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This corruption in every organization
on the face of the earth.
Was there ever a decision like,
hey, he has to go?
Michael Frenzies was once
one of the highest ranking bosses
in American history.
He now helps people achieve
success in business and life
with over 2 million YouTube subscribers.
He's one of the most influential mentors
on the internet.
There's a thought process that people
go around killing each other all day.
That's not the way it is.
And the government doesn't care as long as
the lie is fitting into the story.
They don't care.
You just kind of like I'm solving
the next problem on moving day to day.
I didn't live in a vacuum.
I knew that my boss was coming after me.
Were you involved in those
deaths in any way at all?
So you were an
underboss of one of the most notorious
crime families in the world.
Fortune put you at number 18.
At just 35 years old, you were bringing in
$10 million a week in cash.
In cash?
That's not normal for a 35 year old.
No, it's not, but let me.
Let me make one minor corrections
before we get beat up.
I wasn't the underboss.
I was a Capital Jim,
which is a street boss
and had a number of men
but were placed under me.
But yeah, I was very fortunate.
You know, I came upon a scheme.
It was illegal to defraud the government
out of tax on every gallon of gasoline.
And we started out pretty modestly.
I mean, the first two weeks
we did $320,000.
And I guess that's modest
compared to what we ended up doing.
And I ran that operation
for about close to eight years.
And at the height we were doing between 8
and $10 million a week.
Yes, most of it in cash.
$10 million a week in cash.
That's a lot of cash, A lot of money.
If you took everything
you built the network, the capital,
the people, and ran it legally,
what would that company look like today?
I mean, it would be a fortune
500 company.
I would assume.
You know, we'd have a lot of employees
and we'd be we'd be doing pretty well.
I mean, I probably would have exited
at this point, but for a big Tom.
But it was a big operation, you know.
And, you know, the thing is that, yes,
we were defrauding the government
out of tax money, but
we were also giving it back to consumers
at the pumps because we were charging less
for our gasoline than anybody else.
So they were getting a reward for this.
That's why they called us the Robin Hood.
At that time of people
weren't upset with us.
They were actually happy.
But it was it was it was a lot involved
in getting it right
and having longevity in it.
And we were able to do that.
And at that scale, what was the thing
you were spending the most time managing?
You know, it's managing people.
And at that time
it was an intricate system.
On how to get almost a year
out of every license that we had.
You had to be licensed to collect the tax,
and we had to put
a real intricate system in place
in order to continue that for about a year
until the government would come down on us
and, you know,
and we'll come down on that company,
which was a shell company
which disappeared
when the government finally came down
and we just moved to another company
that we had.
So it was
it was a pretty intricate scheme,
and it took them a long time to figure
that out or figure out who was behind it.
They were never to figure it out.
It's just that I had a partner
that got himself in trouble,
and he was the architect of the scheme
along with me.
As a matter of fact,
I give him most of the credit.
But he got himself in trouble
and I was the target.
And so he, you know,
he in order to help himself
get a lighter sentence, he came after me
and he told him the whole operation,
we'd still be doing it now.
And you were just 35, right?
And so walk me through this.
People are and
and let's give the context to the viewers.
You were 35.
Most of the other people
that were higher ranking
and were much older than you were.
People maybe looking at you like
you're vulnerable because of your age.
And how did you maybe demand that respect
at that age?
Well, actually,
I was 35 when this thing came to an end.
I started this really,
I was 28 when it really came on me.
And yeah, I was one of the younger guys.
And, you know,
you always have resentment in that life
because there were people in that life
that were there 20, 30 years before me.
And here I am making all this money,
having my own jet plane,
my own helicopter,
you know, and having a big crew under me.
So I had to deal with resentment
from the older guys.
And even though I outranked them
at one point, I always tried to give them,
you know, a lot of respect.
Hey, you were here a long time.
I respect,
you know, your position in this life
because I learned, you know,
you're going to come across that in life.
When you're young and successful,
the people on top
are going to be looking at you.
And why isn't that me?
So it's always better
to give them extra respect and treat them
like I would say,
hey, you want to come for a ride
on my plane anytime you need it?
You know, if I can help you in
any way, I'd be happy to.
And you kind of,
you know, you kind of dissipate some of
the resentment that's coming after you.
But I've learned that throughout my life,
you know, it's better to make, you know,
I always said this best way to defeat
your enemies, make them your friends.
And that's work to a great degree.
Unless you can't.
But you always try to do that first.
Yeah. You talk a lot about respect, right?
That's really important
because if you're disrespectful,
something very bad can happen
in that life. Yes.
Because people remember that, you know,
I think one of the reasons that I was able
to walk away from that life,
even though people were upset
with the fact that I walked away,
they didn't hate me.
They didn't dislike me, you know,
because I
didn't let them get to that point
during that life.
So I think that's one of the reasons why,
you know, alive and free today
and very happy about that, obviously.
in loyalty seems to be something
that's also really important in that life
and in this life too.
What's the difference between someone
who is maybe genuinely loyal to you
when you were in that life, and someone
who is maybe just afraid to leave,
and kind of which type of people did
you want around you at that time?
Well, you know, there's loyalty
and then there's false loyalty.
People are loyal for whatever,
because what they can get from you,
if they can make money with you,
if you're an advantage to them in some way
and you find that out in that life
pretty quick.
You know, for instance,
I had a ton of friends on the street.
Everybody wanted to be around me.
When I went to jail, I had 1 or 2,
you know, then people get scared,
you know?
You know,
I was an advantage to them at one point.
But maybe I'm a disadvantage now.
So you find that out pretty quick.
That's what I told my wife
when I went to prison.
I said, hey,
don't expect anything from anyone.
Nothing.
You know, fortunately, I can handle you
and take care of you while I'm away.
Don't expect anything and don't
be disappointed, because that's life.
And so I think I was prepared for that
because I watched my father go to prison.
And what? All the friends that he had.
And then it was me,
you know, when he went to prison.
So I get it.
And at that young of an age, right.
You said you were 28 to 35, kind of in
the prime of kind of running this scheme.
What is, you know, punishment
look like for someone
who is disrespectful, disloyal, right.
How did you walk through
or think through a decision
that could potentially end someone's
freedom or their life?
Well, you know, and that makes serious
mistakes in that life.
You can pay for it with your life.
So you're always aware of that.
We had certain policies
that we had to abide by,
and if we didn't,
the consequences could have been severe.
And there were times
when, for political reasons, whatever,
that people suffered serious consequences
when I believe they shouldn't
have, you know, so you have to deal
with all of that in that life.
You know, one thing I learned to my dad,
my dad taught me a lot.
He was a good student of the life,
and I was a good listener.
When somebody knows more than me, until
this day, I'm happy to listen and learn.
I don't find any anything
demeaning in that, you know,
you could always learn something,
but I was always in that life.
You have to be very, very slow
to pass judgment on someone, very slow.
Be the last one to condemn somebody
because your turn is going to come
and people are going to remember
how you treated other people
to always be the last one, to condemn
the last one to point the finger.
And something like that works
very much in your favor.
And it certainly did with mine
when my time came and it came Right.
Because you talked about
sit down, sit down, Michael.
And we are.
But these are different
type of sit downs back then.
And so what was that process like. Right.
When you're
there's going to be a sit down.
There's decisions that have to be made
that could potentially, like I said, end
someone's life.
How does what does that look like.
Well, you know, I said at those tables
and because I was a copper, a captain,
and that's part of your job, I would say,
is deciding fate for other people.
And there were many times, unfortunately,
it happened many times when, you know,
somebody could have suffered
severe consequences based upon decisions
that were made at that table.
The boss ultimately has the decision.
He has, you know,
he has decision life of death.
And so I was always very careful
to voice my opinion in the right way.
And normally
I was always for the underdog.
You know, maybe we should give this guy
another chance.
Maybe we got to rethink this.
I always took that position,
but when somebody was ultimately at fault
and you couldn't really
defend him, you know, you have to say,
well, that's the way it goes.
That's the way it goes.
But again, I was always
the last one to make that decision.
Was there ever a decision that felt like
clean, like, hey, he did this.
He has to go. yeah.
Unfortunately, yes.
And what does making those type
of decisions do to the rest of your life.
Right.
Does everything else kind of now
just feel very small in comparison?
I would say so, yeah.
You know,
those are tough decisions to make.
And but the way we justified it,
I say, look, we took an oath
and we were told when we took that oath
that we had certain policies to follow.
And if you didn't follow those policies
and rules,
you could pay for it with your life.
So we all accepted that,
and we all knew what the rules were.
So you justify it.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong,
because who really has the right
to tell anybody
whether they're going to live or die?
You know, maybe we have a justice system
that says that
even though I don't believe in the death
penalty, but.
It's a tough decision to make
and to live with, after all, you know,
after, you know, throughout your life.
And look, I still think about it at times.
I think about people that I knew
that were there one day and gone the next.
But again, you justify at that
at that time, hey, he knew the rules.
We all accepted it.
Our eyes were open.
Nobody forced us into this.
So if you break the rules,
you know the consequences.
And that's how we justified it, right?
Because the consequences were, let's say.
Let's say you're in that sit down.
And there's someone that did something
that was totally out of line.
And most likely,
you know, the decision is going to be made
at the end of the day and that person's
going to lose their life.
If you, for example, stood up and said,
no, no, no, no, like and maybe win
on the other side of the things
and maybe lied,
maybe did whatever you had to do to save
that person.
You're putting your own life
and maybe your family's life on the line
by doing that. Is that is that right?
Well, here's the thing.
You could be at a sit down
and there could be six of us there,
and five of them will agree
that this guy's got to suffer.
And you can stand up and say, well,
I disagree.
I'm not going to do anything to stop it,
because ultimately the decision
is not mine. It's up to the boss.
But my decision is, no,
I don't agree with that.
So you can do that and you're
not going to be in trouble for it.
Now, if it comes to the point
where the boss says,
okay,
but you're going to have to carry it out,
that could happen to, well,
you can't refuse that assignment.
You can ask to be excused of it.
But if he says no, that's my decision.
Well, That's his decision.
And you have to abide by it
or you put your own life at stake.
Can't refuse an order. Yeah.
So if you're given an order
to do something and you don't do that,
you're putting your own life
and potentially
your family's life on the line.
Correct. Right. Well, not your family.
I want to be clear.
Okay.
Yeah, I want to be clear on that,
because a lot of people think
that, you know,
we want to have the families.
We did not do that.
But you put yourself on the line. Yes.
Right.
you mentioned maybe forgiving
or are you standing up for the underdog?
Tell me about that.
Maybe there were times
where you were like,
look, this person shouldn't
be harmed or punished for this.
Tell me about some of those situations.
Well, as I sit here,
I can honestly say that I never
I never put that condemnation on anyone.
You know, there's another term
you can use and say, hey,
put them on the shelf, meaning
put them out of the life.
