Michael Franzese on Gianni Russo, Crazy Joe Gallo, Carmine The Snake, Goodfellas (Full Interview)

alright here we go

michael

franzis welcome back to vlad tv this is uh your fourth time third time something like this we can't seem to get enough of each other vlad i don't know we're stuck together we're stuck together as well as millions of people tuning in to watch every time before you start um you actually have your own consulting business and your own youtube channel you want to talk about too right that's right yeah you know right we started youtube channel I actually had a youtube channel for several years, but i didn't know i had it. we have we're doing three a week now and uh it's taken off pretty well we've gotten over 300k subscribers in the last uh five months so we're nowhere near you vlad but we are uh I'd love to catch her. one day we'll see what happens but people have been great you know they've been tuning in and a lot of great feedback and yeah you also know as a result of covid you know I'm a speaker I've been doing after the last 25 years all over the world, but it all shut down this year I started doing personal and business coaching, life coaching and actually started a site it's

michael

francis.com we have over 9000 members now on our free site we're giving a lot of content for what I get personally. involved in that and then we have our inner circle part of my team where, um, they get a lot more involved with me, we'll put a lot of content in there, it's all about encouraging people, giving them hope, giving them some life lessons. lessons and it's working well, we actually started a big promotion today so we hope to get a few more people involved but it's growing fast and I think I have to thank them because they got me in front of their 4+ million subscribers. so I appreciate it very cool very cool I love it when I

interview

people and they go on and start their own, you know, YouTube type businesses on their own so, very cool and you know how are you coping with the whole pandemic ?

I spent three years in almost solitary confinement, so, well, I'm basically under house arrest in many ways here in California, because of all the lockdowns and state house orders, etc., but you know we're getting through it, you know that luckily I haven't gotten sick and no one in my family has really gotten sick, so we've done well there and, you know, for me, like I said, a lot more involvement with people and you. i know the business is growing and we keep moving forward i mean yeah everyone around me has been healthy too but i have personally

interview

ed two people who have died from greed wow one of whom was fred the godson who was in his early years. 30 he was pretty overweight and i think he had some s some asthma type conditions before the other person was actually frank colada oh you interviewed frank uh i did i did his last interview before he passed and you know just to note that he wasn't the healthiest guy when we did our interview he was he was on oxygen, you know, from time to time we had to stop, he had to take the oxygen mask, take a few puffs, you know, put it down and then continue with the interview, i forgot what you told me i had some kind of lung disease.

I think from having smoked most of his life but he ended up getting covid a few months later and passed away wow yeah it was dangerous for older people who had some kind of pre-existing disease or there was, you know, a pre-existing condition. Hit them harder. I didn't know Frank personally. I think I ran into him once on the leaning tower of Pisa when he was in Vegas, but you know, like many other people, he made some comments about me. I don't remember what they were but you know a lot of people Aple seemed to like him they liked the latte and I think he told some good stories and did some good things in Vegas so you know it's sad to see him go yeah rest in peace , Frank, I mean, I liked him, we knew it. just one interview, but it was a good interview and I'm glad he was able to tell the story of his life before he passed away because you know people might reference that interview we did that really told everything from start to finish. the moment we did it and it really encompassed everything else, you know, since our last interview there's been a lot of violence in hip-hop, a lot of rappers have been killed, um fpg duck, a Chicago rapper was killed in broad daylight day uh mo three were killed also in broad daylight a car chased him in dallas fpg duck uh he died in chicago his hometown and we recently interviewed one of our regular guests busy and as we were talking about the whole situation because fbg duck he was essentially o Fifth avenue rodeo drive in chicago he was shopping with a friend of his, you know, the louis vuitton store, the gucci store and everything else, a couple of cars pulled up and they just opened fire on him and killed him there same. in the middle of the street, uh, and then two other people, you know, the girl who was with him got shot, she tried to return fire, a guy who was asking for a selfie, he got shot in the middle too process but, uh, duck ended up getting killed and when I spoke to busy and we were talking about the situation, he said that that sounded like success because I always assume that you know if someone is going to kill someone, they have to feel like there's a chance reasonable that he gets away with it. don't be thinking about it no no no now when you're not thinking about oh all you'll be thinking about is so bad all you'll be thinking about is that money what do you mean? well money money who l like there was a money in his head like when they put bags on you of course don't think about the consequences you're thinking about that I'll spray any of you on the site on the site I wherever take you here when it's on the site you know especially if that bag is bigger than 20. they're going to be on the site oh okay so you want to tell me that's still a very real thing that someone will actually put something into of money on somebody's head and say okay if you kill him you can come collect me yeah that's how it all goes yeah from your point of view that sounds like a hit like all the brands yeah I I mean driving, I mean, they knew he was there.

