From dead man walking, to live one talking: How one crime boss lived to tell the tale.
Australian gangsters, who tend to have the life expectancy of your average bumblebee, would do well to study the once feared Franzese US Mob family.
This meant Michael swapped the first law of medicine, Do No Harm, for the first rule of the mafia, Do Harm If It Is Good For Business.“I was visiting Dad in Leavenworth Penitentiary when I told him I was done with school and was going on the street. He said that if I was going to do it, then do it right,” Michael says.John nominated him to the Colombo family, where he was eventually in charge of 300 Mob members.
Franzese says that at its peak the business was generating $50 million a month, with him making $2 million a week.Hard to believe there was such a thing, but in 1986 he appeared on aHeadlines like that plus owning luxury houses, a private jet and a helicopter were always going to bring police attention, and he was arrested over the petrol racket.
And for 40 years police have been pushing for US-style RICO laws that can take isolated crimes committed years apart to establish a pattern of racketeering and can target apparently legitimate businesses that have been built on illegal funds.When his business partner in the petrol scam was prepared to testify, Franzese knew the gig was up.
He kept sending messages from prison that he was not informing, “But everyone does that.” It was when he didn’t turn up to testify and was still in jail that his former colleagues saw he was true to his word. Although some in his Mob family would never forgive him for walking away. He suspects if family boss Carmine Persico had not been jailed he would probably be dead.
On his forearm he has tattooed Proverbs 16-7, which is, “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” In Franzese’s former business you need all the help you can get. Franzese travels the world speaking to give his inside story on the mafia. He says there is a fascination with and at times a romantic image about the Mob, fed by countless books and Hollywood movies. He tries to separate the reality from the myth, he says.
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