All Episodes
Previous Next
May 17, 2023 - MyronGainesX
56:13
Ex Fed Meets Ex Mobster @michaelfranzese! The Mob, Chasing The Son Of Sam, Making $8M A Week & MORE!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And we are live.
What's up, guys?
Welcome to Fresh Rip Podcast, man.
We're here with a very special guest, Michael Fred Sees.
Let's get into it.
We got a lot to talk about.
Let's go.
Right.
And we are back.
What's up, guys?
Welcome to the Fresh Red Podcast, man.
I am super excited today's episode.
We're here with the legend himself, Michael Francis.
Guys, we're tight for time, so I'm never going to read the uh, we're not going to go through the normal announcements.
We're going to go right ahead and introduce you to the special guest.
Mike, I know who you are.
I'm excited to have you here.
Can you introduce yourself to the people for those that might not know?
Well, it's great to be here, Myron, and one of my favorite places on the planet, Miami.
So it's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
And uh many moons ago, a couple of uh decades ago, I was a Capo Regime in the Colombo Crime family, one of the five New York mafia families.
And uh I was in that life for about 20, 25 years.
My dad before me was the underboss of that family, very high uh position in that life.
And um I did quite well, had had some success, roles from yeah, from soldier to copo.
And uh I was more of a racketeer than a gangster.
You know, there's kind of a separation in that life between racketeers and gangsters.
Racketeers are the guys that really brought the money in and supported the family.
Gangsters did some the other work, you know.
And um, you know, so it became a major target of law enforcement right away.
I had probably 18 arrests.
I had uh seven criminal indictments, two federal racketeering indictments, one brought brought on by Giuliani.
Jeez.
And um went to trial five times.
I beat every case, beat all five uh cases, and then uh eventually um I went down on a big Rico case.
I took a plea, 10-year prison sentence.
I had a $15 million restitution and went off and do my time, did my time, and then decided uh for a number of reasons we can get into that uh I was gonna try to make a break from that life.
And something you don't normally do, you know, publicly walk away, not enter a witness protection program.
One of the only guys, by the way.
Well, very fortunate to be able to do that.
And uh here I am some 20 some odd years later, and I'm able to sit down and talk with you.
Absolutely, man.
Um, so can you take us through um your childhood and what led to you getting into that life?
Yeah.
Well, like I said, my dad was very, very high profile.
He was kind of like the Gotti uh John Gotti of the uh of his time and became a major target of law enforcement right away.
So I was always around uh, you know, law enforcement, and their tactics were very different back then than they are today.
Everything's very covert.
Well, back then when my dad was under investigation, he had seven, eight different agencies surveilling him 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
They were around us all the time.
Yeah.
So I I really grew up hating the police because I love my dad.
He was my hero, my idol.
And um, you know, he didn't want this life for me originally.
He wanted me to go to school, be a doctor, and I was on that road till he got in a lot of trouble.
He was indicted uh three times in the state of New York, twice for grand laws, and he once for murder.
Uh, he beat all of those cases, but then he was indicted in federal court for masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies.
Goes to trial, gets convicted, they sentenced him to 50 years in prison.
Yeah, was the longest sentence for a bank robbery conspiracy case, I think, ever given up to that point.
Yeah.
1970.
And this is in the 60s when they indicted him for that, right?
In the 60s.
This is before Rico loss.
Before Rico, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, if it was Rico, he'd have gotten 150 years.
Yeah.
But um, so he goes off to he loses all his bills in 1970, he goes away to Leavenworth.
And he was 50 years old when he went in.
And for me, you know, Ed 50 on top of that.
It's a death sentence.
Right.
And around the same time, Joe Colombo was organizing the Italian American Civil Rights League.
We were very close to Joey, our family.
My dad was his underboss.
So he kind of took me under his wing.
I started meeting a lot of my dad's friends.
You know, Mike, what do you don't go to school?
If you don't help your father out, he's gonna die in prison.
And I will tell you this.
You know, my dad, dad did obviously a lot of bad things in his life.
So did I. I went to you know, jail for a crime I was guilty of.
But that particular crime that he did 40 years in prison of uh my dad was innocent of.
He was framed.
He wasn't a bank robber.
Well, the people that testified against the raw drug addicts.
All drug addicts and just bad people.
And I'll take that to my grave.
We investigated that case.
He was innocent.
So I'm saying, you know, I have an obligation.
I gotta try to help my father get out of prison.
So these bank robbers got caught, and they were basically saying that your dad is the one that put them up to doing it.
Is that what is that what they basically do?
It was it was very smart.
Yeah, they committed all the bank robberies, they did everything.
And they said they were at one meeting with my father where he ordered the bank robberies.
Wow.
That was it.
They didn't even testify to giving him any money.
He just ordered the bank robberies.
Oh, setup.
Yeah.
And believe it or not, the jury believed it.
Took them three or four days to convict them, but they believed it, and he got 50 years.
And it was a setup.
There's no question, because we heard from witnesses afterwards how the FBI was complicit in it and what they did and all that.
But you know, we're not going to be able to do that.
Well, they they had a huge, I don't think people under I've talked about this before on my other channel, but like they had a huge heart on for the mafia back then.
Like nowadays it's all terrorism and you know, counterespionage, but back then that was their number one thing was going after organized crime, namely the the mafia.
So when did your father get into the life?
What what what decade?
Young.
I mean, he was uh, you know, just just to finish it off.
My dad was released from prison at the age of 100.
He was the oldest inmate in the federal system at the time of his release, yeah.
And he passed away at 103.
Um, but he got in and like he was a tough kid.
He was born in 1916 or 17, and you know, from the 30s on, he was involved with wise guys.
And he got made when he was about 30 years old.
So back in the 40s, 30, 30s or 40s.
So he knew Lucky Luciano, absolutely Luciano and all those guys that knew Luciano, he knew Lansky, he knew Frank Costello, you know, Vito Genovice.
So you knew them all.
Yeah, uh the Mazaria, all those guys.
All of them.
Um, so he was there during uh what was it called?
The Casta Miller's yes, yeah.
He was there.
He wasn't involved in it, but he was there.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
That was one of the most violent times.
And then so when Lucky Luciano uh, you know, I guess prevailed after all that and ended up making the and and just so you guys understand real fast.
So I'm gonna pull up a chart for you guys so you understand what I'm talking about here, because some of you guys might be a little confused.
Uh so the hierarchy with uh with the mafia guys, this comes from the FBI, the ops, but uh did they they have it here in a way that is easy to understand, right?
That New York has five main crime families, and you were uh high ranking in the Columbo, of course.
Um, and then you got obviously the the the top the boss, right?
And then beside him is can you describe each of these positions?
It's a consolidary to the right, yes, yeah.
You can hit control plus on it, Mo a little bit so it's bigger for the people to see.
There you go.
There you go.
Yeah, and the consolier was kind of like the advisor.
I mean, we've seen that position in The Godfather, even though it was fictional, because you know, you gotta be Italian in order to.
I was gonna say it was an Iris guy in the movie.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but uh, you know, he he did a good job, though.
But uh, yeah, and and the boss, he hand picks that person to be his advisor.