It wasn't an accident, um, you know, obviously, I'm familiar with that kind of, uh, you know violence, so it sounds like a no-brainer to me, well, boosie said you know without naming any names or situations where it comes from, that it's baton rouge at hit cost anywhere between two thousand dollars and a hundred thousand dollars llars uh in the world you used to live in how much does a hit cost or if hits are just made based on you know your affiliation you have to do yeah , look at our lifetime uh you didn't pay for the hits you know uh if they were made within the family you didn't pay I mean you know when you were recruited into that lifetime you become a member that's your job if you they give an order to do something, you do it, you don't get paid for it. um you know and I hear stuff all the time there's a half million dollar contract in my head and blah blah blah and people have said that in the past well you know I don't know of any mobsters that have ever paid someone to have someone hit is something you're supposed to do so um and you know what guy is going to shell out half a million dollars to get someone killed so you know to have a number between two thousand and a hundred thousand that's not realistic for me in my life right now i can't comment on anything else i can't comment you know what's up ed in chicago uh with this particular situation but i know in our life we ​​don't pay for these things ok for example you have guys like him ice man who ended up passing away some years ago and was responsible for killing dozens and dozens of people, he was a hit man, he wasn't really part of any mafia family, well you know the story is roy demaio , uh, he was part of the uh dimeo team and that uh, dimeo he had recruited him to do some murder, er, even then. i never heard and if you know what i cant say if demayo paid him or not but i never heard he did and i think you know the story in the movie about kaklinsky was uh it was over the top i dont think it was. which uh close to may since that movie claimed he was um i'm not saying he wasn't a hitman i just don't know of any particular incident where he got paid so it's always done within the family that you never bring in an outside hit man or pay someone else outside, i'm not saying it's lis ten, i know there, uh, there might have been an incident or two that i found out about and was aware of was the westies, You know, it was a bunch of tough Irishmen in uh, in New York, where they might have been enlisted by you know our crew, one of our families to do a certain job, but even then I never heard they got paid for it or heard there was some kind of barter that you might know as a result of you working for us uh let's help you in this situation.

I can sit here and tell you that I've never heard of anyone, uh, in my previous life, getting paid to pull off a hit. Okay, so what you're saying is that a certain number of people sit down, agree. that this person has to go either they're about to testify against someone or they committed some kind of high level violation and then whoever is in that meeting will assign someone to do the job that's how it's normally done , yeah, okay, but now you're kind of tied into a conspiracy right because if you tell someone else to go, I?

They might turn around and say well, he told me to go and now multiple people are involved in this so why not just go and do it yourself and cut out the middle man one way. Well listen if he knows he watches. the ricoh act of federal racketeering laws i mean you know that's what happened that's what killed so many guys when i say they killed they charged so many guys and put them away for a long time because people became on informants and they said yes I did the job but he told me to do it so you know that under federal law and racketeering law you are just as guilty if you are involved in that type of conspiracy as the person who pulled the trigger and it's usually the person who pulled the trigger who becomes the informant or the snitch so you know they get out of trouble and they put the people who supposedly ordered it or were part of that conspiracy, they're the ones that do it all the time so yeah under the extortion statute anyone involved in any way eh is liable yeah i mean it's pretty

crazy

it's pretty

crazy

and you know you've been nest figures around you, like the grim reaper and so on i mean the numbers were probably exaggerated but plenty of bodies under his belt yeah i mean again you know there's always an exaggeration of the bodies the feds always , I mean, my father was supposedly killed by 30 or 40 people or maybe more than that, you know, um, you know they always inflate the numbers, I think or hear. something and they just throw it in the stat you know but look at the grim reaper i mean he has his reputation i think some of it is well deserved we all know he was an informant now for many many years and , you know but you know he cooperated and like I said the story is well known so you got involved with the mob in 1971 yeah you ended up dropping out because your dad went to prison and then you know you weren't done at that moment but that's when you first started getting your hands dirty and you started rolling around these guys now joe columbo was involved in the right godfather movie and i had this interesting interview with johnny

