Franzese - Ill make you an offer you cant refuse: insider business tips from a former mob boss

ILL MAKE YOU
AN OFFER YOU
CANT REFUSE

ILL MAKE YOU
AN OFFER YOU
CANT REFUSE

Insider Business Tips
from a Former Mob Boss

MICHAEL FRANZESE

2009, 2011 by Michael Franzese

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Scripture quotations, except those , are taken from HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

As for the exceptions mentioned above, they are taken from Holman Christian Standard Bible. 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Broadman and Holman Publishers. All rights reserved.

Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince and Other Writings, trans. Wayne A. Rebhorn (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003).

Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott, accessed via Project Gutenberg. EText No. 1232 .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009921620

ISBN 978-1-59555-426-0 (trade paper)
ISBN 978-1-59555-163-4

Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 15 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN
BLESSED WITH A SECOND OPPORTUNITY
TO SUCCEED IN LIFE.
DONT BLOW IT!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER TEN Pick Your Philosopher:
Machiavelli or Solomon?

Most people dont like reading long quotes. Indulge me:

CRIME PAYS. Annual gross income from the rackets will probably exceed $50 billion this year. That makes the mobs business greater than all U.S. iron, steel, copper, and aluminum manufacturing combined, or about 1.1% of GNP. These figures, compiled for the Presidents Commission on Organized Crime, include only revenues from traditional mob businesses, such as narcotics, loan-sharking, illegal gambling, and prostitution. They do not include billions more brought in from the mobs diversification into such legitimate enterprises as entertainment, construction, trucking, and food and liquor wholesaling.... The organization chart of a crime family or syndicate mirrors the management structure of a corporation. At the top of the pyramid is a boss, or chief executive. Below him are an underboss (chief operating officer) and a consigliore (general counsel). Then follow the ranks of capos (vice presidents) and soldiers (lower level employees who carry out the bosses orders). Like corporations, crime groups often rely on outside consultants.... Consultants are almost as popular with organized crime families as they are with corporations. These special counselorslawyers, labor experts, and political advisorsshuttle between members of the mob and moviemakers, hotel and casino operators, owners of professional sports franchises, corporate chief executives, and public officeholders....

Organized crime, a $50 billion annual industry? Revenues greater than U.S. Steel? Consultants, lawyers, and labor experts? A business structure similar to a major corporation?

Tony Soprano, what the heck happened to you?

No doubt about it: The information presented to the Presidents Commission on Organized Crime paints a far different picture of the mobs business operations than the one portrayed by Tonys sometimes inept crew of not-so-merry made men.

How do I know? I was a capo in the Colombo crime family when the commission made its report in the 1980s. I can tell you firsthand that Tony and his men may be entertaining, but they miss the mark when it comes to the mobs extensive and complex business dealings. Not to mention that if a real mob boss was caught pouring out his heart to some sexy psychiatrist, you can bet hed end up in the trunk of a car by the end of the week. At the latest. We didnt reveal our secrets to outsiders, not about business, not about anything. That would be considered a breach of confidence. And breaches of confidence are not tolerated in the life, more commonly known as La Cosa Nostra, translated from Italian as this thing of ours.

Business in the Life

Fortune magazine covered the Commissions report. It was 1986, and the editors ranked the fifty biggest mob bosses in terms of wealth and powerlike the Fortune 500 for wise-guys. I was one of the mobsters featured in the twelve-page spread. At thirty-five years of age, I held the distinction of being the youngest mobster to make the list. I ranked just five slots below John Gotti. The Dapper Don himself was ranked number thirteen, and that was after he allegedly orchestrated the infamous rubout of Gambino family boss Big Paul Castellano.

The reporter devoted a full page to summarizing the various operations I controlled and the intricate business scams I was alleged to have masterminded.

I had interests in labor unions, construction, entertainment, and sports. I ran numbers, bookmaking, and loan-sharking operations. I operated auto dealerships and repair shops. I had interests in nightclubs, restaurants, and catering halls. I controlled bankers and accountants. I had vice presidents and CEOs of major corporations on my payroll. I even dabbled in the stock market. And I was the boss of what proved to be the most lucrative enterprise the mob had seen since Prohibition, the wholesale gasoline business (more about that later).

My operation was pulling in $6 to $8 million a week, give or take a mil. Vanity Fair called me one of the biggest money earners the mob had seen since Al Capone. Tom Brokaw called me a prince of the mafia, as rich as royalty. I wonder if Jack Welch would have hired me to run a division of GE, or if I could have gone all the way and survived a season of Trumps The Apprentice. Oh, well. Life can sometimes be an endless string of blown opportunities.

My dad was happy. Sonny Franzese, my father, was the underboss of the Colombo family. He proposed my membership into the family. At the time, he was serving fifty years in the federal pen for a phony bank-robbery rap. But he was real proud of me as I shot up through the mob ranks, generating money from the streets in the way that Michael Milken was generating money from his junk bonds. Back then, and especially when he was out on parole, wethe mobs elder statesman and its young rising starwere quite the team to be reckoned with.

And there was a reckoning.

Calling It Quits

Former Manhattan U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani was the first G-Man to take a shot at me as a made man. He tried pinning a conviction for racketeering on me. Though Giulianis office was stealing national headlines as the most aggressive gang-busting squad of G-Men since the days of the Southern Districts own Thomas Dewey, I managed to beat the case.

Next came Ed McDonald and the Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn. McDonald and his team of FBI special agents had a bulls eye on my back for years. Let me tell you: these guys were relentless. McDonald had managed to make quite a name for himself a few years earlier when he flipped Henry Hill and took down the guys allegedly involved in the infamous Lufthansa robbery at New Yorks Idlewild Airport (since rechristened JFK International Airport). His accomplishment was so lauded that he was later cast to play himself in the movie