And really the function of the consoliary is to be a liaison between the soldiers and the boss.
You got a problem with the boss, you go see the conseliary.
The problem with that, the boss picks the console.
If you got a problem with the the boss and tell the concierge, you're probably gonna get killed.
So set up right there.
It doesn't work well.
And uh, and then you have the underboss, who's the normally the second in command.
Yeah, and just so people understand, if the boss is eliminated or he dies or whatever, he he retires.
The underboss doesn't automatically take over.
He doesn't.
They're still among the men, they choose who they want, and it's it's so it's not an automatic position for the underboss to boss.
Okay, yeah.
And then you have copy regimes or captains, and they're appointed by the boss, and they're kind of the street bosses, and then they're given authority over the soldiers.
Yeah, and the soldier is the lowest rank after you take your oath and you're made.
Yeah, and uh that's it.
So um, so you were you were a capo, and uh and it took you how long did it take?
It took you uh quite a bit of time there to become a cop or it was five years.
Okay, yeah.
So can you tell us real quick about because you were a pre-med student, right?
And you decided to to leave that and uh get into the life.
What made you get into life and what was the trajectory there?
Well, I had I had a meeting with my dad in uh Leavenworth penitentiary and he was away and I said, Dad, I'm not going to school.
If I don't help you out, you're gonna die in here.
You know, I said we need money for lawyers, we got to track down these witnesses because he kept saying, I'm innocent, I'm innocent.
Yeah, and I knew I had to help him.
So I'm not gonna be able to help you go into school, you know.
I gotta get out and do it.
And I the guys influenced me when I was, you know, I was walking the line, the picket lines for the Italian American Civil Rights League.
I was meeting everybody.
So uh he looked at me, he said, okay, because I was a headstrong kid, my mind was made up, and he said, But if you're gonna be on the street, I want you on the street the right way.
And uh to him, the right way was to become a member of his life.
So he proposed me for membership at that point.
Because you know, people say, Well, how do you become a member?
Well, you can't go up to somebody and say, Yeah, I want to join.
Somebody's got to propose you, they got to vouch for you.
And uh, in my case was my dad.
So you come in, what was a day in the life of um an association?
Because you're an associate first, right?
You come in as an associate.
You didn't come in and automatically as a maid, now you had to earn that.
What was the day in the life like as a as an associate?
Well, here's the deal.
About two weeks after my dad uh he said, Go home, I'm gonna send word downtown, they'll send for you.
So a captain in the family picked me up and took me to see the boss at that point.
And uh his name was Tom DeBella, he's passed on now.
And he said, Mike, I got a message from your father, you want to become a member of our life.
Is that true?
I said, Yes.
He said, Here's the deal.
From now on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you're on call to serve this family, the Columbo family.
That means if your mother is sick and dying and you're at her bedside, we call you to service, you leave your mother, you come and serve us.
Yeah.
From now on, we're number one in your life before anything and everything.
And you do what you're told.
And then uh the captain turned around to me, Andrew, and he said, I'll be here tomorrow morning, eight o'clock, wear a suit.
That was it.
And that's your order.
And every day from that point on, I'm uh I'm a recruit and I gotta do anything and everything I'm told to do.
So, what did that range like in duties?
Was it like driving people around?
Was it?
Well, you know, I had at the same time I was in the car business.
So I always had a good car.
I would buy a car, sell a car.
So I always drove something nice.
So I would drive into Brooklyn, and the boss would say, I like your car, we're gonna use your car.
You sit in the back, I'll drive.
And so I would sit in the back and they would go wherever, and I'm there and I'm just there, you know, because you can't participate in most anything when you're a recruit, but you're observing everything.
Yeah, you're kind of learning the ropes.
And then your day is gonna come when you're called upon to do things and you gotta do them.
You know, you can't refuse an order, so you do what you have to do.
Gotcha.
Um, so how long did you do that before you became a uh just about two years?
Two years.
Yeah.
When I got made, there was a an expression in that life that the books were closed.
From the 1950s till the early to mid-70s, they weren't making anybody.
The only way they would make somebody, and this was all five families agreed to this.
If somebody died in a family, you'd be able to bring a new guy in.
Other than that, you couldn't do it.
But in the mid-70s, they opened up the books and they said, All right, we can start to bring some people in.
So when I got made, there was a guy's waiting 20 years to become a made guy.
Yeah.
Wow.
And then we come in, you know, a couple of us, and we go right to the top.
You know, I was one of the first guys made.
And uh, and that was out of respect for my dad, too, because he requested it and that was it, and they gave him that courtesy.
Uh so that was uh that happened for me in 1975.
Is there jealousy in a family when that happens when you come in?
There's always jealousy.
Yeah.
I mean, the older guys, I mean, it's just like life, you know.
Uh, they resented the younger guys, you know, even the older guys that were made for a long time.
If you come into that life, they still feel that they have superiority over you, but they don't.
When you come into that life, you you're told we're all equal.
The boss is even equal to a soldier.
He may be higher in rank, but the boss is not supposed to re disrespect a soldier either, because we're all made guys, and that's the status being made.
Um, but the older guys always I had a lot of resentment against me.
I was one of the younger ones, and you know, you gotta deal with it, you gotta learn how to deal with it.
Well, was um the fact that your father was so high ranking and you got you were able to get made within two, two to three years made made them a lot jealous.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, guys were geez, we're waiting 20 years, you know.
And they don't verbally say that to you, but you know they're thinking that.
As a matter of fact, one guy did say it to me recently.
I'm not gonna mention his name.
You know who he is.
Yeah.
Um so can you just can you tell the people uh what being made is and what it takes to be made, and then the night that you got made.
You know, being made is is taking the oath and becoming a quote made man.
And so for me it was Halloween night, 1975, and they don't prepare you.
You know, every day you go, you don't know when it's gonna happen because for security reasons, they don't want anybody talking about it.
Is it the oath of America?
Yes, Almerta.
And so for me, Halloween night, I got the call that day, and I said, just be in Brooklyn and and wear a suit as usual.
And then I knew something was up that day.
Things were a little bit different than normal.
And uh, so that night, uh, you know, it was six of us that took the oath.
And just to describe it, it was late at night, and uh Joe Colombo's son Anthony had a had a uh catering hall.
And so we did it there.
It was a secure place.
And uh we walked into the room, the six of us individually, both seated at the head of like a horseshoe configuration, underboss console area to his left and right, and all the captains were alongside of them.
Soldiers were not allowed at this, only captains.
And so uh walked down the aisle, stood in front of the boss, held out my hand, took a knife, cut my finger, some blood dropped on the floor, the scissor blood oath, cupped my hands.
He took a picture of a saint, Catholic Alta card, put it in my hands, lit it a flame.
Didn't hurt it, burnt quickly, it was merely symbolic.
And he said, Tonight, Michael Francis, you're being born again into a new life into causing ostra.
Violate what you know about this life, betray your brothers, and you will die, burn in hell like the saint is burning in your hands.
Do you accept?
Yes, I do.
And you know, when people people don't know what Omerta really is.
They think it's uh you're taking an oath to lie, steal, cheat, kill.
