Michael Franzese Walked Away From Millions... And the Mafia

Michael said he sees himself as fundamentally the same person he was at the height of his mafia involvement, but with a different mindset and way of living. The interview framed his life as a progression from organized crime and criminal business, through prison, to faith, family, legitimate business and redemption.

He said he originally had no intention of joining the mafia and was pursuing medicine instead. He was an athlete and a pre-med student at Hofstra University on Long Island, while his father was a highly visible organized-crime figure who was repeatedly arrested and tried.

His father's imprisonment changed the direction of his life. Michael said his father was convicted in 1967 of masterminding a nationwide bank-robbery conspiracy, received a 50-year sentence, and went to prison in 1970; Michael described it as the longest sentence imposed for that conspiracy up to that point.

Joe Colombo, boss of the Colombo family, became a mentor to Michael after his father went away. At the same time, friends of Michael's father repeatedly told him that if he remained in school instead of helping, his father would die in prison.

Michael left college largely because he wanted to help the father he regarded as his hero. His father initially objected because he wanted Michael to become the family's first professional, but also told him that he had been framed in the bank-robbery case; Michael said he believed him because, in his experience, his father had never lied to him.

His father ultimately sponsored him for mafia membership. Michael explained that a person could not simply volunteer to join; an existing member had to sponsor, vouch for and formally propose him. Michael was about 20 when his father did so.

Michael spent roughly two-and-a-half to three years as a recruit before becoming a made member. He said recruits had to follow orders and prove themselves before being admitted.

He was inducted on Halloween night in 1975 in a secret ceremony at a Brooklyn catering hall connected to Joe Colombo's son. Michael and five other men arrived late at night while taking precautions against police surveillance, and each entered the ceremony individually.

The induction was structured around the mafia hierarchy and a blood oath. Michael described the boss, underboss, consigliere and captains arranged before him; his finger was cut, blood was drawn, and a burning image of a Catholic saint was placed in his hands while he swore that betrayal would mean death and damnation. He entered at the rank of soldier.

His rapid success as a young member created resentment among older made men who had spent 25 or 30 years in the organization. Although made members were formally considered equals, Michael learned to give older men extra deference and to be diplomatic without surrendering his own standing.

He regarded reading the room as a survival skill, not merely a social skill. He would voluntarily give an older member more respect than rank required, but said there was a point beyond which deference became unacceptable disrespect or exploitation.

One dispute involving a man under Michael, Jerry Zimmerman, escalated to a demand that Zimmerman be killed. Zimmerman had insulted a made member from another family; at the resulting sit-down, an older Genovese-family member demanded his death, while Michael refused to surrender his own man even though he knew Zimmerman had behaved improperly.

That confrontation lasted about three hours and moved from threats of killing to threats of hospitalization before Michael found a face-saving settlement. The underlying dispute involved a supposedly defective car from Michael's dealership; Michael offered the complainant a new car at his own expense and allowed the older mobster to tell his people that he had defeated Michael in the argument.

The car settlement illustrated Michael's preference for giving an opponent status when doing so cheaply prevented a more dangerous escalation. He considered losing the value of one car preferable to taking the dispute to the two family bosses, where the outcome became less predictable.

At the time of the interview Michael said he was approaching 74, while much of his team was in its mid-20s. He strongly endorsed "reverse mentorship": younger colleagues handle areas such as digital marketing, production, social media and new technology, while they draw on his experience and judgment.

He deliberately avoids pretending to be technically strong in areas where younger colleagues are better. His attitude toward technology is essentially that he wants it to work rather than wanting to understand its mechanics; when something breaks, he calls his younger children or team to solve it.

His wine-business partner was 25 and, according to Michael, had done much of the work of building the business over the previous three years. Michael said the younger partner also made mistakes that Michael's experience helped correct, which he presented as the value of combining generations.

Michael drew a distinction inside organized crime between "gangsters" and "racketeers." In his description, gangsters performed the organization's basic enforcement and street work, whereas racketeers knew how to operate businesses and make money; a successful racketeer still had to be capable of the gangster side when required.

He argued that status alone could not turn someone into an effective operator. Members who assumed the mafia badge entitled them to automatic respect often failed; he believed business instinct was partly innate, although people could still improve their abilities through experience and work.

His core negotiation rules were preparation, emotional control and the willingness to walk away. He said losing one's temper means losing leverage, whereas calmly saying a deal will not work and leaving often causes the other side to reopen negotiations.

Mafia negotiations taught him to prove a point without unnecessarily insulting the other person. He said that if another made man was lying, directly calling him a liar could itself cause Michael to lose the dispute; instead, he had to know the facts well enough for the supervising boss to recognize the lie independently.

Michael tries to anticipate deliberate provocation before entering a meeting. He cited an appearance with Bill Maher as an example: because he expected Maher to try to get a reaction from him, he regarded remaining composed as refusing to let the other person control the encounter.