russo

how familiar are you with

russo

i mean look at him he's all over youtube you know he's out there as i am so i've heard a lot of his stories um what do you want me to tell you about vlad he has a lot to say huh according to him he has lived a life no one else has ever lived you know um you know if it's true or not who am I to question him I don't know okay he was affiliated with the columbos at least joe columbo yeah I mean I knew him yeah okay now before From the movie, there was some friction between Joe Colombo. and uh, the producers of the movie corrected uh, to the point where at one point the columbo family blew out the couple's front doors, you know Paramount Pictures? know about that stanley jaffe who and bobby evans were the presidents they moved them here now because someone blew the doors of paramount and in california on melrose avenue off the hinges they are 30 feet tall and that was a warning no i never heard that look, me, me, never. i heard something, it was the first time i heard that, um, you know, i know what joe colombo's involvement was, um, he was at a meeting of the italian american civil rights league in the in the park, shirt, park, plaza, park , hotel, center, I found out where it was. um when um one of the producers was already there and started talking to everyone about the movie and joe columbo put his stamp of approval on the best man because they had negotiated a couple of things the main thing was or one of the main thing was that the word mafia would not be used in theabout snow but obviously i wasn't intimately involved in any way and so i don't have any i probably don't have any more knowledge than you about this ok and gregory scarpa at the time he was hiv positive yes it was common knowledge or not um well i knew so what do i mean i think most people knew that yeah yeah you know back then when you heard that it was like wow you know that was serious did you hear how he contracted hiv? well i heard he got it from a transfusion you know from a trusted friend of his you know he was infected yeah i mean that was basically i mean larry told the story he basically said that greg would take tylenol every day to avoid getting a hangover and he did it for years and years until his stomach was completely messed up so he needed a blood transfusion he was too worried about getting a random blood transfusion from someone who might have AIDS so he chose her own man because she trusted him I guess he was a bodybuilder on steroids who ended up HIV positive after two or three operations his whole insides stopped bleeding again and it ended because the surgeon had left one of the arteries hanging down so what is about to die, needs blood, so they call all their friends and family to the hospital.

He wanted to give her his blood because he had already been tested and this is too early. This whole hiv thing was new, kind of like today with the corona virus. there half dead that one of his men gave him blood and his thought was that he knew that none of his men were gay eh not that there is anything wrong with that but he preferred to know that it was at that moment the possibility where he came from eh and he knew his best chance would be scared of the disease so 30 30 of us showed up they all give blood there's a match and it's one of his boys paulie paulie was a cute guy he had more girls uh uh but he was a weight lifter and we found out later that he used steroids in the past and they shared needles so one of the 30 was paulie and he matched so he gave his hiv contaminated blood to greg and greg became hiv positive i know i i i was the one i have to tell you i do remember because a couple of times i asked greg one time in particular i was there why do you always take his tylenol and you know and he said i want i want to be able to function the next day he would tell me so you know greg was a k abrupt ind of guy uh but yeah he did that i know for a fact he used to take tylenol all the time and we all knew he had seen it many many times yeah i mean very weird situation well you know he was a weird guy , yeah yeah I mean look it was good that was uh when we found out he was an informer I mean it wasn't good news you know because we were all around greg a lot well the war went on until '92 and then Arena was convicted of organized crime. and then also for the murder of osero in 1989 and other charges so arena got three life sentences plus 85 years yeah uh 92 were you out or in i was fine when you heard through rumors that oreno was essentially the boss right now i got three Life sentences plus 85 years, how did you feel?

Listen, you know, I knew that I knew Arena for most of my life because he was close to my father. but um you know look I mean that's when you hear you say damn I mean and you know the government got our number you know the same one I heard about the cheese you know who got 455 and I don't know how many more years they added to that i mean crazy numbers you know all it did was reinforce told me life was in a lot of trouble and especially if you were a high profile guy you had to do something because if you stayed in one life you were going to go under there was no question about it so there was just reinforcement good i mean along with sand uh get three life sentences uh 58 soldiers and associates uh were sent to prison 42 persico faction 16 arena faction uh 70 of the family members were convicted as a result of the war and it essentially cut the team in half from about 150 people to 75 people outside of what we mentioned were the people who ended up going to prison were those friends of yours yes I met to all those guys i mean almost all of them yeah you know and and and again um the safest place for me at the time was going to be in solitary confinement that's where i was i didn't want to be there and i didn't know it was going to work like that but it turned out you know even my dad because my dad wasn't around during that time too and he saved us because we would have been involved in some way no doubt well they were saying all this war really started because persico kept trying to keep control of the family in prison, well, he never would. give it up i mean he felt it was his you know he worked it he had his people installed on him he trusted arena and the deal we all knew i mean junior he told me we were in a bullpen i was with jerry lang and junior and he told me that vic is going to be our acting boss until my son ally comes home i said great you know but you know i always had my doubts about vic and they were personal i mean you didn't really know you talk a lot in that life you have you keep it, but persico will never leave him. there's no way it's not in his nature it would have been like you knew i'd leave him he wouldn't leave him it's in that nature to keep him so he went to war in the mid 90's uh there was this interesting kind of situation which came up with the columbos involved too uh they recently did a documentary about this on hbo called mcmillions i heard about it and this was it you know mcdonald's had this million dollar monopoly game where you would go in and every time you bought food you got these little monopoly cards you just did some scratching i remember as a kid i used to know i used to go to mcdonald's and buy these cars i never won anything and found out why i didn't win anything because jerry colombo was involved in this massive fraud where they stole 24 million dollars from mcdonald's by getting the winning pieces and then having multiple people claim they know about these bogus winnings and then would pay the columbos back s uh, did you hear about this when you were in lockdown?