It's not what it is.
The oath of Omerta is an oath of silence.
Yeah, you're not even supposed to admit that the life exists.
That's the oath.
Of course, you do other things along with it, but you're not taking an oath to do that.
You're taking an oath never to betray the life in any way, shape, or form.
Wow.
Okay.
So um, and there's a bunch of prerequisites, right?
You had to be Italian, right?
And your father.
My father had to be Italian, yes.
Um, never had attended a police academy before.
No, cannot.
Yeah, you cannot so like let's say you were a cop and you decided, you know what, I want to get into this life, you can't get in.
No, and understand this.
Before you're made, they put your name on a piece of paper and they send it around to all five families.
Oh and everybody sees it.
And they say, You have an objection about this guy, let us know before we bring him in.
Kind of security reasons.
Oh, wow.
So it actually went to the commission level for it.
We're making this guy, you got anything to say about him, any reason we shouldn't.
Reference points.
Okay, okay.
And that was among all the five families.
So uh, what else?
So you had your father had to be Italian, never had attended a police academy.
Um, you had to have done work.
Was there like a prerequisite of how much time you had to be in as an associate before getting made?
No, no, like I said, some guys 20 years and and me was two years.
Uh you got to do what you're told.
Yeah.
That's it.
So they won't let me in?
No, bro.
See, people help me, bro.
Damn.
Fortunately for you, you're out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, okay.
Uh so um, so also, so there were a bunch of rules um back then.
And there this is a point of contention, and I really want to bring this up because people get mad at me when I say this.
Drug trafficking wasn't allowed, right?
Um, in your day.
I know guys were involved in it, but can you tell us a little bit about that?
Uh, because everyone thinks, like, oh no, the mafia will sell drugs, they were blah, blah, blah.
But I tell them all the time, you weren't supposed to do it.
I get beat up every time I say this.
Yeah, but you know, here's the facts.
During my era in that life, drugs were not allowed.
They were banned.
I was told straight out the day that uh uh, you know, that I sat with Tom De Bella the first time, you deal with drugs, you die.
We don't deal with drugs in any way, shape, or form.
The night I got made, same thing.
Drugs are off limits.
Not that we were angels and saints, it was too much heat.
We didn't want to hurt kids.
That's the truth.
Now, people come back, oh Michael, uh, Vito Genevice went away from drug.
I said, My era, Vito Genovese died in the early 60s, was different then.
Yeah, and I'm not saying that guys weren't doing drugs, little deals here and there, but we weren't cartels, we weren't big drug dealers.
Now, the Sicilians in Italy, big drug dealers, big heroin dealers, big drug dealers.
We weren't doing it there.
As a matter of fact, I try to tell people why do you think John Gotti was in trouble with Castellano?
Because his crew was dealing drugs, and they weren't supposed to.
And that's when the whole thing happened with Cash, because Castellano was gonna take him out.
Yep.
And then John acted first.
So we were not allowed to deal with drugs.
I never deal with drugs.
I hate anything to do with drugs.
And just so the audience understands, uh Paul Castellano was the boss of the Gambino crime family.
Yes.
Gotti was a capo at the time, if I'm not mistaken.
And he was dealing, John Gotti, very famous guys.
We could put a pic pull a picture up of him real quick.
Back in the 90s and early 80s, he was dealing drugs.
Paul Castell didn't like that because obviously it brings heat.
Well, let me be clear on that, because John is his family and I, his crew allegedly was dealing drugs.
Okay.
It wasn't John directly, but his crew allegedly was at least that's what Gastolano had said.
Yeah.
And so they they were gonna go after him and get him.
Um and he had uh because it was back then, right?
If I'm not mistaken, you had to have the commission sign off on killing a guy, right?
Any made guy.
No, not true.
You didn't here's the thing.
The commission, how do I uh how do I describe it?
Uh it was like the United Nations.
It sounded good, but it didn't have a lot of power.
Really, I mean, and uh and the commission can never tell the boss of a his own family what to do.
He had his own autonomy.
Okay.
Now, if they all agreed on something, like when they agreed not to make anybody, okay, they're all in agreement.
But a bo a boss wanted to take somebody out in his family, you could do it.
Now, the other way around, if somebody wanted to take a boss out, that's what I meant.
Yeah, yes, they should get commission uh sanction for that because that's John Gaudi Rachel from back in the day.
But uh sorry, you go ahead, continue.
Yeah, I mean, you get in trouble for that.
And and and you know, John, when he took Castellano out, I mean, it wasn't looked upon well.
Yeah, other bosses were not happy about it.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, they shot him right in front of his favorite steakhouse uh sparks.
It's part there we go.
Sparks.
Um, so the so the drug dealing thing, so and what was the main re the reasons like they didn't want to that they didn't want to do it was was it because the drug trafficking game is just a dirty game in general, people a lot of informants, a lot of people turn.
A lot of informants, too much heat from the FBI, and and uh and honestly, they didn't want to hurt kids.
Yeah, you know, uh a lot of guys that I knew, unfortunately in that life, their kids got involved in drugs.
And they always talk bad about it.
My kid is a junkie, and this and they talk bad about it.
So they didn't want to put that on other kids.
That's how I was told.
And I believe it.
I believe it.
So you do you have something?
So back in the day when you were a federal agent, would you ever go after the mafia?
Yeah, the mafia.
So it's interesting.
Like we did organized crime because after the FBI really focused on um nine after 9-11, the FBI shifted its focus and went straight to terrorism.
That's what they want to do, can't national security.
So homeland security took on a lot of the organized crime, but by then uh the mafia wasn't as prominent like uh you know, in 2003 as it was, but in the 70s, 80s, like you know, that's all the FBI was going after, which they're even back then, they were supposed to focus on terrorism, but they didn't.
They focused on the mafia.
That's where most of their money went.
That's where the racketeering laws went.
They they had a um, like I know they had a squad assigned to each family, which is crazy resources.
That's 20 agents for one family, right?
And uh an entire squad dedicated to investigating each family that had wiretaps on each family.
So they were dedicating a lot of resources.
I mean, what was the number we were talking about the numbers before?
It was two agents to each made guys?
There was 1,400 agents in uh um New York assigned to all five families, and there was 750 made guys.
So you had two agents for every made guy.
Wow, that's crazy, man.
Crazy.
And now I heard they have less than a hundred agents.
So I'm gonna tell you my theory on that so you understand why they go after you know the mafia.
Because here's the thing we be we made the biggest headlines, honestly.
Yeah, we don't shoot back, we don't go after them.
They lock us up, we we go to trial, and if we win, we win.
And they made big headlines on us.
Yep.
Come on, you gotta be on.
They made big names.
I I've talked about it, I've said the FBI or cloud chasers a million times.
Absolutely.
Yeah, we're the easy we're the easiest guys to go after.
I mean, they gotta get us, but when they get us, we put our hands out here, lock us up, we'll go fight you in court.
That's it.
Right.
Um, so at this point, and we're like in the mid-70s, you're a made guy now.
How did your duty shift from being an associate over to being a made guy now?