He described two business abilities as more important to his success than being unusually brilliant: recognizing a promising opportunity and putting the right people around it. He also emphasized motivating people and having them genuinely buy into the mission; someone useful but uncommitted might serve a short-term purpose without being a long-term fit.

When choosing between a great idea and a great person, Michael said he would choose the person. His reasoning was that ideas are common but execution determines whether they become businesses; he recalled regularly hearing pitches for opportunities on Mondays during his earlier business life.

He describes himself as a risk taker, but insists that his risks are calculated rather than impulsive. He attributed much of his ability to judge opportunities to accumulated experience, including mistakes and failed judgments along the way.

The pandemic forced a major change in his view of social media. Roughly 43 or 44 speaking appearances were cancelled; after years of traveling about 40 weeks annually, he initially welcomed staying home and resisted his younger team's argument that he should move online.

His younger team eventually persuaded him to launch a YouTube presence around August of the pandemic year, and he said it grew rapidly. The experience changed his view of digital media: he came to see social platforms as both brand-building tools and unusual advertising channels that can themselves generate revenue.

Michael said his decision to speak publicly about his criminal past began as a faith-based mission after prison. Churches, professional sports organizations and colleges began inviting him to give his testimony, and he realized public fascination with the mafia gave him a platform for a different message.

He found that fascination extended well beyond places where he was already known. Midwestern church appearances advertised simply around "the mob guy" drew standing-room-only audiences, while a Singapore appearance before about 1,800 people produced a question-and-answer session lasting roughly two hours despite his host expecting little audience participation.

He spent 29 months and seven days in solitary confinement and described prolonged isolation as extremely damaging. He called it a form of torture and said he had seen other prisoners, particularly younger ones, suffer severe emotional consequences from it.

The spiritual turning point followed a return to prison after he had already served five years and then spent 13 months on parole. Michael said he violated parole in circumstances he characterized as a government trap, was arrested outside a bank in Brentwood, California, and then saw authorities search his home, freeze or seize his finances and take his vehicle while he had a wife and two small children.

He said authorities were angry that he would not cooperate and told him he would never see the street again. Michael also believed he could not safely enter the general prison population after walking away from organized crime and described himself as caught between enemies in the mob and government.

At 41, he reached what he described as the lowest night of his life. Having visited his father in prison for about 25 years and having served eight years himself, Michael said the prospect of spending the rest of his life confined left him wanting to fall asleep and not wake up; the experience also changed his earlier judgmental attitude toward people experiencing suicidal despair.

A prison employee eventually pushed a Bible through the slot in Michael's cell after noticing his condition. Michael said that moment began a 29-month spiritual investigation during which his wife sent him books on multiple faiths and he filled his prison Bible extensively with notes.

Michael said he chose Christianity because he believed the historical, prophetic and personal evidence supported it. He specifically cited his conclusions about Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection, biblical prophecy and Jesus's character.

His father's earlier moral teaching influenced how he evaluated Christianity. Despite his father's criminal life, Michael said his father emphasized integrity, honesty and proper treatment of women and children; Michael later examined Jesus first as a man and concluded that trying to imitate that character would improve both one's own life and the lives of people around them.

Proverbs 16:7 became especially important to him because it addressed peace with one's enemies. Michael encountered the verse during his worst night in solitary, when he felt surrounded by enemies on both sides of the law; he said it prompted him to consider that changing his own conduct might change what followed.

His wife was already Christian before his conversion, but he said he had initially listened respectfully without accepting her beliefs. He did not describe an audible voice, vision or dream; rather, he described the change as an internal realization followed by sustained study.

Michael has seven children, and his public profile made hiding his past from them unrealistic. They experienced the media attention and visited him in prison, so he tried to be truthful while still withholding details he believed children did not need.

Even his wife has not received a complete, detailed account of his roughly 20 years in the mafia, he said. He has discussed more with his two sons than with his daughters, but believes his conduct and the values he tried to instill matter more than recounting every event.

His view of parenting is that parents can teach values without controlling the adult their child becomes. When his wife asks where they went wrong after a child makes a bad decision, Michael's answer is that their children eventually become independent people responsible for their own choices; rejection of parental values does not automatically mean the parents failed.

A childhood exchange with his uncle became the foundation of Michael's extreme emphasis on personal responsibility. At about 10, after his strict mother had disciplined him, his merchant-mariner uncle made him look up "sympathy" in a dictionary and told him never to look for it again; Michael said he never forgot the lesson.

He now deliberately asks what he could have done differently even when another person wrongs him. His reasoning is that asking why he failed to recognize someone's character or warning signs makes him more perceptive and less dependent on blaming others.

Michael considers choosing the right spouse one of the most consequential decisions of his life. He said that without meeting his wife he is "1,000%" certain he would either be dead or still imprisoned.

He distinguishes between condemning the mafia lifestyle and declaring every participant inherently evil. Michael said good people can do terrible things, but called the lifestyle itself destructive because of the damage he saw it inflict on families.