There's no more authority here.
We don't respect him anymore.
Just put him out.
You can do that.
It's kind of a cop out,
you know? Honestly.
Because normally not going to do that
if something if
if the violation was considered
serious enough that you're deciding
whether this person
is going to live or die,
then there's no putting them on the shelf.
But that's a way out. And I've used that.
You've used that.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
So you've on the forgiving side.
There's times where maybe you didn't
punish someone, or you raise your hand
for someone not to be punished, that
maybe you should have.
Yeah. because that's an evil life.
And maybe you didn't start to realize that
until a little bit down the line.
You talk about that life
as it's an evil life now.
Well, the problem is that,
you know, people were condemned
for the wrong reasons.
You know, could have been political,
could have been over money,
and it shouldn't have been.
Could have been.
We just want to eliminate this guy.
So we'll find a reason to do that.
You know, it's like anything else.
There's.
Look, I believe this
this corruption in every organization
on the face of the earth,
from the government to the church
to everything in between to charities.
There's always corruption.
I'm not saying everything is corrupt,
but there is corruption in everything.
And so on the street life,
of course that applies, right?
There is corruption there.
So people get,
you know, condemned for the wrong reasons.
It's the same way I just said,
I don't believe in a death sentence
because people make mistakes.
And if you, as a civilized government,
put one person to death
that was wrongly put to death
and the whole system falls apart,
you can't kill an innocent person.
And unfortunately, 202 people on death
row were freed because of DNA evidence.
They would have died if it wasn't for that
they were wrongly a convicted.
So you can't have the death penalty
no matter how heinous the crime was.
Put them in jail
for the rest of their life.
Put them in solitary.
Believe me, that's that's punishment.
So the same way on the street, you don't.
You know, I don't believe
we should condemn people to death.
It's just my Right.
And maybe a big part of why you believe
that is because people can change
or can turn their life around
and do good in the world.
Because you're doing just that.
And we're going to talk a little bit
more about your story in just a second.
to say this. I read an article today
about the Son of Sam.
I don't know if you remember that case.
You know, New York,
he killed a bunch of people.
Well, he's been in jail for over 40 years.
He's given his life to Christ.
He's a Christian.
He refuses parole because he knows he's
going to die in prison.
And he feels that he's forgiven
because his faith is genuine.
I actually met with him.
I interviewed him,
and I believe his faith is genuine.
A lot of people are saying
he should rot in hell
and he should die
in all of that, you know,
and he should have been put to death.
He's done 40 some odd years in prison.
He's going to die there.
That's that's a tough situation.
I know I spent three, three years
and solitary confinement.
It's not a life that you want to live.
So I'm forgiving in that way
because people can change
and it's up to God
to decide their fate later on.
guys, we've been so passionate
about finding the biggest geniuses,
and this is just one of the many episodes.
If you want to make sure you don't
miss the next one.
Make sure to subscribe.
All right, let's get back to the episode.
And so let's go back to the beginning,
right.
Take me back to Brooklyn. Right.
What was it like actually growing as Sonny
Francis son?
Not not kind of the story
you've told before,
but what did it feel like
inside of that house?
It had his good points,
and then it had its very difficult points
because our life was very turbulent,
because my father was such a high profile
figure.
I love my dad.
I idolized him as a kid, idolized them,
and he was a great father for me
growing up in my younger years,
no question
taught me
well, taught me how to be respectful,
how to have discipline, accept authority,
treat women right.
So he said all the right things to me.
But it was very turbulent because my dad
was always under investigation, always
being locked up, always going to jail,
always going to trial.
So, you know,
and he had a lot of publicity.
So I was dealing with kids. Hey,
your dad's a mafia dad.
You know, a fight in a schoolyard
got a lot of that.
So it had its good points
and it had its difficult times.
when did you actually understand
what your father did?
Not maybe when you were told it,
but, like, when did you feel like.
Well, like something's different here.
Well, I understood it early on
because it wasn't that he sat down
and talked to me about it,
but I read it in the media.
I heard it from others,
I saw it happening.
So I understood that he was.
But, you know, the thing is,
I would never want to believe
that my dad would do anything wrong.
Oh, your dad's a killer.
No, no, I don't believe that.
You know,
because he would have told me so.
It was kind of naive,
I guess, at that point.
Just a kid idolizing his father.
But I never wanted to believe
anything bad about my dad.
like so many of us. And so you.
There were other kids
that were growing up,
probably in that same world,
who went in a different direction.
You didn't go directly into the mob,
right?
Your path was different. Right.
You were on the path to be a doctor
from what I know.
And so you had a different path.
What do you think separated you from
maybe the kids that grew up in that life
that wanted to get into it?
had no desire to follow
in my father's footsteps.
I wanted to play center field
for the New York Yankees
because Mickey Mantle, I idolized him.
I love baseball till today.
I love New Yankees.
But no, I never had that desire.
I did want to be a doctor
because my dad wanted me to be a doctor.
He said, you're going to be
the first professional in the family.
I have faith in you.
You can do it.
So to please him,
I went into the medical field
that was a pre-med student,
and yet I wanted it.
But I think I wanted it more
because he wanted it for me.
That's how much I cared about him
you know, my dad was smart enough
not to want me to come into that life.
He wanted me to create a life for myself
outside of that life.
Whereas many of the other fathers
wanted their sons to follow him.
There's a lot of nepotism in that life.
They bring in their sons, their nephews,
you know, a lot of nepotism.
But my dad kept me away from that.
So I think that's why a lot of the kids
aspired to be that way.
And and they followed in their father's
footsteps.
Yeah. You have such a unique story, right?
You're someone that was born
into a crime family, right?
You managed to do the time,
and you came out
to see the other side of it,
like few have done.
Right?
Has that changed the way you maybe
see people that come
from a similar background to yours?
Well, yeah. I mean, you know,
I try to give people grace.
I try to understand,
you know, it's look, I've spoken to
thousands of these gangbangers.
I did time in prison with them.
And I sit down
and have a conversation with them.
And I understand.
What chance do these kids have?
They grow up in a tough neighborhood.
Normally, 80% of them don't have a father
figure, and for the other 20%,
the father isn't adding much value
to the raising these kids.
So they get out into the street,
they get with the local gangbanger.
They're trying to earn a living.
Their mom is normally young
and can't hardly provide,
so they get into the street life.
What do you expect?
I mean, I have a son
who almost went in the wrong direction,
and he had everything at his favor
growing up.
So kids need guidance.
They need a father figure.
They need to be shown how to live
and they don't have that.
So I try to give people
the benefit of the doubt
and try to understand
what brought them into that circumstance.
So I look at things
a little bit differently
because I understand
and I believe, you know, young people,
they want to do the right thing initially,
but they're so influenced
by their environment
and the people that they're in contact
with that they don't have a chance.
It's really sad.
And why do I what do I attribute this to?
The breakup of the family.
Everything starts in your family.
And if you don't have that cohesiveness,
that bond, that relationship,
you're in trouble from early on.
And what are you telling those kids,
the kids that you're speaking with today,
that you're trying to help
put on the right path?
Maybe they're over here now
and you're trying to push them over here,
and obviously
you're not going to be involved
in their day to day life. Right?
And you can't replace them
having a father figure.
What are some of the things that you do to
try to push them in the right direction?
Well,
I try to tell them it's a dead end street.
You know, the mob life,
the gang life you're in, any organized
criminal activity, you don't have a chance
because you may be a one off like today.
We have some loose laws out there,
but if you're involved in any organized
criminal activity, you're going down.
There's no future in it.
And I make I explain that to them
and I tell them, look,
don't feel sorry for yourself
that you didn't have a good home life.
You have to start today
and there is a way out of this thing.
I got a way out
and you guys can do it, too.
And I tell them I left the biggest gang
in the world, so don't tell me you can't.
There is a way and is very effective
because fortunately, the platform I have,
everybody believes that the Mafia
is the most organized
criminal organization in the world.
Maybe it is.
I mean, you have the Mexican cartels,
you have the Russian mob.
You have a lot of different organized
groups and different ethnic backgrounds.
But we're certainly,
you know, up there and, you know,
because of the media, look,
we've been given the most attention.
No other criminal organization
has been romanticized,
like the Mafia in movies and television
and media, you name it.
We have been.
So people look up to that
if you're on the street.
And so I have a pretty
good impact on them, and I think I've led
a lot of them in the right direction.
You know, over the past 30 years
that I've been speaking.
Yeah.
And he talked about the media publicizing
the mob and mafia, especially back then,
I'm guessing even maybe more so let's
go back to that fortune magazine, right.
Fortune magazine.
They put you number 18.
You're just 35 years old.
You're one of the most powerful mob
figures or mob bosses, right, in America.
Was any part of you proud of that?
A little bit? I was kind of surprised
when I saw the article.
I was in prison when it came out,
and they happened to lock me down
because I was getting so much publicity.
The writer they had article
was appearing on every show,
and they only featured six of us
out of the 50, and I was one of the six.
So he kept talking about me.
When you're in prison,
they don't like that.
So they locked me down for a while.
But it was kind of funny to me.
But, it was a silly list because
they didn't ask for our tax returns.
How do they make a list like that?
Some guys that were on the list
didn't belong there, you know?
But it was
I mean, it's it was it was kind of
I opening, I would say,
because I had publicity to that point.
But that was like, whoa, you know,
you're really putting me up there.
And listen, you know,
how did I feel about it?
I was kind of mad that they locked me down
as a result of it,
but it's gone in my favor.
You know,
it's amazing how things happened,
because now that article was a big deal.
Hey, this is one of the most powerful guys
in America.
So it gave me more juice, more credibility
when I spoke.
And I used it to my advantage.
yeah.
I mean, coming from being a mob
underboss, son, you built
one of the biggest criminal empires
that was said to be worth over $1 billion.
At that time.
You survived a death sentence
from your own people,
and now you talk about it on podcasts.
Which part of that is actually
the defining chapter for you?
You know, the fact that I'm at 75 years
old, I'm
alive and free
and being able to share this with people,
that in itself is pretty
amazing, because remember, I didn't go
into any witness protection program.
I sat down with the government,
but I didn't cooperate to a level
where I put people in prison.
I just wanted them to understand
that I was out of the life
because nobody believed it.
Originally,
the government said, this is another scam.
He's pulling another con.
I said, no,
I mean, I'm putting my life at danger now
to show you people that I'm out,
but I'm not going to cooperate to the
extent I'm not going to hurt my friends.
It's not what I wanted to do.
So I had
it was a real tightrope that I had to walk
to get through this, and I didn't know.
Look, I don't hold my former associates
short in any way.
They're very, very capable.
Just a lot of things broke in my favor,
you know, to have me be where I am now.
Because could they have killed me
if they really put an effort into it?
Very possibly.
I mean, I knew the life.
I knew what to do and what not to do.
I had an advantage in that
I lived the life for 20 years,
so I knew how they would come at me.