Yes I heard about that. I didn't go in, obviously, I didn't hear all the details, but I did hear that there was some kind of scam. with mcdonald's yeah did you know jerry columbo i knew him i didn't know him well but i did know him i mean it's a crazy story uh i mean it's a completely crazy story but this almost seems regular from what you guys were doing i mean you had your gasoline camera and jerry had his mcdonald's camera yeah well i was actually mentioned i got that in that documentary towards the end i was mentioned as the one you know these were the two biggest scams ever and it was him and I that's what I mean I got so many texts and emails about it and you know people on social media.

Hey, can you explain it more? I didn't even know what they were talking about until I saw the small end of the clip, but yeah, then they mentioned me. involved with it, yeah, I mean, it was was crazy, it was Absolutely crazy and you know the people who ended up winning ended up losing anyway because they had to pay all the taxes and pay a lot of money back to Jerry and etc. pretty crazy, hey listen, you know, the guys on the street could be pretty innovative, pretty creative with their schemes. gave me a chance to explain this the last straw for me happened before i mean it was a bunch of things you know it wasn't one incident but i want to make it clear that i wasn't mad at anybody you know i had my little thing with junior and i had it but i wasn't mad at anyone i didn't want revenge on anyone i just saw that life was in a lot of trouble a lot of trouble and basically i didn't want to deal with uh with my family what i had to do with my my my my own family brother sisters mother and father er we were devastated family was destroyed and I said you know what I don't have longevity in this life because I'm too high profile at the time I had 17 or 18 arrests I had seven indictments two federal felony indictments organized, you know? so I was on the radar in a big way, no doubt the guys were going to know that I would start to trade me. make my exit so when i accepted myself into the extortion case it was part of my exit strategy back then that was in 1985. of the life there was no cooperation involved in that whatever the government had influence over the government because I beat him in the giuliani case, they thought they were going to convict me, it was a huge case, I beat him and the main witness in the gas The case was also the main witness in the Giuliani case and we destroyed it.

Heard it on the stand so now the government is nervous so it gave me the upper hand to negotiate a good plea deal so my deal I'll buy you some time pay you some money move to the west coast and when i get out of jail i have probation and maybe after 12 years the guys will forget about me that was the plan so i instituted that from the start alright and because you went personal i hit you yeah , because look, the government comes to me, when I'm in prison, it became a public life magazine that writes this big story about me resigning from the mob and, um, everyone thought that I would become a big witness testified that that It's what everyone does, you know? made a deal with the government so the person was mad at me obviously contract my life the government is coming in francis you're a dead man anyway they're coming to prison it's all over the street your father agreed to the contract this is what they say i'm well i'm in trouble ble like i don't know that right when i was walking away it wasn't part of the plan i thought i'd be able to do it quietly but it blew up that's when this all started to happen and that's when i texted my dad at that moment.

I told him: look dad, I'm not going to hurt anyone. I will go. you know me I'm going to maneuver this somehow, but tell everyone to relax. i'm not going to and that's how all this but it's personal i mean he didn't notice i heard a story you know i was in louisburg at the penitentiary they have three facilities there medium penitentiary and a camp i was in sock was in the penitentiary, one of the correctional officers told me that he got a copy of my book at that time, he left it and when he was reading it in his cell, he went berserk, started tearing the pages out and threw it against the wall. how mad he was at me, so, uh, you know, but then again, that's how this all started. i said look if i am going to preserve my life this is over especially for someone like me as important as me you said there are some new developments around this the situation recently you want to talk yes i want to talk about it because you know look now that i have this high aspect i have had a high profile for many years but now it's higher because i'm on youtube i'm doing a podcast i have a lot of stuff going on so for some reason there are people out there vlad i don't even know i never met them in my life never heard of them but you know they like to talk about me and always want to say that i was an informant yes i want to make this clear i never meant to hurt anyone in my previous life.

Did I talk to the government? Yeah, look, you have to understand the kind of person I am. I'm saying, hey, I want to make peace with the government so they'll let me. damn only when i get out thats what i wanted with them so yeah i will talk to them and i want to. say this whatever i told the government they had told them on thousands of hours of tape anyway you know gotti's 2000 hours of tape did more damage on those tapes than it could have done anywhere so that yes i agree there is a mob and yes you know persico is the boss all the things people knew without a doubt so i never meant to go to trial or hurt anyone i didn't do that guy deal, but I did two things, number one, they subpoenaed me to testify to a senate investigative committee on the infiltration of organized crime in boxing that was in the 90s, they subpoenaed me, many guys were subpoenaed at that time, but the reason i was subpoenaed is because a few years before that, i was the subject of a huge sting operation called shadow boxing, so all of a sudden this tape from last week comes out and people are like oh you said you never testified against nobody, but you did it, so I'm just clarifying They can call it whatever they want, but that's it. a and i'll say it again no one went to jail for nothing i said the norby walters case i think we talked about it norbie walters i'll do it briefly i saved noby walter's life three times persico wanted to kill him my father wanted to kill him and corki vestola wanted to kill him every time i saved his life because norby used our name and never paid that was the bottom line he was always using us never paying but i liked norby so i saved so when he got into trouble i had given him 250k to get into this business of sports agency ok i'm going to jail i never saw a money quarterback but when i'm in jail he's threateningto the athletes using my name and my father's name this is how we got involved the case so i told norbi norbi accept a statement i heard they are offering you 15 or 16 months i sent them a message through the prison he refused they summoned me again to come and testify I came and testified yes I don't know Did he threaten people on your behalf?