Well, once you're a made guy, you know, everybody thinks, you know, the the joke that night, after we got made, all the guys went into a banquet hall, and we had a banquet.
You know, Italians eat after everything, right?
Yeah, and one of the uh captains comes in as a joke with a brown paper bag, and he says, Hey boss, should I give them their bag of money now?
Because everybody thinks you're coming to that life and they're throwing money at you.
Yeah, it's just the opposite.
You gotta be throwing money up.
Yeah, you know.
So the boss said, Hey don't think that you got a free ride here.
You you guys gotta earn for us.
That's what you're here for.
One of the reasons, anyway.
So once you become made, you're your own man at that point.
You report to your captain, obviously.
Uh, but you're free to go out and do what you gotta do.
You know, make money for yourself because they're not throwing it at you.
Yeah, uh, you know, you have certain like me.
If I needed money, I was just starting out.
If I went to them, say, hey, you know, I got a deal, could I borrow some money, uh point the week, whatever it is, but you got to do it on your own.
So, you know, that's where guys get separated.
You had the guys that were earners and figured things out.
If you know how to use it, if you knew how to use that life at that time in business, in business, it would benefit you greatly.
Yeah.
And I was fortunate.
I knew how to use the life.
I figured it out, and I went on to make a lot of money as a result.
Yeah, and we're definitely going to talk about that.
Before we talk about how you made money, what was it like being um in the life in the 70s where it was a crazy time in the United States?
You had all the craziest serial killers running around, Ted Bundes, the you know, son of Sam, all these guys, right?
Um, and then inflation was high, crime was rampant, the mafia was at its height.
What was it like in the 70s?
It was great for us.
Yeah.
It was easy pickings for us, really.
I mean, we controlled all the unions, you know, we had connections basically right into the White House during that.
We had a lot of political power at that point.
And uh New York was a bad place.
I gotta be honest, before Giuliani took over, they called it Fear City.
Yes, and it really was, but we weren't in fear.
And no serial killers came into our neighborhoods, that's for sure.
As a matter of fact, you know, the son of Sam was rampant at that time.
We were looking for him.
Because one thing, my we were very protective of our neighborhoods.
There was no crime in our neighborhoods, right?
None whatsoever.
And uh, we were looking for him.
I almost had him one night.
We had a tip where he was, but we missed him, unfortunately.
But we we were on the lookout for him.
Wow.
But it was uh, yeah, and now because he was doing shootings in the Bronx and in Brooklyn.
Yes, yes, so and Queens.
It was all over, all over the boroughs.
But uh the crazy thing now, he got life with triple I don't know what he got, but uh he read a copy of my book, and a guy I know is writing a book about him, it's gonna come out soon, and they asked me to write the introduction.
Oh, wow to the book.
The forward forward.
So I wrote it, you know.
I almost got him too.
Yeah.
Does he does he know that you guys were looking for it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He he wanted to meet me.
I can't get into the prison to see him.
But he he's converted now, he's become a man of faith and all that.
So it's amazing story.
But I was gonna kill him one night.
He got off.
He got off.
He would have deserved it though.
He did some bad things.
Yeah, no, I mean, uh, I mean, because just to kind of illustrate it for the people back then, this guy was running around every guys, and he was like just shooting random people with I think they called him the 44 killer at the time or the 45 killer.
Yeah, well, the i he said his dog told him to do it.
Yes, yes, remember that?
Yeah, and and there's been a bunch of speculation that, you know, and he I think he even kind of alluded to it as well that he didn't do it himself.
There was a bunch of people, and there was like a cult and all this other stuff behind the scenes.
But uh, but I did not know that.
I mean, that makes sense because he was terrorizing your guys' neighborhoods.
Yes, yeah.
So we were looking for him.
Yeah, we we would have found him.
He was he was in trouble.
Um and you know, it's funny because I was born in 90, right?
And I was living in New York City from 90 to 99 as a kid, and I remember that how dangerous New York is city used to be even back then, and then when before Giuliani came in and really was, you know, making a push to clean up crime.
Like, what was it like being in New York City in that era?
Like, was it just I mean, the city you couldn't go to Times Square.
Well, we could, but I mean, Times Square was, you know, the porno capital of the world of the country, at least back then.
It was a disgusting place, quite honestly.
You didn't want to be there.
Uh, but crime was rampant.
Yeah, you know, we didn't have trouble with the local police, you know.
As a matter of fact, you know, in New York, with 750 guys, many of us had relatives that were police guys.
Yeah.
Or we had neighbors that were in a police force.
So we got along with them.
We'd have any trouble.
Uh our nemesis with the FBI.
We have trouble with the locals.
So, you know, I had gambling operations in the city.
We were paying off the cops.
I mean, it was it was a good time for us with respect to that.
Yeah.
And it was a great time.
I mean, I had, you know, some good clubs back then, and uh, you know, uh Studio 54 was around.
We we had a lot of fun, you know, I put it that way.
When it comes to networking, right?
Uh, for the, I guess the family, so to speak, what was like the process of meeting people for like business, I guess, getting things done behind the scenes, you would say.
Well, it was technical.
If you were gonna meet with uh a mob guy from another family, you had to put it on record.
You had to go tell your boss, look, I want to maybe in a business deal with somebody from another crew, and we're just letting you know.
Okay.
The reason for that is twofold.
Number one, if you don't put anything on record and you get in an argument and you have to settle it, you lose the argument.
Well, you didn't tell us about it, you're lost.
Don't Bother me.
Done.
And the second thing is they want to know what you're doing so they can get a piece.
Yeah, of course.
So it goes both ways.
So, you know, that was uh like even if I had to go to Chicago to do business, I would tell my boss, I'm going to Chicago, should I check in with anybody?
They would tell me who to check in with there, and I'd say, listen, out of courtesy, come in here, I just want to let you know this is what I'm doing.
Wow.
So, you know, we we had that kind of respect for one another in that regard.
Um, there were five crime families in New York, and then there were how many uh from that mistake, was it nine nationwide?
You had nine that were actually part of the commission that that I understand.
And I've heard different numbers, but you know, the most consistent number was nine.
Okay, you know, in Chicago and Kansas City and Cleveland and Tampa at that time.
So you you had uh you had nine families.
Okay, and in the commission.
So New York City, Chicago.
Um there was a strong um presence in Vegas, too, if I'm not mistaken, right?
I mean, no, no, no, the the Vegas guys were actually from the Midwest.
Oh originally Cleveland, okay, and then it shifted to Chicago.
Yeah, but so there was no real family in in Vegas.
We just, you know, we built Vegas.
I was gonna say the Mafia built Hunter Vegas.
Not only do we build it, it was better to go there when we were there.
Safe.
Better than co, yeah.
Now well, not only safer, the way corporate America runs things, you know, very stringent, very tight, this and that.
If you came down and you wanted a marker, yeah, you got a marker.
You got it.
Now you got to go through a credit check and you know, the the whole bit.
But uh and everybody will tell you that.
Everybody that's around today that was around then will tell you was so much better when the mob ran the city.
We didn't hurt anybody.
Come on, gamble in our place, have fun.
That's it.
But um, yeah, we built Vegas, no question.