But a lot of things
had to work in my advantage.
And I think, you know, again,
as a person of faith, I think it was
it was God's plan for my life
to bring me to where I am today.
Yeah.
And you said, if I'm not mistaken,
you kind of outlived
a lot of those people, or a lot of them
are ended up dead, ended up in jail.
Are there any of those people
that are still around today?
And are you still every now and then
having to look over your shoulder?
I know for sure on that list.
48 of them are dead out of the 50.
Number 49 was in prison.
Last time I looked.
He was an older than me.
I don't know if he's still alive.
I don't know if he's free.
So I'm really the only survivor
on that list that had a life.
So I mean that.
What does that tell you?
And it's only been 30 some ideas.
All these people have gone in the last
30 some odd years.
So yeah.
I mean, is it shocking, you know, why me?
Why am I able to do this?
I don't take it for granted.
I really live my life
where every day is a blessing.
Even if it's a bad day,
it's still a blessing because I'm here.
Yeah.
And growing up, right, at some point,
you stop being Sonny's
son, kind of watching that world.
And you made the decision to go in
right yourself.
What did that actually look like?
Well, you know, understand the mob life,
the Mafia life,
the gang life are evil lifestyles.
Now, why do I say they're evil?
I'm not calling the guys evil.
There was some good guys in that life. Age
old question.
Why do good people do bad things?
Well, they misled.
They have wrong influences in their life.
They make bad decisions,
doesn't mean they have a bad heart
and they're doing the evil people.
But the life is evil.
And the reason I say
that is because I don't know
any family of any member of that life
that hasn't been totally destroyed,
including my own, not my wife and kids.
I've been able to preserve them
through God's blessing.
But my mother, 33 years
without her husband,
because my dad did 40 years in prison,
which she passed away.
Her relationship with my dad was ugly
because she blamed him for everything
that went wrong. Rightfully so.
What went wrong?
My baby sister
dies of an overdose of drugs 27 years old.
She couldn't handle all the turbulence.
My brother, a drug addict, 25 years.
What I had to do just to keep that kid
alive on the streets.
You don't even want to know.
My other sister was never mentally stable.
She dies at the age of 4041.
So the whole family devastated.
Except for me.
So any lifestyle that does that to a
any family,
the lifestyle that does that to
a family is an evil life.
And that's one of the major reasons
why I walked away.
I met a young girl.
I fell in love with her.
She fell in love with me.
I said, am I going to marry this girl?
I'm already indicted seven times.
They're going to put me in prison.
We had three wars in our family,
or I'm going to die.
One of one or the other is my fate,
without a doubt.
Do I want to do this to her?
I either got to cut ties with her,
or I got to cut ties with the life.
And I chose her.
And that was the bottom line. Yeah.
And we're going to talk about your wife
here in a second.
I want I want to know
what was going through your head
when you made the decision.
Because, again, premed student,
you're thinking about being a doctor
and you made a decision.
And I know it has something
to do with your dad.
And you made a decision to get into that
life.
Let's talk
and tell the audience a little bit
about why you made that decision
to get into the life,
when that wasn't the path you were
strictly to help my dad get out of prison.
There was no
I didn't aspire to be a mobster, I wasn't.
Wow, this is a great life
I want to pursue.
My dad felt
that that was the way that when I decided
I wasn't going to school, because Joe
Colombo had a powerful influence on me.
He was the boss of the family
and a lot of my dad's friends telling me,
your dad's going to die in prison.
And I said, no, I can't let that happen.
I went to see my dad.
He told me he was framed.
He said, I'm innocent, I believed him.
If he would have said,
I'm guilty and I got to do my time,
I probably would have been a doctor.
But he said, I'm innocent
and we got to help prove my innocence.
But what did that mean to me?
I can't do it.
While going to medical school,
I had to help my dad.
We had to get to the witnesses
that testified against him,
get them where he can't
that testimony have money for lawyers?
Because people weren't throwing money
at my dad
when he went to prison, his money ran out.
I had to support my family.
So I said,
okay, school is in words happening.
I got to help you, dad.
And that's totally the reason
I got into the life.
No other reason, right?
And let's talk about that.
Let's dive a little deeper there,
because I don't think some of the audience
understands that story,
if I'm not mistaken.
You correct me if I'm wrong.
The reason that you believed your dad,
because I'm guessing
most people watching are saying
his dad was in jail.
His dad says he's innocent
and he just wants to help his dad.
But his dad's probably not innocent.
But a big part of the reason
that you believed your dad was innocent,
I'm guessing still believe
today, is because you talked about
how the people that testified against him
were drug addicts and tell us the story
of what the stories he would tell
you growing up about drugs
how that ended up playing out.
And reason that you truly feel
that he was innocent. Yes.
I'll take that to my grave.
I know my dad was innocent.
He was no bank robber.
Absolutely not.
I investigated that case.
We spoke to every witness.
They recanted their testimony.
We gave them a lie detector test.
They proved they lied at the trial.
We just could never get the conviction
overturned.
He was framed on that case.
I was guilty of the crime
I went to jail for.
My dad was innocent of that crime.
Maybe did other things in his life.
He was no angel. I'm not saying that.
But that particular crime that he did 40
years in prison for my dad was innocent.
I'll take it to my grave.
up, my dad
hated anything to do with drugs.
He would create stories about people
that died over drugs or whatever.
He he hated drugs and he never wanted me
to have a motorcycle.
He would make up stories about people
that got killed in motorcycle crashes.
And I would never get a motorcycle.
When I told him I wanted one,
that's when he started telling me stories
about how bad it was,
and I trusted my dad.
I believed him, so I said, okay, dad,
if you're saying it's no good,
I'm not going to do it.
And drugs, I have never until this day
even smoked a joint,
never taken any kind of drug
Nothing at all.
No prescription drugs have. I'm giving
something and I don't even like that.
I don't.
I'm afraid of drugs,
I hate it, I'm afraid I might like it.
You know, alcohol.
My dad used to tell me three things, son.
You got to worry about wine,
meaning alcohol, drugs and women.
Those are the
three things that are going to destroy.
But you're a wine guy now, aren't you?
Yes, but not Not to that extent.
Right.
and I get hit up for that too.
Oh, you're a Christian and you're
selling wine for the whole Jesus created.
You know, his first miracle
was changing water into wine.
But anyway. So.
Yeah, so I believed it.
He wouldn't associate with drug addicts.
Absolutely not.
And those three guys were drug addicts.
four of them.
They were all drug addicts.
Yeah, all of them were involved in drugs.
And what they did,
they committed all these bank robberies.
They just created a meeting where they
said, my dad told them to do it.
That was it. One meeting, one time.
They never even handed him money.
How he got convicted,
you know, his lawyer, whatever.
But anyway, so yeah, I believed him.
And I said,
and he said, son,
if you're going to help me out
and you're going to be on the street
to help me,
you need to become part of my life.
Okay, dad, I'm ready.
And that's what you did.
Okay, so let's talk about the next steps
after that, because you didn't right away
start making $8 million a week.
What are those first years look like?
Right before the money, before the scale.
What were you actually doing day to day?
Well, at 20 years old,
when I hit the street,
I became a target of law enforcement.
I got indicted five times.
I went to trial for a year and a half,
almost on nonsense crimes.
But they kept me in a courthouse.
I would, you know,
I got three hung juries on one case.
Another one was dismissed and they just
kept, you know, wearing me down.
So I was totally broke at 21.
Didn't have a penny paid for my lawyer.
I had a bad lawyer, paid for him as best
I could, and I was broke.
So I had to get into something
I could not stand.
Not having money in my pocket.
I just couldn't it,
I couldn't sleep, I'm still that way.
Right?
So I had to try to get going.
Anything that I can get going.
And it started out with me
being in the car business and hustling
and working 24 over seven.
And,
and then when I got involved in the life,
I started doing things on the street.
And I mean, that's a whole
we'll be here for the next ten hours
if we'd get into all of that.
But but that's how it started for me.
And you ran right.
At some point,
what the FBI says was $1 billion operation
when you were in it at the peak,
did you know how extraordinary it was,
or were you just kind of like, I'm
solving the next problem.
I'm moving day to day.
started to understand it early on.
You know, I realized
this could be a gold mine of bonanza,
and that's why I dove into it so heavily
and really was able to the
the guy that brought me the idea
and was really the architect of it,
but it had a lot of holes in it,
and it would never have worked
if we didn't concrete all those holes
and get it to work seamlessly.
And I was able to to assist them
heavily in that,
and I was able to get the licenses
that we needed and everything.
And I said, man,
if if I took this across the country
and he would have never
I would have been making billions a month
because with collecting tax on gasoline,
think of it,
you know, in New York alone, the tax,
the federal and state
tax was $0.40 a gallon
depending upon where you were located.
And we were doing a half
a billion gallons of gas
a month, half a billion, half a billion.
And we were paying no tax.
We weren't paying like a little.
We were paying no tax, you were pocketed.
The scheme was the pocket attacks.
and it might take them ten months or so
to figure it out.
Set up a new company.
So you were I had 18 shell companies, and
every one of them were formed in Panama.
and you were able to continue
to operate that for years,
and you were just pocketing
millions of dollars. Not on top of that.
You were able to deliver
gas to gas stations at a lower cost,
and they would have been paying.
So they wanted
they wanted to do business with you.
It was easy.
would go to a gas station, let's say
it was a mobile station, and I would say,
how many loads of gas
are you getting from mobile?
Oh, we get six loads a week.
I said, well, by far from them
and two from us.
We'll save you $0.10 a gallon.
That's a lot of money for them, $0.10
a gallon.
Before you know it,
they're trying to buy all six from us.
And I'd say, you can't do that.
You're going to lose your your brand.
You have to buy some from mobile,
you know.
So we had to chase people away.
And I'll tell you even more,
the major companies like I bought
a terminal from BP, British Petroleum,
they loved us, the major companies,
we were buying barges from them
as they came from the Middle East.
We were buying the barges.
We were selling it
back to their own stations.
They didn't care
because we were increasing the volume.
The FBI went to them and said, you know,
the Mafia, you're dealing with mafia guys.
Oh, we'll be careful. We'll be.
And then they call us up and say, hey,
the feds were here, you know, be because.
So they would
they would tip you off. Everybody.
But the government was Everybody,
people on the street were happy.
They were paying less at the pumps.
The the major brands were happy
because we were buying more gas.
Only the government got hurt. Wow. And so.
So that version of you at 35, right,
$10 million in cash a week.
You're on fortune list.
You have, I think, a jet, a helicopter.
You have many houses.
What would he think of
where you are today?
What would he maybe respect
and what would he think is weak?
I have to say this
and I'm going to get beat up for it,
but I don't have a moral issue
with defrauding the government
attacks on every gallon of gasoline,
especially today
when they do it in Minnesota
and they're doing their pocketing
themselves,
I would at least give it back
to the people.