I have no idea that I was me. In jail, I don't know what he did, but yeah, I said he was my partner, I know Norfolk, 30-something, this tape recorder. There's no way I can deny it. I'm not going to take a perjury wrapper because of him, but at the end of the day I knew what he was doing. No one spent five minutes in jail. Forget anything else. I bring it up because they ask me you know there are some I can't explain there are some people it's like misery they like company people I never knew it has nothing to do with anything all of a sudden my name is being mentioned and a lot of it there are whistleblowers out there they talk about me like they're guys who testified against people who cooperated with the government they put people in jail forever and i want to make this clear no sami gravano sammy hasn't said a word about me so this isn't about him he doesn't, not at all, but there are other people who do.

I don't even answer. I don't mention names, but you give me a chance to clarify. I clear it up so that's all. know how much of this is going to go into the interview but I'm telling you so you know and uh whatever you want to put out it's up to you this is your show we all go out we don't really cut anything out when we do our interviews for that everyone understands to see this well, you left the mafia in 95, but you know that the columbo family is still a thing, yes, um, now there is an underboss of luchazi, anthony caso, right, you knew him, I knew castro, yeah okay and i guess around 2000 they talked about merging families tried to end the war yeah it was a conversation it never would have happened nobody nobody would agree to that okay because then in 2002 I guess with the help of the head of the Bonanno family, uh, Joseph Masino, they finally allowed Columbus to come back. on the commission quite a bit that's what i heard again i don't have first hand knowledge of that but my father told me that he was present at the time yes ok the commission still exists today i don't think so he would go away i doubt it's he's active either way um listen i can only tell you this there was a time i read the new york post every day every day it's one of the first things i do in the morning i'm always in touch with what is happening in new york years ago not a day had passed certainly not a week had passed in which you had not read about the organized crime mafia any of the five families all of us whatever now is every four five six months maybe I'll see a story that means whatever's going on, it's going very low key, guys went undercover and finally got smart if it's still going on and people aren't taking the chances they used to It's because you can't beat this government anymore.

I can't and I think they know, so I wouldn't watch the committee meeting. I think they would have to be crazy and I think they know there are so many whistleblowers out there. Vlad, who knows who's online now, I mean. I really mean when you press look I'll never forget uh long ago when n I was in mcc and gotti was there all the boys were there willie boyd johnson had a relationship with willie always shy raise money with him probably had a hundred grand that i hit him and vito guzzo on the street he got along with him but he was a loud guy and god knew i was shy to deal with him he said ok when we found out he was an informant for 25 30 years i was in seventh grade I think it's the 7th floor in mdc willie the guy was behind the glass that's a bad sign when they found someone behind the glass that's where a lot of the tipsters were and john had texted me try to talk to willie to see if he really is an informant good he is behind glass i could i didnt really talk to him but he used to hold a piece of paper willy is that true but as a 30 year old man how Do you know who today, who, who is talking to the government? be crazy if they're not very very careful and go undercover if they are ng anything they're crazy because they're going to get caught okay so at one point uh andy russo aka andy mush ends up taking over from the family, that's the current conversation, uh, now i want to, i want to make this clear, andrew russo, uh i love andrew to this day.

He was my first captain. He always treated me well. I have nothing but great things to say about Andrew. I don't know what's going on with him right now. I know it's been a long time. Heard he's just living his life um and he was Junior's first cousin okay because they say I guess he was acting boss from '94 to '96 but then I guess in the 2000s he took over control again. I think he becomes nice. risky and then and then from 96 i guess ali boy became the head of the family i know ali was in charge for a while yeah when he was home yeah ok and then in 2011 uh uh andy russo uh benjamin castellaso uh richard fusco were charged with murder, drug trafficking and labor racketeering so you have and all this other big series of arrests that's going on with the colombos well you see you're proving my point it's just I want to say this life is on a lot of problems, you know people have to be and this is the reason why I walked. away because look you have to make a decision I'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life because that's what's going to happen or to a large extent my family is going to be destroyed and from what you see now I want to tell you this the only one I disagree I love my father you know he passed away in February 103 years old I love my dad but we had an ideological problem and I told him dad what you don't understand is your involvement in this life destroyed our family my dad would never admit that he was not at fault for me blame because they framed me i said but dad they didn't frame you because you were a doctor a lawyer or a priest they framed you because you are a street kid and your profile became too high and as a result the family was destroyed ed i mean look sister dies of an overdose of drugs my brother is a drug addict so 25 years old he becomes a federal informant against my father and other boys my younger sister dies of cancer my mother is a hopeless case when she finally passes away in 2012 33 years without a husband what that woman went through forget it she wasn't quite there so i said dad i don't want to do that to my family because i just don't want to now that we had a real disagreement did my dad agree? with the contract on my life he probably did it because you know if I was going to be an informant then those are the rules you shouldn't do that I mean I heard he hit my brother and I know you know when my brother was against him I believe so I believe so I think my father would have pulled the trigger I don't think so but I don't know if he would have gotten in the way because he was too much a product of that life he meant my dad's legacy in that life he meant everything and you know that people have criticized Tell me well, you didn't do enough for your father towards the end, listen, you know, I mean we had a real ideological difference for 25 years.