Started with the Desert Inn, and then it went on going.
So you were a huge earner for the mob uh back in the day.
I did pretty good.
Yeah.
Uh I wanted to talk a little bit about that.
So how'd you so you become a made guy and you st what did you uh from that point?
What did you do to earn?
I know you had many different things.
Well, I had both I had legitimate and illegitimate business.
I had two uh new car agencies.
I had a Mazda agency and Chevrolet agency.
I had interest in some restaurants, I had a film production company.
Uh I had a lot of stuff going on.
And then on the illegal side, I had a gambling operation.
I had a number of bookmakers that checked in and worked with me, and I I got a cut of what they did.
And uh I had money out on the street.
We're all shy.
Those of us that have money, we're all lending money out, you know, one percent, two percent.
Usually we lend it to our own guys, and then they go lend it out to make money.
And uh, and so we had that going on.
And then whatever you got to understand, I was kind of the guy on Long Island, parts of Brooklyn, and so when anybody had a deal, they would come to me.
And I would say, okay, I'll get involved with you, or or I wouldn't.
And you know, a lot of people think that you know, mob guys sit around their social clubs and they say, Okay, we're gonna attack that business, we're gonna go after that one, this one, that other than the unions, which we did, we made sure we had control of the union.
But as far as business, the way it normally happens, somebody from inside the company would come to us with a uh a scheme to to defraud their company.
They came to us.
Well, we'll protect you, we'll give you money if you need it, we're not gonna snitch on you.
So they came to us.
Yeah, and I can't tell you how many legitimate guys came to me with a scheme to defraud their company.
Yeah.
So you mentioned a bunch of things there.
Uh bookkeeping, loan sharking, not bookkeeping, bookmaking.
Bookmaking, I'm sorry, but I'm over here thinking of my real estate.
Yeah, bookmaking, uh, unions, uh, we'll talk about the gas thing as well.
Can you describe what uh what uh bookmaking was exactly?
Because people get confused about it, how it actually works.
Yeah, it's guys on the street taking bets illegally.
When I say illegally, it's against the law to do that because you're not paying taxes.
So you want to place a bet, a horse race, sports, whatever.
You go to the bookmaker and you say, I want to put X amount of dollars on uh the Lakers tonight, you know, to win.
Whatever.
And uh so he he uh he's taking the bets.
Yeah now it's illegal because you're not paying taxes, and basically that's it.
And gambling was illegal at that point.
I mean, it's still illegal if you're not doing it through the government, it's gotta be regulated.
It's gotta be regulated.
We taught the government how to be gamblers.
Do you know when when uh when off-track betting came into New York, you may you may not remember it, it's horse racing.
But you're able to do it outside of the track.
They set up, you know, places, and the state ran it.
Okay, and the cops came to me and said, Oh, we're gonna put you guys out of business now.
You know, we got uh Legal gambling here on the racetrack.
I said, Yeah, watch.
Why?
Because when you came to us as a bookmaker, we gave you credit.
That's it.
All right, just tell us what you want.
And we were very good at collecting our money.
You weren't gonna beat us.
But you go to the state, you gotta pay right then and there.
What happens?
80% of the time, you're gonna lose.
Yeah.
So when you lose, what do you do?
I don't have any money.
Let me go back to the bookmaker to see if I can make this up.
They increased our business.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's guys who had never gambled before.
Now we're gambling with us.
And then what do you think happens after that, Myron?
They went bankrupt.
Yeah.
They didn't even know how to do it.
I said, You should have called us up.
We would have ran it for you.
It would have been great.
Oh boy.
So you guys, so you're making you so you're doing the and you guys had influence with some of these sports, right?
Obviously, you know, basketball, whatever.
You know, hey, we need you to score a little because it wasn't winning and losing, it was spread, right?
It's all about the spread.
Okay.
Not winning and losing, all about the spread.
Can you describe that a little bit as far as like I'll give you an example?
Yeah, you know, let's let's go to college.
Let's go to basketball.
Okay.
Five guys on the courts easy, right?
So we used to watch some of the St. John's Syracuse in New York.
We watched the players.
They used to come and hang out in some of the clubs we were in, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, the City.
We'd hang with them.
We kind of pick up one of them out.
Let's say he's a guard, right?
He's playing for St. John's.
And uh, hey, how are you doing?
You know, in the club, we treat you, buy him a drink.
Hey, we love your team.
We love the way you play.
You guys are great.
We're big fans of yours.
Yeah.
So he comes, he loves that.
We send a few women over to make them feel good, right?
Before you know it, he's coming back every week.
He wants to be around us, right?
We were fun to be around.
Yeah, you guys are making big money.
Yeah.
So now we kind of move on.
I say, come here, sit down.
I want to talk to you.
I said, You're a senior, right?
Yeah.
You know, you're a pretty good player, but you're six foot two.
You're not going to the pros.
You know that, right?
Yeah, I know.
How much money you got in your pocket?
Oh, I'm broke.
Yeah.
Broke.
Every time you play, they fill up that arena, 15,000 people.
I said, You're broke?
I said, I heard your girlfriend's pregnant.
You know, your mother's driving this old jalapy car.
I said, Why should you be broke?
I said, Let me educate you.
Tomorrow night, you're favored to win by 10 points.
Don't win by 10.
Don't lose the game.
We want you to win.
We're fans.
Don't win by 10.
Win by five, win by six, win by four.
I said, Don't cover the spread.
You do that.
I take 10 grand out of my pocket.
That's the number.
And I push it over.
He never seen that in his life.
Yeah.
Right?
I said, put it away.
Go buy your girl.
I said, you do that for me 10 times.
You got 100 grand.
I said, who's better than you?
Very hard to pass up.
Yeah.
Because they're still winning.
Yeah.
I'm not going to tell them.
Hey.
I said, who's going to get it?
You bought you, you know, who's gonna know?
Yeah.
You know, forget about it.
Don't worry about it.
Don't tell anybody.
Forget about it.
Forget about it.
That's a good line.
When I heard that line, my wife will tell you, I was the only one in the movie that cracked up because it was so real.
She looked at me like, what are you laughing at?
I said, you don't get it.
It was so real.
That's what the movie Donny Brown.
Forget about it.
Everything.
That's a good offer, though.
So yeah, and I mean, this is the the 80s now at this point, right?
I'm guessing.
So 10,000 in the 1980s, guys, the equivalent to about 20K today.
You put that in front of a college kid's face that doesn't make any money.
A lot of money.
That's a bunch of money back then.
Yes.
Um, even today, in today's by today's standards.
So you guys were doing this, and he's fixing the games and uh making quite a bit of money off of spread.
And with basketball, right?
They could a good player can influence it easily.
And listen, a referee.
Yeah.
You got too.
Listen to me.
Oh, you got a referee, let's say Christmas time.
You know, he wants to make a few extra dollars.
You know, a referee, he can call a foul every time they go down a court, or he don't have to call it right away.
It's up to him, right?
So, you know what?
Favor to win by 10.
The Lakers are playing whoever back then, Kobe Bryan.
Hey, what do you do?
Put him on a bench for an extra few minutes.