I would share it.
You know, I would be
a, you know, beneficial in that regard.
But I won't do it because I'm not going
to get in trouble of jeopardize my family.
But, you know, look, I was happy
with my accomplishments to that point.
I have to say that, you know, and
throughout all of this understand this.
I'm a major target of one point alone.
I was indicted seven times.
There wasn't a day
when I didn't have an investigation on me
from the time I was 20 years old,
they were watching me every day.
Seven indictments.
Excuse me, two major racketeering cases
with the feds
and one with the state of Florida.
So I had to be dodging bullets
from the state and the feds
and also my own people, because
as I'm progressing through that life,
I mean, I got a target on my back
from other people.
it was tough to deal with.
Honestly, I'm not saying
I didn't have peace because, you know,
I mean, I worked seven days a week, but
it was a lot to deal with at a young age.
And I don't
I don't know how I was resilient.
I can't you know, you don't claim credit
for this thing when you're just
when you just have that build,
you're just fortunate, you know?
I mean, I can't say, well, I studied this
and I was such a good learner
that I created.
No, I was just
I was just born with this innate quality
that allowed me
to get through all of this.
I mean, I don't know what to say. Yeah.
And how do you see that life today
in evil life, when you look back,
I see the you know, I have
I'm ambivalent.
And sometimes I have issues with my wife
because I say, oh, these were good guys.
And she she's from a perfectly legitimate
and reasonable perception of this.
Well, how could you say they were good?
They killed people and this and that.
But there was a lot of good people there
that I missed and that I really cared for.
I had good friends in that life and
I missed them because they're all gone.
So do I.
Did I hate the life?
No. When I left the life,
I didn't hate anybody.
I wasn't mad at anybody.
I didn't leave
because all these people were after me.
When they were after me,
they were supposed to be after me
because I left the life
and I wasn't supposed to do that.
So I understood that I wasn't mad at them.
I think if I would have got killed,
I couldn't even be mad at somebody
because I was supposed to get killed
according to the oath that I took.
This sounds crazy,
but that's how I believe.
Even when my father, they said,
your father put a
you know, he went along
with the contract on your life.
I kind of understood that.
I don't think he would have ever done it.
He would have never put a gun to my head.
There's no way.
I don't care what anybody says.
No way my dad would have done that.
But did he go along with it?
Maybe to protect himself and not to,
you know,
he didn't know what I was going to do.
Okay, I get it.
I understand now, maybe that's crazy
way to think, because my wife says to me,
you would never do that to your son. Well,
of course I wouldn't.
Different circumstances.
And I like I said it, I don't know,
maybe I have a crazy way of thinking,
but it's just the way I feel.
It seems the people in that life,
or at least the people
you're talking about, yourself
and your father, you kind of follow
the rules of that life,
even if it meant putting those rules
over your own family at times, potentially
when you were in that life.
you know, that's that's the one discussion
I had with my dad.
And that was kind of a deal breaker
for me,
because when I sat down with my dad after
my mother had passed away and I said,
you know, our whole family was destroyed,
dad, because of this life.
And And he said, well, it wasn't my fault.
I said,
what do you mean it wasn't your fault?
He said, well, I was framed for a crime
I didn't commit.
If that wasn't the case,
none of this would have happened.
I said, dad, you were framed.
Not because you were a doctor or a lawyer
or a priest.
You're afraid because you're a mob guy.
We got to expect those things, you know?
And he said, it's not my fault.
And he kind of blamed my mom.
And I said, come on, dad,
you got to take responsibility
for the destruction in our family.
And he wouldn't.
Now, maybe that was guilt.
I understood,
and I didn't want to press him too hard,
but it was upsetting that he wouldn't
take responsibility
because I thought we were close enough
where he could have said, you know,
it's son, you're right, you're right.
But he didn't.
an FBI informant
once put your name next to five murders.
You were never charged with any of them.
But what do you think of those
accusations?
Well, they were false, number one.
And number two,
the informant that brought the story
and really tried to jammie up with it.
He was later thrown out of the witness
protection program for lying.
And everything that he said
was just dismissed
because he implicated me
in a number of other people.
So. And I told you I is lying.
I said I knew the guy very well.
So it turned out to be a false accusation
and something that I was fighting against.
And were you involved in those deaths
in any way at all? No.
And the person that you're talking about,
Big Sal.
Right.
He named specific murders,
not the accusations generally,
the specific incidents he named
walk me through, you know, where were you?
What do you know about those?
Were those just made up incidents
where the incidents
that actually happened
that were tied to the family in some way?
Well, these people were murdered.
There's no question he didn't make up
that somebody got murdered,
that wasn't murdered.
There were murdered.
But he implicated the wrong people.
I mean, bottom line.
And he was probably involved
in all of them.
And, you know, listen,
one thing that I am sorry
and I don't know if you saw the Jubilee
when I sat down with 20 different cops
and we went into this, I do not believe
that people are entitled to a free pass
when they've committed a murder,
they bargain with the government,
and they give me a pass on those murders,
you know, to implicate other people.
It's strong
incentive to lie, strong incentive to lie,
and they shouldn't
be given that advantage.
So I think in this case, that's exactly
what happened with Michelle.
And I knew him well.
He was he wasn't one of the more prominent
guys in that life.
Let me be kind to him right now,
even though he doesn't deserve that.
But I'll be kind to him.
So he he made up like other informants.
I'm going to tell you this and this is.
And I'll stand by this.
I've been to trial five times
and I've visited.
I can't tell you how many other.
I've been to three trials of my dad's.
I've never seen a government informant
get up on the stand.
Left hand on the Bible.
Right hand.
Swear to tell the truth
and lie through their teeth.
And the government doesn't care as long as
the lie is fitting into the story.
And it can't be.
It can't be, you know, court.
They don't care.
That's the problem
you have with these informants.
They buy themselves out
by telling stories.
And that's exactly what happened
with my show. Yeah.
And the world you were in
were those type of accusations come in
and those type of deals very common?
Absolutely.
I mean, there's a case right now.
I'm going to be honest, my dear friend
Michael Sessa, who did 34 years in prison
for a crime he didn't commit because a
prosecutor and FBI lied and implicated him
and then withheld testimony
that could have put him out of prison.
I'm trying to get him a pardon right
now. Poor guy.
34 years in prison
because the prosecutor lied.
Andrew Weissman, I'll mention his name.
And Linda Vecchio, who?
An FBI agent
that was charged with four murders
because he was feeding information
to an FBI agent that was charged
with four murders.
And and the reason was he was
he was feeding information
to an FBI informant who I knew very well.
Greg Scarpa, a big name out there.
And Greg Scarpa was taking that
information and killing people, murdering
Oh, my God, based upon FBI,
this is a fact.
Documentation.
I don't make anything up.
So this is what happens in that life.
So you don't give informants the ability
to hurt other people
and giving them the incentive to lie?
Listen, John Gotti,
anybody would believe any story
about John Gotti because they wanted him
so bad and people were lining up to give
stories about him.
I'm not saying every one of them lied,
but you certainly have incentive to lie.
you think John Gotti
was the worst person out there?
No, he just happened to be
the biggest name.
He just happened to make careers.
People wanted him.
They got by with drooling
to get a hold of him because they get
they get careers made on this.
So I don't like the system at all.
I don't like informant system at all.
I'm sorry.
They get too much
of an advantage for lying.
And how do you think
that could be changed?
Is that just incentives?
Is that some laws that need to be changed?
I mean, there has to be a limit to what?
Okay, you're going to help the government,
but there has to be a limit
to the advantage that you get
if you murdered,
you know, a number of people,
you shouldn't be walking the street
because you implicated somebody else
you commit ten murders, right, and you're
implicating a guy that committed two,
why should you get a bigger advantage?
Because he has a bigger name than you,
and that's what happens.
That's the system.
And I challenge anybody to because I
when I say this, I know it,
I lived it and I know it.
I challenge anybody to challenge me on
that because I'll give them the evidence.
And what do you think of karma? Right.
Because you talk about your dad,
you talk about your good friend
who served time for what you say
is something that they're innocent of, but
maybe they did some other bad stuff
in their life
that they were guilty of that
they didn't get charged for.
And maybe that's just the karma
that they ended up getting,
you know, in their life.
What do you think of that?
I believe that, but I don't think it's
the governments shouldn't impose.
Maybe that's not the government.
Maybe that's God's way of doing it.
Well, maybe.
Maybe,
but the government doesn't have the.
Let me tell you something.
Our government has all the tools,
all the money, all the time,
all the weapons, all the laws.
They don't have the right to
frame somebody because there's something
they believe they did.
They have enough weapons
to go and get somebody.
Because if you allow that,
just think of it.
Well, if you allow that,
what do we really have?
Government.
Anytime they want to put something on you,
they'll do whether you did and or not.
Well, you didn't do this,
but you got away with a number of things.
You can't have that.
We would be a dictatorship and an anarchy.
Okay, let's talk about Larry Champagne.
Larry. Okay. You're really going.
You're going heavy on this.
But I'm ready for you. It's All right.
He was the godfather of three
of your children.
True. Two.
Two of your children.
And you said.
And I want to quote you,
and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
I knew it was going to happen,
and I didn't save him Yeah.
when you knew it was going to happen.
What was going through your head and talk
about your relationship with Larry?
I loved him like a brother.
He was one of my dearest friends.
Our families were close.
But he made
with respect to that life.
He made a very serious mistake.
And here's the painful part of it.
I believe that
the consequences were severe
because I tried to get him.
I was a captain,
and I tried to get him in my crew,
and they the boss at the time wouldn't
allow it because they didn't want us.
He was he was a
it was a good guy on the street.
He was an undertaker,
he was a pretty good earner.
And I wanted him with me
because we were close.
We were like brothers,
but they wouldn't give him to me.
And they kept him with somebody else.
And he was resentful of that.
And I didn't care for it either.
But I think that I tried to save him.
He did something he shouldn't have done,
What did he do?
Can you tell me
that affair with my sister?
and an affair with my sister,
and he was married at the time,
and this was brought to my attention.
I didn't know it. I didn't discover it.
My sister didn't tell me.
It was brought to my attention,
and the decision was made
that it was very disrespectful to me
and then to my father.
And when I argued
and I said, listen, he's not a made guy.
He made a mistake. I can correct it.
No, your father has been in this life
a long time, and so of you,
and we don't allow that.
So it was very painful,
even though I knew that he, he,
you know, what he did was wrong,
no question about it.
How did you feel?
Did you feel disrespected
because this is something
that you didn't even know was happening?
did feel disrespected.
But I mean, come on,
you know, to pay for it with your life.
So I'm
guessing you didn't pull the trigger, but
you were maybe part of a sit down
or you knew this was going to happen.
Well, let's put it this way.
They they didn't give me specifics.