He used his own family as the clearest evidence of that destruction. His mother spent 33 years without her husband while Michael's father ultimately served 40 years; their marriage became bitter, one sister died from a drug overdose at 27, his brother struggled with drug addiction for decades, and a younger sister who was never mentally stable died at 40.

By the time Michael met his future wife, then 20, he said law enforcement had already indicted him seven times, taken him to trial five times and arrested him 18 times. He concluded that continuing the mafia life would inevitably drag her into it, so he chose the relationship and began trying to leave that world.

He credited his wife with making him both a better and a more thoughtful person and described her as his "rock." At the time of the interview, he said they were approaching 40 years together that May.

Michael rejected the interviewer's suggestion that he had implicated New York Yankees players in game fixing. A self-described diehard Yankees fan, he said investigators had tried to get him to implicate Yankees but he refused; he then distinguished that claim from the broader gambling operation he acknowledged running.

He said roughly 12 bookmakers operated under him because organized crime financed bookmakers and handled collections. Athletes sometimes accumulated gambling debts with those bookmakers, creating leverage that Michael said could then be exploited.

Michael described allowing an athlete's gambling debt to grow substantially before confronting him, sometimes from around $50,000 to $250,000. In his account, debt could then be converted into repayment demands or pressure to influence athletic performance, making the gambling debt itself the instrument of control.

He said game manipulation focused on point spreads rather than necessarily deciding who won the game. He described indebted players deliberately making mistakes and the possibility of a cooperating referee changing playing time or foul calls enough to affect a spread; he said such arrangements could generate substantial profits.

Michael believes professional athletes today are less vulnerable to this particular leverage because their incomes make large gambling debts easier to cover, but he sees college athletes as more exposed. He specifically blamed the ease of gambling by phone for increasing access and problems among students.

He said he has spoken at more than 300 Division I and Division II schools and has received messages about gambling problems after every one. His practice was to invite student-athletes to contact him confidentially, without names or school involvement, and he said messages would already be waiting by the time he returned to his hotel.

His earlier business activity was highly diversified, spanning gambling, gasoline ventures involving Russians, film and car dealerships. Michael's view is that diversification is sensible only when the entrepreneur has the ability, work capacity and time to supervise the additional businesses.

He rejects absentee management as a general operating model for himself. Even when strong people were placed in charge, he wanted them to know he was paying attention and would not enter a business unless he believed he could devote enough time to oversee it.

One example was a distressed Mazda dealership acquired when failures of Mazda's Wankel engines had badly damaged demand. Michael said the previous owner was near closing; he developed other sources of revenue while waiting for Mazda to fix the product problem and ultimately built the operation into what he described as the biggest Mazda agency in the Northeast.

An early mafia business lesson taught him how the organization's internal economics worked. An associate hijacked a load of meat that Michael sold for nearly $7,000; Michael handed all the money to his captain and received only about $600 back.

Michael's father then taught him to separate reporting an activity from surrendering control of its proceeds. Mafia activity had to be "put on record" with the boss both for protection and so leadership could monitor members, but his father advised Michael to personally hand over a fixed 25% rather than give leadership all the money and let them decide what to return.

That 25% became Michael's default internal formula for scores that were his own rather than true partnerships. If another person was actually a partner, the economics could be negotiated separately; otherwise, he said he learned to establish the percentage himself to avoid being taken advantage of.

His closing advice to young people centered first on responsibility: admit mistakes rather than reflexively blaming someone else. He emphasized that he still makes mistakes and sees willingly owning them as essential.

He also stressed choosing associates carefully because people are influenced—and judged—by the company they keep. Accountability, in his formulation, shapes a person's direction; his own order of accountability is God first, family second and then the people who depend on him personally or professionally.

Michael advises against unnecessarily burning bridges even when ending a relationship. He distinguished cutting an unhealthy person out of one's life from destroying the relationship in a way that permanently eliminates possible future cooperation.

He explicitly rejected the idea that everyone should become an entrepreneur. Some people are better suited to being skilled employees, he said, and businesses like his could never exist without capable people who prefer those roles.

Michael now wants his legacy to center on rebuilding community rather than his mafia history. He believes modern life is losing family and community bonds and has created a community combining entrepreneurship, leadership, negotiation, workplace guidance and Bible study, in which he says he participates personally rather than merely licensing his name.

He regards the breakdown of families and local community as a root cause of many broader social problems. His stated goal is to bring people together around common interests in ways that create positive change, and he said that is how he would prefer to be remembered.

His current commercial interests include a wine business with distribution in about nine states and a pizza-vending-machine venture. He said the wine was carried by major retailers including Ralphs, Costco, Kroger and Total Wine and was also sold directly to consumers.

The interview itself ended by reinforcing the case he had made for working across generations. Michael told the younger hosts that he regarded their interview as unusually innovative and said experiences like it were precisely why he continued surrounding himself with younger people.