That's how you manipulate the spread.
You know what I mean?
So instead of winning by 10, you know, they win by seven.
He puts 25 grand in his pocket.
Who's gonna know?
So that's why Golden State lost.
Now we know what they lost, bro.
Damn it.
Who's gonna know?
Right?
Think about it.
Um, so uh so was basketball the easiest to influence, I'm assuming, probably because basketball, obviously, tennis.
Okay, y'all want tennis too.
Wow.
You got to get to one person, yeah.
You know, when there's a one-man sport like that, or you know, easy.
But basketball, pretty easy because you got five guys on the court, and any one of them can make a difference.
So basketball, tennis, boxing, were you guys in football?
Bocing big, yeah.
Football as well.
Football, yes.
But football's a little bit different.
You know, look, I had a bunch of pros that were gambling with bookmakers that I uh I had.
And you know, the pro you're the same thing.
You know, I had a bookmaker call me up.
He said, Hey, so-and-so, from one of the New York teams, he's into me for 50 grand.
Should I cut him off?
I says, Why would you cut him off?
You're writing something on a piece of paper.
It didn't cost you anything.
Let him get into you for 250 grand.
Wow.
And then bring them to me.
Yeah.
Right?
Then he'd bring them to me.
I sit down.
Hey, you owe us a lot of money.
Oh, you didn't know I was involved.
Sorry, we didn't introduce ourselves.
My name is So and so.
I said, Listen, you owe us a lot of money.
How are you going to pay?
Well, you know what?
I'm going to give you a break.
I said, I love the team.
I like you.
I said, you don't have to pay me all at once.
I says, you bring me X amount of dollars a week.
I said, no, no, no.
I'm going to charge you two points a week on a 250.
You make sure you bring it there every Monday.
You play Sunday?
Bring it to me on Monday.
Don't forget.
He'll bring it because he wants to get out of the room.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He'll bring it three, four, five, six weeks.
What do you think he's doing?
He's down the street.
Betting with the next bookmaker to hopefully make up my debt.
This is what guys do that.
They're gamblers.
So finally I bring him in again.
Hey, you missed your juice.
We got a problem.
But I'll tell you, I like you so much.
Here's what you're going to do.
You're a quarterback, you know.
First three times you get the ball, put it in the hands of the other team.
I don't care how you do it.
You're a running back, first time you get there, put it on the ground.
Wow.
Fumble.
And that's how you try to manipulate.
Doesn't work every time, but over the course of a season, you're gonna come out ahead.
Wow.
And that just goes to show like how how much power you guys had back then where you guys were influencing you know, sports at a professional level, collegiate level, etc.
So, how much was that bringing in on a weekly basis?
Just the bookkeeping alone.
Sorry, the bookmaking, excuse me.
I'm thinking of my real, I'm trying to hire a bookkeeper right now from a real estate.
Yeah, how much were you earning from the from the bookmaking?
Look, uh, a smart bookmaker makes a lot of money, especially in the New York area because we have so many teams, there's so much going on, so many people.
I mean, you know, hundreds of thousands a week.
Yeah, good ones.
Wow, and this is an 80, so this is a lot of money.
So you were also involved in uh lending money out, uh, which people know as there's terms for it, it's a loan sharking in the world.
Shylocking.
Shylocking.
Um, can you describe that a little bit for the people how that worked?
Very simple.
Business guy, you know, can't go to a bank, whatever, comes to me for money, I'll give it to you 1% a week.
You know, you make sure that you got the ability to pay, because if you don't pay, it's a problem for you.
It's not a problem for me, it's a problem for you.
So, you know, you check it out.
Okay, I'll give it to you.
Boom.
And a lot of times, if you don't pay, you take the business over.
You know, I acquired a Chevrolet dealership that way.
I lent the guy a lot of money.
Plus, he was a gambler in trouble with one of my bookmakers.
And I said, Look, the agency is mine.
You can work for me.
I said, but it's mine.
I said, Maybe at some point in time, if things are good, I give it back to you.
But right now I own it.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what was it?
So how much would you typically lend out and what interest rates were you charging on people?
Well, it depends.
You know, to my crew, guys that weren't great earners around me.
I would say, here, you know, here's 50 grand, 100 grand, put it out on the street.
You pay me a point a week.
You can put it out for three or four points, but do it smart.
Do it with somebody that's gonna pay you back, you know.
So if a guy puts it out at three points and he's giving me a point, he's making two grand a week.
It's not bad, right?
So, you know, I gave it to a lot of my my crew to to put out.
And then again, if it was a business that I thought, you know, was was worth it, I I would give it to them.
It could have been a couple hundred grand.
I mean, yeah, whatever they needed.
What happens if you don't get if you don't get paid?
Well, listen, you know, there's uh they're gonna break your legs and all of that stuff.
Now, guys may say that, but when a guy owes you money, you want to get paid.
Yeah, so you'll you'll kind of help him along a little bit.
At least I did.
I said, I don't want to put him in the hospital, I want to get paid.
Yeah, now if he's making a fool out of you and he's going here and there, and there's you know, then it's a different story, you know.
Uh, but that doesn't happen very often.
Oh, you know, because and if it does, then you're a fool for giving it to him because you didn't check the guy out, you know.
So um, with me, it normally worked out.
Okay.
So very rarely do you actually have to like get someone beat up to pay.
I never had to do that.
Never had to do it.
Never had to do it one time.
My crew, they were smart, sometimes were smart.
They would they would borrow the money from me, and then they'd pay me the juice they were paying me, got me even, and then all of a sudden the guy they landed to ran away or something.
Oh you know what I mean.
So they didn't.
So he always made sure to pay you, even if they took it out.
Yeah, to make sure that I got all my money back.
Oh, okay.
So if I lent him 15 grand or whatever, 10 grand, and they're paying me a point a week.
They made sure that the interest covered my principal.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden the guy left town or a guy got bailed who knows, whatever.
And because it was my crew, I let him go sometimes.
It was one of two guys that were smart that way.
Actually, I appreciated their ingenuity.
So you're a capital.
How many guys did you have working under you at this point?
Well, you know, because of the gas business that I was in, I had about 300 guys under 300 guys on the city.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because I had the Russians that were involved with me, and they had a sizable crew.
And then I had my own crew, and uh it was a lot of guys.
So what was it like?
Because, you know, obviously you're making all this money, you have all these people working underneath you.
That must have been very stressful.
What was that like, man?
You know, Myron, I stress, you know, I I had to go to the doctor the other day, and I had a little issue, nothing serious at all.
I had an ulcer, right?
Uh-huh.
And she says to me, Do you have a lot of stress?
I said, I don't know what stress is.
I've been a certain way my whole life.
I don't know.
Is it stress or whatever you call it?
So let's put it this way.
Back then, I was very on top of things.
I'm I'm a lot more lax business-wise than I was then.
Back then, I was on top of everything.
I was 24-7.
I'm working, I'm watching, I'm doing everything between, you know, being in Brooklyn and doing what I had to do, coming out to where my businesses was.
I was very active in that regard.
Yeah.
Um, so I mean, uh, I'm an early riser.
I'm up six o'clock.