And at the time I asked, I said, listen,
why don't you consult
my father about this?
My dad was in prison at the time.
I said, why don't you consult him?
If you're saying that
it's disrespectful for him,
why don't we get his opinion on it?
And I honestly don't know
if that ever happened.
I don't know that.
But at some point it was out of my hands.
Does that line
between ordering it, doing it,
or allowing it actually mean anything?
Put it this way
that doesn't only apply to Larry.
When I was 20 years in that life,
you know, I knew a lot of guys
that made mistakes
and were gone after that.
So if you're part of that life,
don't you have to take responsibility
for all of it?
It's not any one particular person
because you're part of the life.
You know, you things go down,
but that's part of the evils of the life.
Yeah. Right up until that happened.
Were you guys very close, like you said,
you were best.
Basically best friends. Yeah.
And so does
that still stay with you today?
Sure it does.
It stayed with me to a point
where a few years back,
I got an email from somebody
really close to him, one of his kids,
and it was a very painful email
for me to read,
and it took me a while to digest it.
And then I responded,
and the email that I got back
really was a blessing,
because that person understood
what went down.
Because people I mean, look, everybody,
I get the blame for that.
I mean, Michelle lied and said that
Larry was part of the gasoline business.
He never had anything to do with gas.
Total fabrication
100% lie had zero to do with it.
Never.
And he said that that was what he made
that up.
That was part of the reason
that Larry got killed.
Not true at all.
It was one reason. One reason only.
Aside from I'm sorry I made a mistake,
I was also told that he was dealing drugs.
I happen to know that there was
a little bit of truth in that.
I'll leave it at that. But
as far as him being involved in gas,
absolutely.
But he had to embellish
his reasoning with me for some reason.
But, you know,
people say that I hear it on social media
and all this kind of stuff.
But look, of course it's painful.
And he's not the only one.
I mean, there are other people
I knew that were gone.
Not that I could have done anything
about it.
See, that's the thing.
If a decision is made,
it's out of my hands at that point.
I can't do anything about it now.
You could. You have warned him.
That's up for me to internally deal
with, Right.
If you could go back.
Not before, let's say, the order came,
but to the moment where you could
have warned him.
What would you have done?
I don't know that I would have,
really. Why?
I was part of that life,
you know?
I mean, look,
a strong case was made about it.
Now, nobody said to me,
this is what's going to happen.
You know, I felt pretty, pretty concerned
when I walked out of the room
after this was laid out to me. But,
you know, when I left,
I said, like I said, consult the people.
Let me think about it,
you know, and I was told
straight out, we don't want you to talk to
anybody about this.
And how long after that meeting
was he dead?
It was. It was a while.
Did you talk to him
after you found out what he did
between that time and his death?
About that?
No, at all. Any conversations with him?
I believe so, yeah.
I mean, this is,
you know, almost 40 years ago
when you talked to him,
did you confront him about what he did
or did you just you just you played along
as you guys are just a friend still.
Okay. Let's pivot.
So your children were kind of growing up
through this, right?
When did they find out
who their father actually was
and what did that conversation look like?
Well, my kids new early on because again,
I had a lot of publicity.
But my kids
until today, don't talk to me about it.
They don't question me.
Then I asked me anything about it.
I don't understand that.
And honestly,
they they're not inquisitive.
My two daughters now have a podcast,
and I think
me sitting down with them
and their podcast,
I finally got some of their thoughts
about what they thought about me
during that time, you know?
they don't ask me about it.
I don't know why
I think I have to credit my life
where she just, you know,
she raised them properly.
And even when I was away,
they were cared for the right way,
and I don't I can't explain it.
I don't know why. It's
kind of baffling to me at times.
Hey, why don't you sit? Hey, dad. What?
You know what went on to know?
Nothing. So.
But I guess that's a good thing.
You know, So when you're growing up,
there was no there was conversations
about who you are or what you're doing,
the life you're involved
in, you just kind of treat it as like,
let's just try to give them
as normal of a childhood as we can.
But I still have the feds here, and
I got a lot of big business I'm running.
They lived through.
I never forget once I was in LA County
jail, they had me that for some reason.
And my wife and my
we well, dad's in school
and my youngest daughter
and my oldest daughter at the time.
Well, how come it says L.A. County Jail?
That.
But, you know, I'm happy.
Look, I don't want to sit down
and talk to them about my former life.
Same way I don't want to sit with my wife.
I've never had to sit down
and have a conversation.
What my wife is hearing now is more
than she ever heard in 40 years.
42 years.
Never discussed any of this
because I don't want to.
And fortunately,
they don't bug me about it
or ask me about it
because it's just that stuff.
you were in a world where people
getting hurt wasn't the exception.
This was just kind of part
of how it worked, right?
How did you carry that? Right?
How did you carry?
Were you just like, look,
this is the life we've got the blood oath.
I'm following the rules.
Did you step outside yourself a little bit
when you had to make certain hard
decisions?
Well, I don't want you to.
You know,
there's a thought process out there.
Maybe the movies that people go around
killing each other all day.
That's not the way it is.
I mean, we live our life
and we do our business.
Every once in a while,
something comes down.
It's not normal course of business,
and we don't look at it that way
and we don't treat it that way.
But when it happens, it happens,
you know,
for the smart people in that life, it's
the last course of action.
You talk about a guy like Roy DeMeo,
you probably heard his name.
I mean, Roy DeMeo, Greg Scarpa.
These were serial killers.
They would have been killers
if they weren't in the Mafia.
The Mafia just made it
a little bit easier for them.
But that wasn't the normal course
of business for most of us.
Certainly wasn't for me and many of
the guys that I knew you don't want.
That's not what the life is about.
It's not, hey, let's get rid of it.
Let's kill it.
No, it wasn't with that.
You know, when it happened,
it was a serious situation.
It was well thought out.
The boss could make that decision.
And it wasn't every day.
Normal life, right?
Every day.
Normal life was what?
Making money for the family.
Living your life.
You know, there may be some orders
that you have to follow from the boss.
And you weren't, like you said,
making those final calls or decisions.
You were part of sit downs
and you were giving input.
And in a lot of cases,
you were being forgiving.
You were rooting for the underdog.
And obviously there was some other cases
that are tough.
And at the end of the day, either way,
they were completely out of your hands.
The final decision always.
Yeah, I wasn't a boss.
Only the boss makes that decision.
He can consult with who he wants to,
but it's his final decision.
Talk to the people about the hierarchy.
Right. You have soldiers. You have.
Go ahead.
Well,
the the official people in that life.
People that took the oath.
You have the bosses on top.
He's a dictator.
You have the underboss
who's his second in command.
You have a
who is his advisor.
And then
you have the capital, James or captains.
And they have a crew of soldiers
and the soldiers at the lowest level.
And they've all taken the oath.
There's no lieutenants, there's
no sergeants or anything like that.
That's the that's the rankings.
And the final say is always
with the boss
on anything of real importance.
Now, way the protocol worked.
If you're a soldier, you're not supposed
to go directly to boss or the other boys.
You go to a copper gym.
That's why I get beat up all the time.
Be the call me a mob boss. Well,
you weren't the boss.
I was a carpenter.
They were the street boss.
In other words,
the soldiers had to go to me first before
they can go to the boss about anything.
That's the proper protocol.
So in essence, I was a boss of those guys.
And how did I get those guys?
The boss assign them to me.
That's how it goes.
So. And then you had associates
that worked with us, but
didn't have the privilege or the rights
of a made guy, and that's that's it.
I had a lot of associates.
How many associates you have?
Hundreds.
I probably had 15 guys in my crew, 15, 18
guys in my crew that were made.
And and then I might have had
I don't 50 associates at the time.
Yeah. I don't know the number
the associates didn't take, though.
They weren't part of the Mafia mob. They.
But but they were people on the streets
that you guys dealt with.
And in order to take the oath,
your father must be Italian.
And so you talked about
how you were being wiretapped
in investigated for years, right?
You were in front of grand juries.
And all that time
you kept running the operation, right?
What does that kind of sustained pressure
do to you?
couple of years ago,
I had that I forget what they call it, but
when you lose your beard a little bit,
you know, for whatever reason.
And so I go to doctors, what's going on?
And he said, well, you have
I forget the name of it.
And he said, it's
normally called by cause, by stress.
Do you have a lot of stress?
I say, doc, I don't know.
I mean, I grew up one way all my life.
I mean, I always had stuff going on.
I don't know what stress is.
Honestly, I don't even anxiety.
What does anxiety?
Now I get a little bit of anxiety
when I'm ready
to leave to go on a speaking engagement.
Not because of the plane,
because I don't want to leave my house.
I love my wife.
I want to stay home.
I don't want to travel anymore.
I've been traveling for 30 years.
So I get anxious thinking,
oh, here I go again.
But other than that, I don't.
I, I don't know what stress is
because I just live a certain way,
and I think I handle it
the way I handle it.
And Like when you were being wiretapped
or investigated, were you,
when you were on the streets,
were you making certain decisions,
knowing that they were listening
or watching you?
Oh, all my decisions.
I mean, knowing that somebody
could be watching me or whatever.
I mean, you know, my dad used to hold up
the telephone and say, this is a cop,
don't talk on the phone.
And I never got caught saying anything
that would hurt me on a telephone I had
I didn't find a
you had 83 tape recordings on me
and couldn't use one of them
to hurt me, because I just knew
I wasn't sure who I was talking to.
So I was always very careful in that
regard because I was prepared for it.
But yeah, I always knew that whatever
I was doing, people were watching.
And, you know, if I didn't know somebody,
well, I just didn't
trust talking in front of them.
I was very careful in that regard.
And this entire time, were you going
to church as well or not yet? No.
Okay.
I grew up Catholic, but I wasn't
I wasn't a practicing.
I mean, after I got out of school
because I went to Catholic school,
I wasn't really practicing.
I didn't go to church on Sunday.
How did you balance, right,
trying to raise your family and run
a criminal empire at the same time?
Right? Without one of those breaking
or where you just.
I'm working seven days a week.
I'll see the family when I can.
Or were you trying to balance both of them
and give some time to the family,
as well as trying to build up
this organization?
Well, I did, and my first marriage and I
had three children from my first marriage,
but I was I was really more concerned.
I don't know what the right word.
I mean, I cared for my family, gave them
everything, you know, no problem there.
They didn't have a lot of my time because
I was extremely aggressive on the street.
I worked seven days a week if I needed to.
That became first.
That was wrong.
It wasn't the right way to go.
And as a result,
the marriage didn't last. But.
You know, what could I say?
I mean, I tried to balance it,
but it was an imbalance
because I was more concerned
about making a living and doing
what I was supposed to do on the street
and saying, oh,
my family's got everything they need.
No worries.
You know, a mistake
that a lot of people make.
You don't have to be in the mob
to make that mistake.
A lot of guys in business
that I talked to made the same mistake.
Thriving company.
You probably know this.
