sense that, you know, somewhat politically correct.
00:52:01.460
Well, there's certain things that we don't understand.
00:52:03.420
But what you were saying about Trump in particular, something I've been saying for a long time, which is if America's weak, people are going to take advantage.
00:52:09.600
And I bet you there are lots of things you learn in that life that are actually quite useful for understanding how the world works and moving through the world.
00:52:18.160
So you go around speaking to people now, young people, you speak in prisons.
00:52:23.500
What what do you have to say to people about, you know, how to conduct yourself, how to behave, how to do this, how to do that, how to avoid the life that you were part of and, you know, stay on the straight and narrow?
00:52:34.440
Well, you know, one of the things just going back to what you said, Ronald Reagan, you know, he coined the phrase peace through strength was the same way on the street.
00:52:43.300
You wanted peace, but people had to know that don't mess with us.
00:52:47.400
OK, and that's what Donald Trump and some other president showed about America.
00:52:56.300
Too many people want to take advantage of that.
00:52:58.300
But, you know, number one, I dissuade these young people from the gang life, the mob life, the street life.
00:53:08.180
And, you know, I speak to a lot of gang bangers, went into a lot of prisons throughout my lifetime, a lot of juvenile halls.
00:53:14.380
And it's very sad to see the condition of young men today.
00:53:17.260
And I believe I believe this all has to do with the breakup of the family.
00:53:21.200
That's the root cause, because these young boys and girls, they don't have mentors in their life.
00:53:28.520
And it's very hard to navigate life without people teaching you.
00:53:34.140
Now, he may have been a criminal organized crime, but in the house, he taught me a lot of things.
00:53:44.660
And when you answer, make sure it's intelligent or shut up.
00:53:49.280
Be the last one to judge somebody, because one day your time is going to come, and people are going to judge you the way you judge them.
00:54:03.760
The guys that I knew that were most violent, they were the first ones to go, to lose their lives.
00:54:09.100
You know, so, you know, he used to tell me, be kind to the little people.
00:54:14.320
When he said little people, he wasn't meaning in a demeaning way.
00:54:18.640
But he said, you know, the valet parker, the waitress, you know, the person that takes your coat, be kind to them, respectful to them, treat them right.
00:54:29.540
The people on top are looking at a gun for you.
00:54:31.700
And I lived through these principles throughout my life, and it was very effective.
00:54:35.220
He told me, too, you go to prison, you're going to go one day.
00:54:43.100
He said, because everybody in jail, so many of them never got respect on the street.
00:54:47.120
Now in jail, they want to throw their chest out and show that they're respectful guys.
00:55:07.660
You're throwing your weight around in prison with guys that are doing life.
00:55:13.320
I'm going to be in this cell for the rest of my life.
00:55:16.400
I know a number of guys that were tough on the street, didn't get handled well in prison.
00:55:22.460
So things that I learned from my mentor, my dad, served me very well throughout my life,
00:55:32.260
You know, and I tell these young kids the same thing, you know?
00:55:35.960
Look, you know, people say to you, Michael, you know, who are you?
00:55:39.400
I was asked this morning, you know, who did you fear the most in that life?
00:55:46.120
You know, Roy was kind of a serial killer in that life.
00:55:49.380
You know, if you look him up, he was just a tough one.
00:55:56.800
I said, hey, any one of us could put a gun in our hand and do what we had to do.
00:56:03.300
I feared my boss because he had the power of life and death over me.
00:56:07.200
If I were to make a mistake, I know that this guy can pull the trigger on me, you know?
00:56:15.320
So, you know, you learn a lot of these things that are very, very helpful, you know?
00:56:21.980
You know, I got put in a situation one time where I was walked into a room.
00:56:30.560
I don't mind telling you that's a scary situation of being in.
00:56:33.660
But it showed me that I could face death because I faced it.
00:56:40.040
Prepared me for walking away from that life when I knew I was going to be in trouble.
00:56:43.840
So a lot of things that I learned on the street, I took to heart that helped me later on.
00:56:49.520
Michael, it's been an absolutely fascinating conversation.
00:56:55.460
We're also going to ask questions from our locals.
00:57:01.280
But we always end our interviews with the same question, which is,
00:57:04.440
what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?
00:57:09.040
Well, I think, again, and this is a product of me having children and grandchildren,
00:57:14.900
one of the things that's really gotten me that I don't think there's enough conversation about
00:57:19.440
hopefully it's happening, is this gender-affirming surgery among minor children.
00:57:29.820
I did my research, spoke to doctors, read enough articles on it.
00:57:33.680
And the fact that we're allowing it to happen is just criminal.
00:57:42.180
And again, I have to say it again, you know, another thing I have with Joe Biden,
00:57:47.040
Joe Biden made a statement, and I think he's just pandering to people to do this.
00:57:52.200
To give up your integrity like this to the detriment of people is horrible.
00:57:58.140
He said that banning, banning gender-affirming surgery among minors is both immoral and outrageous.
00:58:06.960
And I was stunned when I heard that from a father, a grandfather.
00:58:14.680
There's not enough conversation about stopping this because now finally it's coming out that
00:58:21.680
young people that have undergone that terrible surgery or have had puberty blockers or things
00:58:29.160
And they took it at a time when they weren't, they're just not mentally able to understand
00:58:36.640
So rather than getting therapy and guidance and proper care, they just went right to the
00:59:03.840
Michael, join us over on Locals where we ask your questions and continue the conversation.
00:59:10.560
Since you became a Christian, how have you changed and what differences do you see in
00:59:14.980
yourself now compared to who you were in the Mafia?
00:59:18.220
Your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineup is here on September 11th through 13th at
00:59:36.160
Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.