Former mafia boss who made $10 million a week for seven years reveals what he learned about business in the crime organisation

A former mafia boss who made $10 million a week for seven years revealed what he learned about business in the crime organisation.

Michael Franzese, from New York, who served as a caporegime in the Colombo crime family spoke candidly about the crime organisation and life afterwards with Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast.

The dad-of-seven, who has now rebuilt his life after a stint in prison as a motivational speaker and TV personality, explained how he entered the criminal life in the footsteps of his father John Franzese who was a high ranking ‘underboss’ of the Colombo family.

The 73-year-old explained how one certain mafia tactic could be applied to ‘civilian’ businesses that he claimed was ‘tremendous’ in any business negotiation. 

He said: ‘There’s sometimes you can walk into a room and be the smartest person in the room – you don’t want anyone to know that, you want people to just talk. Throw them a bone so that they’re going to come back and talk so you can learn the personality of the person. 

‘You can learn so much from people just when they talk and you can keep quiet. There’s other times when you’re not the smartest person in the room – and by keeping quiet nobody knows that.

‘It’s a tremendous technique and in that life it was extremely valuable for me. I was always the last guy to talk. It helped me master that art because you had these guys [in the mafia] that were very smart. If they hadn’t been successful in that life, they’d have been somewhere else.’ 

Elsewhere he claimed that to be a good boss you can’t micromanage your staff, saying ‘I do what I do best, delegate the rest.’ 

He said: ‘You can’t micromanage because when you micromanage you’re taking yourself away from your best talent. I always said ”do what I do best delegate the rest” and then hopefully you have the talent to motivate the people and get the most out of them.

He added: ‘I tell people get your personal life in order because normally your business is going to be a reflection of your personal life in some way shape or form and you can’t do one well and do the other not good because they’re going to affect one another.’   

The ex-member of the Colombo family once made a staggering ‘$10m a week’ over seven years through gasoline taxes and shell companies based in Panama.

During this period, as authorities tried to collect taxes, his firm would declare bankruptcy, a tactic repeated from 1985 to 1992. 

This scheme cemented his status as one of the most successful Mafia earners since Al Capone.   

Michael who served as a caporegime in the Colombo crime family spoke candidly about the crime organisation and life afterwards with Steven Bartlett (pictured) on his Diary of a CEO podcast

Speaking about a 29-month stint in solitary confinement Michael said ‘three words’ were vital for his survival.

‘You know, my father taught me again. He said, ‘Mike, I’m gonna tell you three things that are gonna help you when you go to prison because you’re gonna go one day’.’

‘He said three words that are gonna go a long way – ”please, thank you, excuse me”. And he said the reason for that, he said all these guys in prison that never got respect on the street, they want it all in there.

‘They want to show they’re people, you know, that they’re tough guys or whatever. You bump into somebody, ”Excuse me’; you wanna cut somebody on the line, go to eat whatever, said, ”Do you mind?” 

You know, ”Excuse me; please, if I can come in front of you?’ Don’t ever just get in front of them… and somebody hands you something… ‘Hey, thank you, thank you very much’. Be cordial.’

He described the experience as ‘rough’ and ‘not easy’, noting that he saw others who ‘did not do well’ under such conditions. Michael expressed his opposition to solitary confinement for young people, labelling it a ‘form of torture’. 

He justified how the mafia kills people saying ‘they only killed their own’ meaning people within the organisation. 

He said: ‘People think when we take the oath of omertà, which is an oath to stay silent, it’s not an oath to lie, steal, cheat and kill, but does that happen as part of that life, yes, but we’re told straight out.

He claimed there is an induction period which lasts over a couple of years were the bosses test potential recruits by given them tasks

‘You come into that life, you are told straight out, we have rules, you don’t ever violate another man’s wife, daughter,sister, girl, never that’ll cause you to die.

‘During my era we weren’t allowed to deal with drugs, you deal with drugs and you get caught you die. If you are not honest with people, you disrespect somebody, you hit another main guy, then you die. 

‘Now we understand that and they tell you your best friend may be the one that pulls the trigger because the life comes before anything that’s it, you know don’t violate the rules that’s how we maintain control in this life that’s how we existed for a 100 years, and that’s how it’s going to stay.’

Michael said there was a lot of ‘nepotism’ in the mafia life saying father’s usually get their son’s into the organisation.

He claimed there is an induction period which lasts over a couple of years were the bosses test potential  recruits by given them tasks. 

He said: ‘For two and a half years I was in a recruit pledge period where I had to do anything and everything I was told to do prove myself worthy.

‘There was a lot of authority, a lot of alleged respect, you had a meeting at 8:00 and you weren’t there at 7:30 you were late, you can never be late in that life.

‘Drive the boss to a meeting sit in the car for three, four, five hours, god forbid you leave, you go to the restroom get a newspaper, he comes out you’re not there, oh my gosh, we could have had trouble.’

Elsewhere Franzese revealed how seeing a dead body of someone he loved changed his life forever.

He explained that after his father went to prison, a man who had become like a ‘second dad’ known as ‘Arty the animal’ was murdered. 

He said: ‘I was 19 or 20 and I walked into the funeral parlor, I’ll never forget his sister came up to me and hugged me, and she said you need to come with me, you need to look at what these animals did to my brother.

‘I’ll never forget the words, the coffin was closed and she opened the coffin and he was unrecognizable, there’s a guy I loved, I didn’t faint but it got to me, it really got to me, I had never seen anything like that before in reality, especially somebody I really cared for, really loved and it did have an impact on me there’s no question but somehow I was able to get beyond that as a young person.

‘That was a defining moment in my life to be able to move on from that and then continue to move into the life because I said this is part of it.’

Now Michael is the best-selling author of books such as, Blood Covenant and I’ll Make You an Offer You Can’t Refuse: Insider Business Tips from a Former Mob Boss.