Making billions
and their whole life is falling apart.
You know, one of the things
when I went to prison that was so
that concerned me more than anything,
I watched my dad and mom
grow apart in prison because when my dad
went to prison was different.
One three minute phone call a month
and one visit a month.
The family obsolete. I mean, absolutely.
You grow apart.
I'm, I'm. And dad grew apart.
So I was determined
not to let that happen to me.
When I went to prison,
I told him in prison, I said, hey,
you can lock me up 24 over seven.
Just let me have my phone
and let me have my visits.
I don't care what I eat,
I don't care what I do.
I just want my phone calls and my visits
because I want them to maintain
a relationship with my wife because prison
is not conducive to a healthy marriage.
So I worked hard to do that when I was in
prison, and I tried to do that.
Now, you know, I've tried to do that
because I didn't want my marriage
to fall apart. It's very difficult.
So it seems like that made a big impact
on your life, seeing your mom and dad
and what his time in prison
did to the whole family.
And let's transition that to your wife,
Camille, who is here and who I've met.
Right. Who was she when you met her?
And what did she actually see
she looked at your life?
Well,
she didn't know my life. Fortunately.
And I didn't broadcast it.
She thought I was a film producer, which
I was, but that was kind of my second job.
On my fifth job, I should say. But,
you know,
she just saw me as a film producer.
She didn't know anything.
She was from Anaheim, California.
She saw The Godfather movie once
and thought it was, you know, fiction.
So she didn't have any concept
of the life.
And I didn't sit down and tell her.
Oh, by the way,
this is who I am, and this is what I do.
So fortunately, she fell in love with me
before all the catastrophe hit.
And I well, a number
of my other indictments came down
and the prison and all of that,
the trials in the prison.
So, can say this,
that God saved my life through that woman
because I wouldn't have left the life of
I didn't meet her. Why?
I only left to preserve my life with her.
I didn't leave it
because I was mad at anybody.
I hated the government at that point.
I beat them six times a trial.
I figure I'll just keep beating five times
a trial.
I'll just keep beating them.
Let him keep coming.
I'll keep beating them.
That's my attitude back then. So.
But I meet her and everything changes.
Yeah. So you met her.
And how long after that did she start
to figure out what you were into?
Well, since I kept getting
kind of figured something's up.
Okay, so how long was that?
Was that right away? After you met her,
you said you fell in love. So you.
You fell in love quick, and then boom.
Why do I. You're getting indicted.
It was pretty quick.
Yeah, okay, I met her.
She was 19, turning 20, and we had
a fairytale relationship for about a week.
No, it didn't last that
long before the roof started
to really cave in on Oh, wow.
And so she got a taste of it.
But I always told her,
don't worry about it.
I'm going to handle it.
You know, it's going to be okay.
You know, I'll make you know,
I got arrested on Friday.
I was out by Monday,
you know, that kind of thing.
And life went on.
And then, of course, I'm on trial
for several months with Giuliani.
And, you know, a lot of stuff
started to happen.
So she got it. But if I don't meet her,
I never would
have last that I would have been dead
or in person, there's no question.
So I can't call her a savior
because nobody is a savior on this earth.
But I believe
that God saved me through her.
Was she telling you like, hey,
we got to get you out of this life?
Was it a push from her
or was it just your own?
Like, hey, I love her.
I want to have a family.
I don't want her to be involved
in any of this.
I need to do it on my own
and get out of life 100%.
It was me realizing that.
What am I going to do to this girl?
I'm going to marry her
and go away to prison forever,
or get killed in the next war
that we have in a family?
I said, why would I do that to her?
And I wouldn't marry her.
I was on a trial with Giuliani, and
I wouldn't marry her during that trial,
because Rudy told me in the courtroom is,
if I convict you on this,
the day of my arraignment, I'm giving you
100 years, you're going to get double.
What? You. Father God.
So how could I, in good conscience, marry
a girl and go away for 100 years?
Made no sense.
But the day I got acquitted
on a Friday, on Saturday
she was in New York waiting for me.
I didn't
tell her that the jury was coming in
with the verdict because jury was out,
I don't know, 5 or 6 days.
I didn't tell her because I knew
they were going to take me away that day,
and that would have been the end of it.
And I would have had to tell her,
you know, go find a life because I'm done.
But.
I got acquitted on a Friday.
I called her up.
I said, get ready, we're going to Vegas
tomorrow.
We're getting married.
And that's exactly what we did
on May 9th.
I got acquitted on May 8th.
On May 9th we went and got married in
Vegas, and then I gave her a big wedding.
We got married a second time in July in
California with the family and everything.
But yeah,
I mean, I wasn't going to do that to her.
Plus it would have been too painful.
I love this girl and being in prison
and losing her to some other guy
that I probably want to kill.
Sorry about that, everybody.
But And that's why I took a plea.
Because, believe it or not, ten years,
I knew that I could.
I'd have a life after that.
If she would hang in there with me,
we could have a life.
And that was the whole plan.
I mean, you tried
something that never worked, right?
You're the, if I'm not mistaken,
the only high ranking made man
who publicly walked away from the mob
in his prime and survived.
And she was a huge part of that, right.
She she was the reason why.
And so was there a single moment
where you just realized,
I'm done with this life?
Was it that, you know, was it meeting her?
And it was like that, that's it?
Or was it a bunch of these moments,
these little moments throughout where
you realize, look, this is an evil life.
I don't want to be part of this.
And eventually you met her.
And that was just the trigger. Like,
you know what? I'm going to move.
Let's put it this way.
I knew that eventually
I was going to go down.
I knew that
even though I beat him all those times,
the Giuliani victory was used for me.
So here I am.
I beat a huge federal case.
And here's the thing.
The witness against me
in the Giuliani case, who we destroyed on
the stand, was the next was the witness
against me in the gasoline case.
We already beat him up.
He was a terrible witness.
So I go to trial in the gas case.
I probably went again
because he was a horrible witness.
But I'm not going to take a chance now
with this girl
because I'm going away forever.
If I lose, if she's not there,
I go to trial.
I definitely go to trial because I said
I would have beat him again.
And what else can they do to me?
I beat him every time,
you know, it's going to take them years
to build another case against me.
So again, I didn't leave the life
because I was mad, I didn't.
It was strictly because of her
that I know it was tough
roads ahead with the Rico case
and all of that Rico statute.
Yeah, but I figured, hey, I'll beat him.
That was my attitude.
So it was strictly her.
And was that the hardest kind of decision
you've ever had to make to leave the life?
It was a terrible, terribly hard because
I felt like I was betraying my oath,
betraying my father, betraying my guys.
I really struggled with it.
I would go to sleep at night,
walking away, wake up in the morning.
No, I'm back in.
It was very, very difficult.
It was one of the most emotionally
triggered times in my life.
Not because I love the life so much,
because I felt like I was.
I was betraying something
that I took very seriously, Yeah.
Because it seems like you had a bond
with those people in that life.
And you knew
that you were going to break that bond.
And when you announced you were leaving,
if I'm not mistaken, the boss
put a contract on your life. Yeah,
it was very.
He took it very personal.
and your own father, allegedly.
You tell me. Approved it.
What was it like to get
that information to understand
your father allegedly or potentially
had signed off on your death?
Well, listen, I didn't live in a vacuum.
I knew when I walked in, it became public.
I knew that my boss was coming after me.
There's no question.
When I heard about my debt again,
I think things out.
When I heard the feds came into the prison
and said,
your dad went along with the contract,
we got word from our informants.
It's all over the street.
And my words to him
would let me worry about my dad.
I'll worry about my dad again.
There's some part
of that that if I was going to be bad.
Because here's what the feds did.
They played dirty.
They put my name on a witness list of many
trials that were coming up in New York,
and I was sending word on my dad,
don't believe it.
I'm not coming in.
But that's what everybody says.
And then all of a sudden,
they're on the witness stand.
So that's what they were so concerned
because I'm going to tell you right now,
I could have heard
I could have buried a lot of people,
not only in my family,
but in other families.
I mean, I knew Fat Turner very well.
He was the boss of the Genovese family,
chin Gigante, Newham pretty well.
Okay.
And a lot of guys down the road.
I had a very high profile in that life.
Why I was in the gas business.
People were making money around me,
so everybody wanted to know me,
meet me, whatever.
And I had a lot of stuff that I did
with a lot of people.
I moved around in that life.
I could have heard a lot of people.
Editor MacDonald said that Ed McDonald
said he was a prosecutor.
He said Francis could have hurt everybody
because he knew how active I was,
I wasn't into that.
And anybody listening
now should understand that.
I could have buried a lot of people and
I didn't do it because I wouldn't do it.
It's not who I am.
Couldn't do that.
I couldn't live with myself.
I did that, but the feds played me dirty
in that regard.
And I will tell you
this was I concerned about my dad to like,
I don't know, you know. Yes.
I didn't see my dad for ten years
after this and after it all became
and I did my time in prison and all that
and nobody got hurt.
Then he finally got in touch with me.
So I need to see you.
I said, okay, I'm ready.
He should meet me in such
and such a place.
I said, no,
dad, I'm not meeting you any place.
I'll meet you at your house
because I'm not stupid.
Maybe somebody was following him.
Who knows?
You know, look,
I knew that life pretty well.
I understood it pretty well.
I didn't leave in a vacuum, like,
okay, nobody's going to come after me.
No, I knew what I had to do.
I changed my whole routine in life.
And I sit down with him.
And I walked into his house
at 530 in the morning,
and I hadn't seen him for ten years.
And he looked at me and he, you know,
he said, if you would have listened to me,
you'd have been a boss
of the Colombo family.
Those are the first words he ordered to
me, because that's what he expected.
He wanted me to go the distance.
That was his dream for me to be the boss
and him being in the background
because he had lifetime
parole to advise me.
And I looked at him and I said, dad,
do you want to Twilight Zone?
I said, I serve a different boss now.
And he looked at me and said,
you're serious about all this Bible stuff?
And I said, yeah, I am.
He said, all right, let's talk.
And we spoke for about three hours
and broke the ice on everything
and all these people out there.
Oh, you and your father
and they don't know.
What the hell are you talking about?
None of them. They just like to talk.
And, you know, because I have a name,
they want to,
you know, get views on my name.
They don't know what the hell
they're talking about,
about the relationship between me and
my dad and anybody wants to talk about.
I supported my dad for 25 years,
and my family
and my mom and my brothers and sisters,
and did it all while he was away.
But when I decided to make a break,
things had to be different, period.
It was my family
and my kids that I was worried about.
I'm sorry, but that's call me
selfish or whatever, but that was it.
That had to be an emotional conversation.
You haven't talked to him for ten years.
You're getting out of life.
You're out of the life.
He's thinking, hey, you know,
you could have been the boss.
And you're like, I'm on a different path.
I'm over here.
And you guys had to go back and maybe
touch on some of the things that happened.