I fought for my father's release. a lot but you know people don't know you know there's so much this life is so destructive to family and relationships and unfortunately it came between me and my father somehow but i never hurt my father i never talked about him never i said nothing wrong and i won't till today i just tell the truth we had a difference in our family situation i am not saying he didn't love his family but he put his life before his family 100 percent. Well I knew the story about your dad hitting you but I didn't know about your brother but your brother actually stood up to him and put him back in prison yes my brother my brother actually put him in prison. going back to prison twice was the basis of one of his uh probation saw olations we didn't know it at the time but then it came out and then yeah he used a wire on my dad and put it on and testified at trial and put him back in prison.

People sometimes think that I was the one who did that. It wasn't my brother, you know? But my brother, you know? He had a drug problem his whole life. I mean it was him. It was a mess and he'll tell you, Mike, our family was a mess. We were all screwed. above, I didn't know that you can tell my left hand from my right hand and it's true in a way, you know? uh reynolds maragni no ok so i guess in 2011 i guess this was the capo one of the capos yeah reynold moragi ended using a wire uh for the fbi uh to get information about the role of uh thomas uh gioli in the murder of tommy joey you know yes we met i don't know him well because again you know tommy came to power after i left i mean who was running the family for a while but you know you mentioned something else you mentioned his name he just passed over joey messina boss of the bonannos i knew him very well he became an informant while in prison with a huge sentence so I mean who do you trust you know I mean and he's a veteran a lot of guys are saying oh it's all the young can't handle no it's a lot of the old that changed a lot of the old and I shocked when i heard joey messina shocked me i'll be honest with you he was already doing a long time the case i'm talking about was thomas jolie's role in the murder of william catolo aka wild bill yeah uh you knew very well about bill yeah we were we were in the same era he was in during my time yeah ok and this guy was known for doing a bunch of murders supposedly again i didn't have much to do with him so I don't know, okay, wild bill or billy fingers, was he considered one of the crazy ones in the crew? or just a normal guy yeah you know I didn't see him that way no he wasn't considered that way I mean at least st during my time I mean I knew him well we were in each other's presence quite a bit um, i didn't see it that way i liked him you know he was a nice guy well on march 7th 2019

carmine

persico finally died in prison yeah this is a guy who hit you when you find out he died it was like a sigh of relief or sadness or nothing or what happened you know vlad lemme lemme lemme put it this way i knew i liked junior i really liked him i knew when i walked away i was going to get in trouble because i took an oath and i violated my oath by just walking away and talking about life not necessarily putting people in trouble but by talking about life even though there was nothing else to learn because we were so caught up between surveillance and informants and wiretaps.

Everything you needed to know. i had the same lawyer he had bruce cutler i had john jacobs angelo r uggierio i was in the lawyer's office listening to the 000 hours of tapes that were as a result of the mistake in rogerio's house and the apartment john used to sit on the ravenite there was just so much information on those tapes about life about the structure about the names of the people that are mentioned there is nothing else the government knows everything they know everything so you know life was falling apart so i knew when i left that junior was going to be very upset with me without a doubt and I knew that what to do with someone who walks away has put a contract on his life according to our life the oath we took so it was not a surprise to me it was not how could how dares junior to do that he knew that I was going to face that with the consequences, but he also had a plan on how to defeat that I will move to California.

You're not going to call me into a room and blow my brains out. That's not going to happen. you're going to have to come and chase me and and find me and i'm aware of this i'm alert i know it then i knew i was going to face that so no i can't say i was mad at junior the same way i wasn't i was hurt by my dad he was okay with that, you know, in a devastating way, but i also understood and forgave him for that, i know it sounds crazy, my wife thinks i'm crazy when i say that, but i was too much a product of the life that i got it i got it right persico died mm-hmm uh i felt bad when he died honestly i mean he spent 30 odd years he spent most of his life in prison let's be real yeah but you know yeah i felt bad honestly persico died, uh the acting boss alfons persico is serving a life sentence yeah and the last known street boss uh andy russo is over 80 so they really don't know who's running colombo these days no I do not know. i don't think they really do i don't know look andrew he's a very smart guy i can tell you he's very smart very capable and like i said i loved andrew and until today and um obviously we didn't talk but i love them i mean i went on good terms with andrew yeah i mean it seems you know i mean there was recently even you know last year in october of last year uh capo joseph amato along with danielcapaldo and thomas uh scorcia were indicted uh for extortion and loan sharking which is why you still see the colombos on the news sometimes and they get caught so they're still around but it seems like they've become a lot more silent that used to be fine listen if they didn't then no one would be around they would have wiped everyone out but uh I don't know look you know if the government continues to put as much pressure on that life as it did in between.