Even if I'm out all night, you know, four o'clock in the morning and come home six, six thirty, I'm up and I'm out early.
So, but I had a lot going on, so I had to pay attention, you know, otherwise I would have got hurt.
So we we talked about the loan sharking, the book making um unions.
The mafia was notorious for infiltrating unions.
Can you describe that and how that would go about?
We installed our people in the unions.
So the delegates, the uh, you know, the the the uh we had guys at the top in the union.
So we controlled it.
You know, how did we use the unions?
We shook down a lot of people.
I had the restaurant and bartenders union, they were mine.
I mean, local.
I didn't have the whole union, but I had the local.
I had the security guards union, they were mine.
I had I had nine nuclear power plants that we had our security guards on.
Oh now, listen to this, my you may not know this, but you check it out.
When a uh nuclear power plant goes down, it's not used anymore.
They got to have security there for a hundred years.
Really afterwards, yes.
That was the law back then.
I don't know if it is now.
So I had security guards around there doing nothing and collecting big money because they were there.
So we controlled that union, and then we had them in the hotels and all of that.
And uh the delegate, the the union president was my guy, so they answered to me.
And restaurant and bartenders, I say, okay, we're gonna go pick that restaurant.
Big dad, they got 25 employees.
Go in and tell them we're gonna unionize.
They don't want to unionize, right?
So I go in and say, Listen, I heard you got a union problem.
I can help you out.
Well, how can you do that?
I said, Well, they're gonna put a picket line out there, they're gonna stop everything.
Nobody's gonna be able to come into your place.
Yeah, you don't want the union?
No, we don't want the union.
I said, All right.
Uh every Christmas, give me figure it out.
You got union, you're gonna have to pay pension fund, health insurance, the whole bit, double time when they work overtime.
And that's it.
That's union rules.
I'm gonna save you all that money.
Every Christmas, give me 25 grand, and they're out.
Oh, okay, great.
So you would prevent them from unionizing.
Yeah.
Ah, okay.
And then I would come back and say, Listen, there's another local.
I I can't help her.
You know, it's a different crew.
I can't die.
So here's what you got to do.
Put the union in here.
Only you put one, how many employees you got?
25?
Make two of them union people.
Don't worry about the other 23.
So now my union is in here.
Nobody could ever bother you again.
I'm only gonna make you take two guys instead of this other one's gonna come in and make you unionize everybody.
So now it's a union shop.
I save them a lot of money, and nobody else can come in there.
Wow.
So there's all different schemes on how you do it.
Yeah, but the let me tell you something.
You control the union, you control a country.
Yeah, the Teamsters Union, two and a half million members.
What are politicians want?
They want money and they want votes.
Yeah.
We had all the money in the world in our pension funds, and we had all the votes you wanted.
We got two and a half million teamsters.
You want us to vote for you?
You know, it's politicians, it bought a lot of politicians.
Speaking of politics, you made a video on YouTube that went viral, very popular one about Trump and his affiliation with, you know, pretty much like the lifestyle.
Could you uh talk about that?
You know, let me a lot of people think that Trump was mobbed up.
He wasn't mobbed up.
It's not true.
You know, Trump had to deal with the unions because any contractor in New York couldn't get anything built unless they built with dealt with the unions.
We controlled all the unions.
Yeah.
You had to deal with us.
Now, uh Trump was represented by Roy Cohen.
And I knew Roy, and Roy did represent some mob guys.
You represent, I think uh Tony Solano tried to represent me, but I didn't hire him.
So, you know, there was an affiliation there, but Trump was not controlled by the Mafia.
He was not a guy that we sat down with, or not at all.
So any rumor about that is absolutely untrue.
Yeah, and and uh because back then to because you guys controlled uh controlled the construction uh like all the buildings you guys see in New York City, the mafia probably had some play in those buildings.
Every one of them, yeah, being a yeah.
Um I I had the biggest construction job for uh apartments into uh co-ops in all of the country at one time was in Queens.
Oh yeah, we we uh we had uh 3,800 conversions from apartments to co-ops, and I controlled all the unions there in that job.
So with construction, right?
Because that's a the typically unions are strong when the construction business, you know, whether it's you know erecting buildings, windows, etc.
So would it be kind of similar to the restaurants where you'd be like, hey, these guys want to come in and unionize, but you just pay me this, and we're not gonna unite.
Same thing.
Or in this particular job, same way the j the uh did the uh supervisor was a guy I knew.
Yeah, and he brought the deal to me.
He said, Michael, before the unions come in here, because they're gonna come.
A job that big, they're gonna come.
He says, Can you handle it for me?
Absolutely.
So the guy I can name him, the uh the builder's name was Jerry Gutterman.
And I sat down with Jerry.
I said, Junior Jerry, the union's gonna be all over you.
So no doubt.
Let's make a deal now.
I said, You make my guy is gonna be we're gonna have to bring a union in, because if I don't bring it in, somebody else will.
But same deal.
You put one of my guys in each one of these.
Is this where the job is like paid for and planned and they're gonna start building it?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, this after I said, You put one of my guys in, I want a shop steward, I want this, that, that, that.
I said, and I'm gonna charge you X amount of uh money per apartment you pay me.
I said, So that's how we'll keep and I'll keep the rest of the union out.
It probably saved them 10 million dollars.
Yeah, I said, but aside from that, I said, all your trades, all your subcontractors, you come to me first.
So you got a painter, I'll bring him in.
Gotcha.
You got uh plumber, I'll bring him in.
So we were making all the subcontract work, but we still saved them a lot of money.
Yeah, because I said, Jerry, do the math.
He said, No, we're in.
Wow.
So it's not like we were shaking them down, we were helping them.
So I noticed they get very good offers that you can't really resist.
Yeah, no, it's powerful.
Yeah, that was a great line.
I wish I would have came up with that in there, honestly.
That'll make you an offer you can't refuse.
Because I've always like wondered about that, like what like what made what incentivize them so strongly?
But it's clearly it's like you guys save them a lot of money, so it's a win-win because they don't have to unionized unionize at the highest level where they're paying a bunch of money out.
Yeah, you guys are able to come in and control it.
Exactly.
And uh everybody makes money.
Exactly.
And then I said, Well, Michael, you know, if we're forcing you guys pushing the union, they wouldn't be here.
I said, No, that's not true.
That's what their job.
Their job is to unionize people.
Yeah, so whether we if we weren't there, they're coming in and they'll put up picket lines and they'll do all the legitimate stuff that you do.
We're gonna prevent that.
So, okay, so with the with the unions, how much were you earning roughly a month with that back then?
That that job I earned a ton of money.
I mean, it was it was a couple of million dollars.
I remember exactly.
We had a lot of money coming in.
Plus, I put a lot of people to work because we had the subcontracting too on a major job.
Did you get paid during the job or after the job was during the job?
Okay, yeah, we don't wait periodically.
Okay, yeah.
Um, and then how much were you making from the from the loan sharking roughly per month, if you remember?
You know, I I had over a million dollars out on the street at one time.
So yeah, so figure one point, two points.
You know, I worked between a point and two.
Okay, you know, I never I never choked anybody.