We did.
And it was
it was a very in-depth conversation.
And I said to him,
you know,
when people are going to get upset
about this, but I'm going to tell you
that I don't cuss online,
but I'm going to say it now
because I'm going to repeat
my dad's words.
My dad told me
many times, many times, son, you know,
this life is full of shit, right?
It would say it
just like that while we were in the life.
And I said, yeah, did I get it?
But this is all life, you know?
So he understood that
my dad didn't have blinders on.
It wasn't all of this.
But my the problem with my dad,
his legacy in that life
was more important to him than anything.
He wanted to be known
as the guy that died with his boots on.
You could put ice picks in his eyes.
You could pull out his tongue,
you can do whatever.
He was never going to cooperate
with the government
because that would destroy his ego.
And I kind of understood it,
but at the expense of his family
is what I didn't understand.
Because many times
when my dad was on parole after his third
parole violation, when he got out, I said,
dad, you need to get out of New York.
A family is falling apart.
And he wouldn't do it.
He wouldn't do it.
Couldn't do it.
I should come to Florida, come to.
I got plenty of money.
I can set you up anywhere you want to go.
Get out of New York.
You can't survive here.
You wouldn't do it.
So basically, he loved his family.
Don't get me wrong.
I'll never say he didn't.
But he put the life in front of his
family, and I wasn't willing to do that.
And that's the difference
between the two of us in that regard.
So yeah, I sat down and made the made
the cops understand
if I'm out of the life.
But don't tell me I'm going to testify
against people and hurt my former friends.
No, I'm not doing that.
Put me in solitary for three years,
put me on diesel therapy,
do whatever the hell you want.
I'm not going to do that.
And the bottom line is, like I said, yeah,
I'm getting a little riled up now
because you give me an opportunity
to answer
some people that I won't answer directly
because I don't stoop
to that level online,
but people that talk
and all your relationship,
they don't know what the hell
they're talking about and plain English.
They don't know what we went through
as a family, my relationship with my dad
and anything else that went
on, you know, they don't know,
but they want to talk to get views.
It's okay, don't bother me,
but I can answer it now.
Who are these?
Are these specific people?
No, I'm not going to go there.
But it doesn't matter.
But they know who they are, right?
Okay, let's talk about God. Right?
You found God in prison.
You know you found God, I knew God.
I like to say that God found God finds us.
We don't find him at his appropriate
right time.
He finds us and he found me
and made an impression on me
when I was at my lowest. Yes.
And for someone watching who has maybe
no faith, maybe they're Skeptical of this.
Well, let me say this to
I want to answer that for the ignorant
people out there that say, oh, well,
he found God in prison.
Well, people find God when they were at
their lowest, and prison is their lowest.
Prison is fertile ground for God
to do his work because people are beat,
their destroyed,
not because they're cowards
or anything else,
because they have nowhere else to turn.
So fortunately,
God is available at that point and God
is there to transform their lives.
I've seen many, many,
many honest conversions in prison,
including my own,
and people can challenge that.
But it's been 40 years for me.
So challenge me all you want.
But you know, that's
when God is at his best.
When we're at our worst
because we need him,
we don't think we need him until
that point, but he'll take us whenever.
When we're at our worst or our best,
he'll take us.
Yeah.
And you're still here.
You're still here. Right in front of me.
Right.
And other people who went through the
same thing that you did trying to leave.
They're not here.
you have a theory for why?
Well, yeah, my theory is very simple.
God had a different plan
and purpose for my life.
He's made it
crystal clear for me. Evident.
I didn't think I was going to be doing
any of the things that I'm doing.
Speaker.
Whoever thought of that, that didn't
I didn't plan that.
And so when I come out, I'm
going to be speaking to people
and changing their lives.
I had no clue.
But, you know, sometimes
a path is laid out for you and you're
fortunate enough to accept it and take it,
and then it
leads in the right direction.
I believe until this minute,
my whole life in the mob was a platform
that God can use to bring people
to into the kingdom.
I believe that because, again,
I didn't want to be part of that life.
I went in there to help my dad.
I didn't go there
because I wanted to be a mobster,
but look at how it's being used.
I would go speak, and when I first started
speaking at a church
in Minnesota,
nobody knew who the hell I was.
I had I had big following in New York,
maybe California, Florida.
Okay. That's where my problems were.
But nobody knew me in the Midwest.
But on the marquee,
the mob guy standing room only.
Wow. I got a platform y
thanks to the media.
Thanks to the Godfather thing.
People are interested in that life,
so they give me a platform
to go and preach the gospel.
Basically,
that's what it would give me a platform
to speak to corporate America,
because I'm a survivor and
I've had success in my life in business.
And while I'm doing that,
they also hear the gospel
because how are you still alive?
God had a different purpose for me.
Pretty obvious, you walked out of that
last prison sentence.
What did that first year look like?
Right?
Building a normal life
and fully making the exit.
Right.
What did that look like?
It was a disaster for me.
I didn't know what the heck I was doing.
Honestly, I did a lot.
I made a lot of mistakes.
I'm like a fish out of water.
My first experience outside of the life
is getting out of prison, out of New York,
out of the things that I knew how to do
really well that I couldn't do anymore.
I made a mistake.
I was I had severe money problems.
You know, I was eight years.
I supported my wife while I was in prison.
The government took everything from me
almost.
I still think I have money
buried someplace,
and that's for me to know
him, for others to find out.
How's When you say almost.
You were bringing in so much cash.
And from what I know,
there were some safes and there were
some were buried here
and some were buried there, and,
I don't know, maybe a birdie
told me in my ear, when you got out,
you might have had something here,
in something there.
That's for me to know
and for others to find out at some point.
Listen,
all I can say, it was very difficult.
I was still on parole.
I had to watch myself.
I still had guys on the street, remember.
That was people were still around back
then, you know, when I was on parole
one day I come home
and there's the feds in front of my house,
and they told my wife they went in.
I was mad at them because they scared her.
They said, if you don't leave,
your husband were going to be dead
by the weekend.
So because guys were out there to hurt me
and and is this in New York or
now in California? In California?
Oh, jeez. Yeah. They sent people out.
I never even wanted to.
Full disclosure with my wife.
I don't want to scare her until now,
but that's many years ago.
But there were people out there
to look and to hurt me.
Wow. So when did you have to do what?
Did you have to move or what was the what
went to the desert for a couple of days.
Yeah.
Until things were straightened out
and I made a couple of calls and
everything was okay after that.
But, yeah, I had a couple of things
like that that I had to deal with.
so it was rough.
I had a rough couple of years
getting back on my feet
because the gun was they were still on me.
They were looking for the money.
They I mean, yeah, they didn't
just say, oh, okay, you did your time.
Goodbye. No.
How long did that last? For a while.
Yeah. Took a while.
Is there any part of that life
that you miss?
I miss the camaraderie among the guys.
Yeah, there's nothing more powerful
than a bond, a brotherhood of brothers
other than a marriage.
There's nothing more powerful.
I got your back.
You got mine.
Wherever you go in the world,
somebody will be there.
You'll have a brother there
to take you in.
Don't ever worry about your wife,
your daughter, your sister, your mother.
Nobody's going to mess with them.
We have you covered.
Powerful.
I, I love that.
And we had that relationship
with some of the guys.
Some of it was real.
Some of it, like I said, they just
hung on you to get what they can get.
But there's nothing
more powerful than that.
Nothing. So, yeah, I miss that part of it.
Not now anymore.
I'm over it
because I have such great relationships.
You know what
I'm gonna tell you as a Christian?
I'll tell you how gracious our God is.
That camaraderie
he replaced with the fellowship
that I have now
with my brothers in Christ, you know, my
my future son in law,
you know, prince of a guy were very close.
My other son in law,
you know, that married my older daughter.
I mean, you know,
we have this bond in this relation.
Nothing more powerful than that.
And you look for that as men in life.
Unfortunately, we have a lot of men
that don't realize that today
because society has dumbed down
the relationship of men and the, the,
the manhood of men, which I don't like.
And I wish that men would get back
to understanding that
real men, okay, are not a threat to women.
They're a benefit to women.
Until this day, you could ask my wife,
she's sitting there.
My wife? Don't put gas in her car. It's
my response.
Camille, you don't put gas in your car.
No, I won't let her. That's my job.
When I go away, I'll call
for all the doors locked in the house.
My wife, if she wanted to work,
I would give her that grace.
I don't want it to.
Because I don't want any other guy
telling my wife what to do.
I don't tell her what to do.
We have a good relationship between us.
the sheets sell you what to do sometimes.
Yeah, absolutely. And I
Listen, because it's easier, you know.
You know that my wife's.
My wife's got a strong will.
She's independent.
But you know what I'm saying is men
have to be men with women.
It's not demeaning to women to be a man.
I'll open the door for my wife.
I get mad at her.
She jumps in front of me.
That's my job.
When I walk down the street,
she's on the inside. I'm on the outside.
Little things like that.
I try to make her life easier
because that makes me feel good.
That's what men do.
And she has her role.
She's more nurturing.
She makes sure that I go to the doctor
when I have to go to doctor,
there's food on the table that I buy
and she prepares.
This is the way it was meant to be.
There's nothing demeaning about that.
Is she capable of doing a job?
Of course she is.
She's my video.
All the video. You see, it's.
My wife's doing Hey. Good job.
Wow. So clear
That focus on the camera is beautiful.
I thought that was one wonderful.
You have to understand.
We have a role
as men and women have their role as women.
It's not demeaning to either sex.
Let's talk to some of the entrepreneurs
out there, right.
Because they're listening
and they want to take some lessons
from kind of your life
and what you've built.
What from everything
you've built, let's say stripped of
the context is actually useful, right?
For someone building a company today?
if entrepreneurs, they're going to have
an opportunity to sit with me.
We're creating a platform
now I've spoken to so many businesses.
You know, if they listen to me,
they will have a better business
and a better family life.
Because remember this
your business is reflection
of your personal life, no doubt about it.
And you have to have that life in order
in order to be successful
and satisfied in your business.
I know people that are successful,
but very unsatisfied
because they don't have it all together.
When you can figure that out
and I can help them figure that out,
that's when they win.
So I have so many lessons to teach people
in business because I've done it all.
I've done it
legitimately. I've done it illegitimately.
There's a certain pattern that you have to
figure business is business,
whether it's illegal on the street
or it's in the boardrooms.
Business is business.
And I have a great approach to it.
I have a proven track record,
and it's too much
that we'd have to do
another whole thing to sit down.
But I don't want to give you my secrets
unless you join my club.
Share with us, if you can, Michael.
Share with us one of those lessons.
What's one lesson that can be applied
I'll give you two.
Number one, there's
no such word as failure doesn't exist.
Failure is a learning experience,
nothing more.
We're going to fail at certain things
and we're going to make mistakes.
They're a learning experience.
If you don't fail, you'll never succeed.