In the 80s there will really be problems, it will go away. I don't think that's the case because now what is the government? You know about terrorism and cybercrime and stuff like that but they haven't completely moved away from that you know investigating that life but it's different it's different it's not the same let me tell you the golden age of my previous life it was from the 50's to the mid 80's sami the bullet tells you that's when we had it going and then in the mid 80's it started to fall apart i don't think it's coming back well you're a trump supporter I am a supporter of Trump's politics, I absolutely believe his agenda for the United States was the right one, without a doubt, it's fine and I remember that you made a video on the eve of the elections, finally, he ended up losing, he lost the popular vote, he lost the electoral college, the final elections of the electoral college have been the votes. he counted and he lost, but not according to him, he still feels like he won, you know there was, you know, when i interviewed johnny russo, he mentioned this, this conspiracy that the philadelphia mob had like 30,000 fake votes or something, in actually looked up The story it's based on a fake news site essentially pretends to be a real news site but it was a fake news site you know skinny nikki the guy runs the philadelphia mob no no I'm familiar, okay, they paid him three million, he's freaking out. they handed them they handed him 30,000 blank spaces and they paid the guys a thousand dollars an hour overnight to fill them in how stupid they were that morning they handed out thirty thousand dollars in thirty thousand ballots none of them were for trump how do you have thirty thousand million idiot at least give them a thousand two thousand I have two other cities all this evidence is in the supreme court no one else because they know the media is not going to help them johnny russo decided to jump on it he knew he knew it was a false story and he jumped on it , you know what that says we left it a bit we left it in the footage but we didn't title it because I didn't want youtube to take our channel down right and s or forward exactly um you know do you feel like uh trump got robbed or do you think he lost fairly?

I mean, I think it's clear that there have been some irregularities and I think a lot of it is caused by greed and write-in votes and things that happened. I can't say that that caused Trump to lose the election. I'm not saying that, um, you know, he looks as far as I'm concerned, he lost, he's not the president anymore and Joe Biden is going to be sworn in on January 20th, so it's like that, I mean I'm accepting it and I'm. i think trump will probably be accepted at this point but look this is what i say about trump for four years this guy is under severe attack every day like nothing i've ever seen before you know and we all have to admit you know he's in a and he's a New Yorker he's fighting all the time he's always on defense always defensive always defensive so I think he feels good now no matter what they stole from me at three in the morning I was ahead and we woke up and i'm behind and i think he's going to stay at it forever and maybe he's i don't know vlad i don't know i mean do you know people send me information say all these things that happened and but nothing has been proven yet so that if nothing has been proven we have to accept the fact that trump lost and biden is the new president and trust me i will take hits from this from trump side and if i would have said anything else the blind side will come out you cant win with this, I know, but m anger i feel i feel bad for trump in a way because the guy the guy took such a beating for years i will say this i think it was i think the media is terrible the way they act in this country i mean , really I mean you know if a story is a story just let the story out let the people deal with it and think ab find out what they do but don't hide it you know you don't think stuff, that's not what the media is supposed to do, they're supposed to report the news, period good, better and different, that's what bothers me, well you're someone who's been prosecuted by giuliani a who you've known for many years when you see giuliani being trump's lead attorney and you mention all these cases, all of which were thrown out, you know you just lose case after case after case does that kind of amuse you? kind of o or what you know is it's kind of funny you know i mean i guess you really have to believe it though i mean giuliani was a good prosecutor let's be real um you know i'd be doing this otherwise i don't think it was true.

You know I don't know, but he's also a smart prosecutor. Well, they knew you as the yuppie. name for you hell no i don't know i don't know how i got that name but it's stupid ck and i didn't like it uh sammy the bull has a new podcast yes i checked it i did i didn't do it right me and sammy we've been talking uh-huh um you know we may or may not do something in the future but i talked to him i talked to his son too i think he's a great storyteller i think he tells it like it is and look there's no denying who he was Sammy and as far as I know the story is accurate I think he's doing a good job yeah yeah I've got to check it out I've heard good things about it yeah I know it's good and uh listen Sammy has 75 years old and uh you know he's a grandfather and a father and you know he's calmed down in his life and he's trying to do the right thing I think so I agree interesting guy like I said we've had uh we had a couple of conversations we've had at least one conversation that i can remember yeah very interesting guy if uh you know i ended up doing an interview uh with someone What do you know uh mike tyson yes uh I don't know if you have I've seen him around.