Is you you're giving somebody making them pay five percent a week on a that's a lot of money, you know.
You don't want to hurt somebody, you want them to pay.
Yeah, yeah.
So I was making a lot of money.
Yeah, so you're making one percent and you were charging this interest on a weekly level or like week.
No, that's a week.
Oh, wow.
So between one and five percent a week.
Every week.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes, smart.
52 weeks a year, no days off for Christmas or anything else.
Every week.
And and your guys, and that's smart because I I was wondering like if you were the one that actually lent the money out, but you actually had a layer of separation.
So you'd give it to your guys.
Yes, they would lend the money out.
Yes, they'd be responsible for getting the money back to you.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, there are times when I dealt directly with the with the business guy.
If I thought he was, you know, a high quality guy, I would deal direct.
But right, you know, you try to insulate yourself in case one of them goes bad and they want to start telling, you know, so you you try.
Of course.
So um, I think one of the and correct me if I'm wrong here, one of the most profitable schemes you had was with the gas station.
Gasoline.
Oh man.
Can you can you take us through this?
Uh how how this all worked.
I'll try to break it down quickly because this was a seven-year operation for me.
I will tell you this.
You know, according to the government and everybody else, it was the biggest scheme that the mob had since the days of prohibition.
And I can verify that.
I mean, at you know, at the height of our operation, we're bringing in five, eight, ten million dollars a week a week.
And it was all stolen gas tech money, defrauding.
Five to eight million dollars a week.
Yeah.
Oh, because we were we were selling a half a billion gallons of gas a month, taking down 30, 40 cents a gallon, you know, whatever the market would bear.
And um, you know, again, it was a guy in the gas business.
He had a small operation, two guys from another family were shaking him down for money.
He ran to me.
Michael helped me, you know, I run a B W. I don't like these guys, they're they're extorting me, whatever.
So uh make a long story short, I got made these two guys go away, and I went into business with him.
And after two weeks, you know, he saw somebody that I had put to watch him comes to my house and puts a uh a box down on my kitchen table, three hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
And that was the first week's take when we got into business with tax money.
Well, he got my attention, and I grew that operation from that 320 to what I described, eight to ten million a week.
And I grabbed the Russians, came into business with me.
They had a number of stations and they were wholesalers.
They couldn't get licensed.
I had the licenses.
And uh it was a tremendous operation.
Yeah.
And so how because the way you uh because I've I've read about this, so you basically would do it for a period of time.
The government will catch on, but by then it was too late, right?
You guys had made your money in your own.
I had this may sound similar because we heard something like this in the news recently.
I don't want to get into politics, but I had 18 well, I really do, but I won't.
I had 18 shell companies.
They were shell companies, and they were licensed uh to collect tax on every gall gallon of less uh gasoline.
So we would run one license on one company.
I had an accounting system second to none.
So the government we were supposed to report on a monthly basis, which we did, and pay taxes on a monthly basis, which we didn't, but we were able to hold them off for 10 months to a year.
After that, they would come down on us, but we would close the office, shred the license, and go on to the next license.
That was it.
So but money we needed.
Did you control the license?
We control the license and the the uh we had to open up bank accounts, so we had a bank account, each one of those company names.
You know, um, because we were getting wired money, all different transactions.
Yeah.
So uh but it was a daisy chain.
Yeah.
One company goes down, you just move to the next.
The feds come up to the office, it's closed, nobody's there, there's no license anymore.
Was it coming IRS or probably Department of Revenue from New York?
Department of Treasury, yeah.
Okay, yeah, IRS.
They came after.
So um, but we held them off for uh seven years.
Yeah, until my partner uh got in trouble on an unrelated case, and he became uh an informant and he he blew the whistle.
He snitched on you on that.
Yeah, well he s yeah, and he he told him what they what we were doing.
I had two feds, two agents come to me maybe halfway through this.
They came to my dealership, we got to talk to you.
So I go outside, what do you guys want?
I was always courteous to them.
They said, Well, you listen, Michael, we know you're in this business.
We're getting we know taxes are being stolen.
We don't know how you're doing it.
Tell us how you're doing it, we'll give you a pass.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, you admiring it.
Yeah, yeah, they lied.
I was born in the morning, but not yesterday morning.
So um I said, what are you talking about?
I don't gas.
I go to the gas station, I'd fill up my car, you know.
They they got so mad at me, you don't want to help us.
I said, I can't help you.
I always you want a car, I'll give you a car wholesale.
I said, but I can't help you with this.
Yeah.
And uh they had no idea.
Yeah.
So when my partner became an informant, he told them everything the way we were doing.
He's the one that blew the whistle on on the whole operation.
Where is he now?
He's dead.
No, we didn't kill him.
No, he went to the seasons.
You didn't know, you know, He went to jail and then he came home and then he died.
So how like um did you like put like mark like how'd you guys do it?
Did you guys like kind of like mess with the get the pump itself where it would like stop at a certain point?
No, no, no.
Had nothing to do with that.
It was different back then.
No.
We we we were buying, we were putting gas in branded stations, unbranded stations, everywhere.
It was just we buy it off of mobile oil, BP, Shell.
We were buying from all the big guys.
Okay.
And just selling it right back to their stations.
They didn't care because we were buying the gas from them anyhow.
Yeah.
Whatever way it ended up in their station.
So I don't care.
I was just trying to figure out like how you guys didn't end up paying.
Like, did you guys do it with maybe dealing with the books?
So wasn't the games itself?
You own a gas station, right?
You're paying a dollar a gallon.
The tax at that time was maybe 30 cents.
Yeah.
All right.
You're paying a dollar a gallon because you're paying it 30 cents.
So I go to you and say, hey, how much are you paying for gas?
I'm paying a dollar a gallon.
How would you like to pay 90 cents?
10 cents difference is a big deal for a station, right?
Per pump.
Oh, great.
Per gallon, sorry.
Yeah, I'm gonna sell you the gas, and on the receipt, it'll say all taxes included.
That's all they care about.
Hey, I'm paying.
I don't know what these guys are doing.
You know what I mean?
So I would go, we would send my guys into a mobile station.
How many uh loads of gas you get in a week?
Oh, we're getting six from mobile.
Okay.
Take four from mobile, take two from us.
We'll sell it to you at this price.
Great, we'll bring it to you in the middle of the night.
Great.
Before you know it, they want to buy all the gas from us.
I said, You can't do that.
You're a branded station.
You gotta at least buy something from mobile.
They didn't want to buy any.
Yeah, and meanwhile, we were driving the prices down at the pump.
You guys would have loved us now.
You go to a gas cheaper just because of us, right?
So people didn't care, you know.
They called us the Robin Hoods, you know.
We stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
Yeah, and ourselves.
Good job, man.
Yeah, cause because you guys are basically putting the price back on the savings would go back to the government, basically, and then the people saved the money, and the government had to pay for it.
Exactly.
Okay, yeah.
You want to cover some chats?
Uh yeah, we can hit some chats real quick and then we'll talk about it.
I got some more.
Yeah, uh, we're gonna go ahead and kill uh Fed Reacts guys.
▲
Export Selection