And anybody in business will tell you
that people that have made it number one.
Number two, it's
never anybody else's fault.
Anything that goes wrong is always
your fault.
Take responsibility.
Oh, that guy really messed me up. Well,
why didn't you know that?
Why didn't you see that in him?
Why didn't you?
Why was your perception off
when you dealt with that person?
And even if you had every excuse as to
why, it's still your fault, you know why?
Because when you take responsibility
for everything, you're
never going to make that mistake again.
Those are two things very valuable.
Number three networking.
Networking.
Any time you present yourself to anybody,
I don't care how great
the business deal is, you're the product.
You're the one that has to be liked.
Because if they don't like you
and they like the product,
they'll figure out a way
to get the product without you.
I know that's what I would do.
Hey, I like this, but I don't like him.
I'll figure this out.
Always remember you're the product.
How you present yourself is key.
Now, there's certain
there's a lot that goes along with that.
I'm not going to tell you all about that,
but there's a lot.
And, you know, I feel blessed to be
in a position to have done
so much in my life that I can share it
with people, and I'm happy to do it.
if everyone out there is listening,
we have three things for Michael,
for entrepreneurs.
We have obviously the last one
you said networking.
failure doesn't exist.
Take it out of the learning experience.
I've failed so many times
and so many different businesses.
So you have to
if to learn from those experiences.
You made mistakes. Yeah.
You don't just crawl on the ground.
Crawl on a hole.
Give up.
You you learn from those experiences
and then you can level up the next time
Because think of it.
Failure is is definite
or I failed definite.
It's over. No, it's a mistake.
I learned from the next
from that experience how to move forward.
And the third one was ownership
which is owning up.
Look,
even if you might have hired someone,
they may they make a mistake
or they screw something up
taking ownership of it
instead of saying that was his fault.
That was her Take responsibility
for everything that goes wrong and fix it.
What's the lesson?
You can only learn when getting it wrong.
Doesn't
mean losing a client in your past life.
Getting it wrong
meant potentially losing your life.
Yeah.
So you go through that now in the business
world, things are a little easier.
You might lose a client
or lose a relationship here or there,
it's a lot easier probably than it was.
Yeah.
And I always have the attitude.
It's not the end of the world.
You got to have confidence in yourself
and your ability, you know?
And I don't like the self-esteem
where I don't like that.
You know, confidence is a word.
I'm going to tell you this.
I love confidence in people.
I hate arrogance,
and there is a distinction between
confidence and arrogance.
You know, confidence in narcissism.
You know, you know that distinction.
So it's good
to have confidence, bad to be arrogant
because people pick that up right away
and they don't like it.
I don't like it.
I don't care how successful you are,
who you are, what your title is.
If you're arrogant to me, leave me alone.
I don't need that,
you know, but have confidence in yourself.
All right. So that this didn't work out.
The last client in the world,
you're never going to get another one.
Oh, but it was so much money.
Well, another one doesn't exist out there.
You can't figure out a way around this.
Do you have good people around you?
Surround yourself with good people.
Remember people who say to me,
Michael, you're a brilliant businessman.
I'd say, no, I'm not.
Well, what do you mean?
You've had all this success?
I said, but there's things that I don't
like to do, and I don't do them well.
But what's my secret?
Hire the right people
and motivate them to do the job for you.
Do what you do best, delegate the rest,
and learn how to motivate them.
I love that,
and let's talk about today, right?
So speaking to young people.
Maybe they're from difficult backgrounds,
right?
All over the world.
And in addition,
you're speaking to to businesses, right?
And so.
What do you tell them about redemption?
The ten greatest words
that were ever spoken in the history of
the world, in the history of civilization
came from Jesus on the cross.
Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.
Jesus was willing to forgive
those who persecuted him wrongly.
He was innocent.
He was on the cross, beaten, brutalized
everything.
You can imagine the worst death
in the history of civilization.
Father, forgive them, for
they don't know what they do.
He was willing to forgive
even those that did that to him.
Bible is very clear.
Thief on the cross.
These are not just stories
and fairy tales.
Jesus did this for a reason.
Thief on the cross.
Lord remembered me today in your kingdom.
You didn't get hung on the cross
for being a thief.
This was a bad guy.
Throughout his life,
he saw something in Jesus and Jesus
saw it was sincere because remember,
you can't pull a scam on God.
I pulled a lot of scams, not on God.
That's why people would tell me,
oh, Michael, you know, you preaching this.
Hey, don't worry about it.
I'll pay the price if I'm mocking
or making it, or I'm using religion to
earn money.
God is going to.
I'm going to pay for it
when I stand in front of him
because he knows my heart
can't pull a scam.
He looked at that thief.
And what did he say to him?
He saw you're a bad guy.
You got to pay the price.
Today you'll be with me in Paradise.
What's stronger than that?
more proof do you need?
There is no more.
Remember, don't try to pull a scam on God.
You ask
for forgiveness and you sincerely mean it.
And you don't remain
in that pattern of sin.
You can't remain in a pattern of sin
and say that you accepted Christ
and you're trying to change.
You can't.
So anybody can be redeemed.
Son of Sam can be redeemed.
Some people will get insulted by that.
And I understand it well.
He murdered my son and daughter.
I know that, and that's hard to accept.
And I don't know how I would feel in the
same circumstance, but I am not God.
I didn't set the rules.
I didn't put the playing field down.
But that's what God says.
I will forgive anybody
that sincerely asked for forgiveness.
Period. That's what we believe in.
If we don't have that,
we don't have anything.
Is there a version of your story where
the redemption doesn't happen, right?
Where you don't find faith, you don't meet
Camille, you don't walk away.
And what does that man look like?
Well, this man won't be here right now.
Look, Will, I'm telling you, I believe
with all my heart there's no question.
It's not a question
of what I believe. It's just fact.
All the guys that I ran with are dead
or in prison.
All of them. Not 1 or 2. All of them?
No, no. Well, let me correct that.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
One guy that I just interviewed on
my podcast was made
the same night that I was made, but
he just got out of prison after 34 years.
He's got lung cancer.
The poor guy, he's in bad shape.
His life was destroyed.
Okay, so he's alive. But look. What?
Look at his life. Don't have anybody.
He's living in a trailer.
I feel so bad for him.
There's no question.
The level that I reached that
in that life and the profile that I had
either be dead or in prison.
Why would they let me go?
There's
no way I could survive in that life.
No way. After going through all of it.
Right? The life.
The time in jail. Everything.
Was there anything you would do
differently if you can go back?
At what point? At any point.
Meaning not get into the life at all.
Decisions you made
during your time in the life you know,
looking at your life now,
if you could, if you could go back
and make a change, a different decision,
maybe not to get into life at all.
would you do anything differently,
Well, knowing what I know Yes.
what I have entered the life. No.
entered
the life because I wanted to help my dad.
But now I realized that wasn't
the only path to help my dad.
But as a 20 year old kid, that's
what I believed as a 75 year old man.
Well, that's not the only way.
I didn't help him that much
because he still did 40 years in prison,
even though I got him out on parole
a couple of times.
So no, I would not go back in that life.
It's a bad life.
Look, whether we like things or not,
you know, I love what Jesus said.
This.
I don't totally agree.
I have to clarify this.
Remember, Jesus is surrounded
by all of his followers, and the Pharisees
were there looking to nail him,
and they tried to outsmart him
by giving him a coin with Caesar's
imprint on
it and say, what do you think about this?
Because they knew
if he would have said something wrong
about not paying his taxes, well,
they would have got him.
So Jesus looked at him
smarter than all of them and said, render
therefore to Caesar
the things that are seasons,
and to God the things that are God.
They couldn't trap him.
But the Jewish Jesus really believed
that the Romans were doing the right thing
overtaxing his people? Of course not.
he wasn't going to let them
put him in a situation where he could have
put his people in trouble and himself.
He was too smart. So what am I saying?
Do I believe we have a great government
and they're doing everything right
and taxation is great?
No. They're horrible.
They're defrauding us.
They're doing a lot of things.
But does that mean
I have the right to break the law? No.
Jesus taught me that if it wasn't
for that, I'd probably be doing it
because I don't like a lot of people
in government That drives me crazy.
Some of the things that I hear.
And you're in California
and I'm in California, where we
we got the worst of the worst here.
Is there anything that you look back
in that life and you're still maybe
privately glad that you did?
Maybe some things that you couldn't say
in a church talk,
but you know, you're glad you did.
Yeah.
And I couldn't say it on the.
Fair enough.
when you're gone.
What do you want?
The one line story of Michael Francis
to be not the redemption,
the the whole thing, the one line story.
So I just had a conversation
with somebody yesterday
who I'm going to engage to work with me
very, very bright young man,
along with my future son in law.
And he said, what's your legacy?
Because I have a brand now, and I have,
you know, a lot of good things going on.
We're into wine and pizza, but
I have a brand that people are attracted
to now, and a lot of great
things are happening as a result of that.
And we're being very selective.
But. Well, Michael,
what is it that you want?
What's your legacy?
And I said,
I don't need my name on a building.
I don't need the whole world to know me.
And I made my mark and I did something
wonderful for civilization.
What?
I wanted two things somebody runs into.
Hey, did you know Michael Francis?
Yeah. Was a great guy.
That's my legacy
and my family, my kids to be proud of me.
And maybe I can leave them something that
they can build upon when I'm gone.
And maybe while I'm here,
that I can help them with.
That's my legacy,
my kids and my grandkids.
And of course, you know my wife.
She's right there along with me.
So it's not
that I'm leaving her with that,
but it's and we both talked about this.
Both.
It's about our kids
and our grandkids at this point
and just people having a good word
to say about people that know me,
not people that want to capitalize
on my name, but people that know me.
I can hear the emotion in your voice
when you say that.
It seems like family is so,
so important to you.
I get kind of choked up with this
because I really do
want to leave something for my kids.
I mean, I look, it's
it's tough, you know,
you go through a lot of stuff in life, and
your kids
should be able to benefit
from who you were.
And that's really important to me.
And I wish, you know, some of you
that are listening.
I wish you would take more advantage
of all the work
that I put in throughout my life,
you know, so that you could benefit
because I have no complaints
if I were gone tomorrow.
I mean, I lived a good life
throughout all of it.
I have no complaints.
God's been very good to me,
and I hope that I'm around
for a lot longer
so that I can continue this for them.
That's what it's all about.
Yeah, well,
you're spreading a message of positivity.
You know,
you're telling an amazing story about what
you've been through and hopefully
your story and this story, you're able to
make an impact on so many people's lives.
So, Michael, I want to thank you so much
for being on Dakota Genius.
Well, I want to say this.
I didn't expect
some of the line of of content
or questioning, but I appreciate it
because a guy give me a chance
to say some things that I wouldn't have
said, you know, on my own.
So appreciate that.
And I think you did a good job. Thank you.
You got it.