In fact, we had the boxer Zab Judah. Do the interview. No, I didn't watch the interview, but yes. I'll check. Yes. Mike is a very interesting boy. You know the level of honesty that he's basically able to tell because even though I didn't do most of the interview, we put up all the questions and he admitted to everything, he didn't try to dodge any question that he asked. I'm not trying to say that's not what happened from using drugs to wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, just the mistakes he himself made along the way were extremely interesting, you don't see too many people who would actually admit it. to his mike tyson level failings yeah i don't know if there's any guy more honest than mike i mean he's you know he has no filter he just tells it like it is but he's really as honest as they come and i really respect him for that you know i really do it and you know i'll be around soon i'll hang out with him i also did the hot boxing thing with him it was a great interview we had a good time and he lives here in newport beach one of his places so um you know i also made friends with a couple of people around him but he's a great guy well at one point mike got a little annoyed with me because i jumped in and asked a couple questions at the end and um you know Off camera he was asking me about a lot of the street guys I interviewed as the key feed.

Do you know who is involved in Tupac's murder? Or this guy, Brian Frosting Gibbs. one of the questions i asked was hey you know you seem to know you get along with a lot of street kids and uh mike said what do you mean by that? oh, and it was kind of like this moment like it was okay. you seem to know these guys what are you trying to say here you are this multi-millionaire and you know you seem to have always been attracted to the guys who are still on the streets to some degree do you think that is a fair statement? you're never attracted to them well you're not attracted to them but i mean you like having them around you are friends with them and you mean they're like giving it to them i'm just asking dammit i like you do you think i'm friends what do you think you think i like having them around you just got really good on zip so yeah you know who doesn't know what these guys are when you talk what about me?

I'll talk whatever I'm right but no those guys are those are the guys that when I'm whoever I am a nobody I mean those are the guys that live in the same building with me they give my mom salt or sugar if you need milk and what was actually funny was that he was interviewing a comedian who is a regular on faison love and he compared it to the scene in

goodfellas

the the joe fisher funny how oh what do you mean what do you mean say funny like what a clown for your amusement like it's one of those times where you're like it's like it's like that you know i felt like you know being in that joe pesci scene well i'm trying to explain my way out of this without you things go completely to the left but uh mike is still mike yeah luckily uh you were on zoom with him right? in the room alright yeah mike is uh he's great you don't want to get on his bad side and by the way those uh

goodfellas

scenes are like the whole you know funny how or you know the whole situation from Shine Box was totally like that. made up or based on real situations no i was improvised uh peshe he was great at that he uh yeah i mean the stare pressure was around the guys so he knew but it's cool yeah he had lived that which wasn't in the original script not really in any way oh wow ok yeah i mean not like ok i'm not saying the scene wasn't there that scene wasn't there but the dialogue they improvised certainly ok because your character was played in Goodfellas, yes, there was a Michael Franzis, you know, in one of the bar scenes. i have played de niro pesci uh pacino gangsters and so on who do you think he has actually played him better? i think armando asante um he was brilliant in the hbo movie gotti i thought he was brilliant he played the part tremendously i think anthony quinn brilliant played neil de la croach brilliantly um joe pesci i mean he captures that kind of guy like no one else can capture he is brilliant pacino in uh donnie brasco with guns left handed lefty brilliant ruggiero i mean these are my favorites you know and i have to tell you you know i'm doing a segment on the sopranos i never watched that show when it came on sporadically ally i would watch it but i watched the first season and i'm on season two and uh tony soprano i mean gandolfini just killed played a brilliant part in it but he really did and i'm watching it now it was brilliant so i mean that's those are my guys oh yeah i mean sopranos was one of the best tv shows of all period period period so very well done and uh you know when you see that show and you watch the first season pretty accurate yeah you know a lot about yeah the dynamic was pretty accurate I told you you know what I think is the dysfunction of the family for me was the highlight of that show you know, to show how families are affected by the members of that life and um, you know, I mean I related it to my own family for sure, and I think most families you know have someone who is involved in that life you know they turn out the same way so um but yeah it was pretty accurate I mean the way he behaved himself and his crew and the family dynamic and yeah it was pretty accurate yeah I still love one of the great series man i absolutely love it and you're right they show a human side because you know you have a tv series instead of just a movie you could actually show a lot more relationships and a lot more interactions than you can see in a hour o and a half exactly on the screen well michael franzis always a pleasure you seem to be doing great you know while it was going on. my notes and i looked up your age and i said 69 i'm like ok maybe this is just a typo and he's going to tell me it's wrong for 10 years or something but i'm worried at 69 you look great you sound great huh you know what you have a stable life you have a great family um you know sadly you lost your father but he didn't live too long 103 years 103 that's right he survived everyone he certainly survived everyone uh i wish you all the best man happy holidays i appreciate the same to you and I'm sure we'll meet a win yes sir see you next time ok thank you bye