Breaking Good ｜ Michael Franzese ｜ EP 302 (RzKM-VwriK0)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=RzKM-VwriK0

I don’t want to not accept responsibility for what I did, because I think that’s wrong, especially at this stage of my life. Let’s put it this way. Had my father never introduced me to that life, I would have never gone down the criminal path. That’s not who I was. But on the other hand, I had it in me to do what I had to do. So I wonder myself sometimes, you know, what is the real you? In other words, if you were presented with a situation when you had to do something, you did it. Is that the real you? Even though you were uncomfortable? I’ve asked myself this question quite a bit. But being I was capable of doing it back then, was it the real me? Is it the real me? You might think that because you, as I said, because you had decided to abide by this moral code, and that it was a moral code, that you wouldn’t be conscience-ridden for doing some of the things you had to do to stay part of the family, because you’d already defined yourself in that way and also defined that as ethical. But it was still grating against something in you. And I would say, hopefully, that whatever was calling you to conscience was more the real you than the you that was stepping outside of your conscience to do the terrible things that you did. It’s very interesting to me that despite your oath and your discipline following of the appropriate practices, that you were still guilty. Hello, everyone watching on YouTube or listening on my podcast. I have the opportunity today to speak to Michael Francis, who has an extraordinarily interesting life, one that might be characterized as breaking good. Michael Francis grew up as the son of the notorious Underboss of New York’s violent and feared composition from the late 18th century, and that had been lost as an experimental phenomenon 음악 Any too, if you have any questions, New York’s violent and feared Colombo crime family. Franzis was, quote, one of the biggest money earners the mob had seen since El Capone, end quote. And the youngest individuals on Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 biggest mafia bosses. Ranking number 18, just five behind John Gotti. At his most affluent, Franzis generated an estimated five to eight million dollars from legal and illegal businesses. It was a life filled with power, luxury, and deadly violence. Michael’s story is a modern day Damascus road experience. From his early days in the mob and rise to power, to God’s leading him to do the unthinkable, quit the mob and follow Christ. In fact, nobody at Franzisi’s rank had ever just walked away and lived. Michael’s compelling story of transformation is featured in his autobiography, Blood Covenant. He’s also written several other books, including This Thing of Ours, and The Good, The Bad, and The Forgiven. He’s appeared widely in both Christian and secular high profile media, including The 700 Club, Life Magazine, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, GQ, and many others. Thank you very much, Mr. Franzis, for agreeing to talk to me today. Well, thanks for having me, Jordan. Yeah, well, this should be a very interesting conversation. So let’s go back to the beginning, I guess. You had quite a, let’s say, checkered past decades ago. You were involved in organized crime at the highest level of organization, really, and I suppose in your way, very successful at it. And so let’s start with that. Maybe we could go back even to your teenage years. I mean, tell me about your family and how this all came about. Well, I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and my dad, Sonny Franzis, was the underboss of the Colombo family, one of the five New York mafia-cozinoster families. And my dad was a very, very high profile figure at the time during the 50s and 60s and right into the 70s. He was very well known, and he was a major target of law enforcement, a major target of the media back then. I always say he was kind of like the John Gotti of his day. I’m sure most people know of John. And so I grew up in an atmosphere, Jordan, where I loved my dad very much. He was a good father. He originally didn’t want this life for me. He wanted me to go to school and be a doctor. He wanted me to stay off the street. But we were surrounded by law enforcement all the time, and I always viewed them as the enemy because they were trying to harass my family, harass my father. And I grew up with people always talking negative about law enforcement, so on and so forth. And I experienced that from the time I was four or five years old up until my teenage years and then after that. And it took a real turn of events. During the 60s, my dad was indicted several times. He was indicted three times in the state of New York for some very serious crimes, grand larceny and murder. He went to trial on all three of those charges and was acquitted. He was found not guilty. But then in 1966, he was indicted in federal court for masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies. After a lengthy trial, he gets convicted. In 1967, they sentenced him to 50 years in prison. It was, I believe, the longest sentence for a bank robbery conspiracy case ever given up to that point. 1970, he loses all his appeals and they ship him off to Leavenworth Penitentiary to do his time. And I was a pre-med student at that point at Hofstra University in New York. But when my dad went away, which was essentially a death sentence, he was 50 years old when he went in, we figured he had 50 on top of that. He’d never come out of prison alive. And then Joe Colombo, who was the boss of the Colombo family, somebody we knew very well, he kind of took me under his wing. I would meet a lot of my dad’s friends. At the time, Joe Colombo had started the Italian American Civil Rights League. Which was supposed to safeguard Italian Americans from being harassed by the FBI. And I got very active in the league. I saw it as a way to help my dad. And during that time, I was actually picketing the FBI building in Manhattan and being a very active participant in what Joey was trying to do, Colombo was trying to do. And I lost interest in school because a lot of my father’s friends were telling me, if you don’t go to school and help your father out, he’s gonna die in prison. I believe my father was innocent because I asked him, I said, Dad, bank robbery, it doesn’t make sense. And he looked at me, we were in the visiting room of Leavenworth, and he said, son, I’m not a bank robbery. He said, I was framed on these charges. And he said, we got to work to get these charges overturned or I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in prison. And it was a turning point for me during that visit when I said, look, I’m not going to school anymore. If I don’t help you out, you’re gonna die in here. And basically at that point, he proposed me for membership in the Colombo family. I was 21 years old when that happened. And that’s when my life started to take a shift. Big government continues to spend borrowed money, inflation continues to swell, dragging down our economy, and the stock market has entered bear territory. So what’s your plan? Are your assets diversified? I’m Philip Patrick, precious metal specialist for the Birch Gold Group. For nearly 20 years, we’ve helped Americans diversify into gold and we can help you too. Did you know you can own physical gold and silver in a tax sheltered account? We can help you transfer an IRA or 401k tied to stocks into an IRA in gold. If you’re skeptical about the trajectory of the economy in the US dollar, then text Jordan to 989898. Birch Gold Group will send you a free info kit on securing your savings with gold. With thousands of satisfied customers, five star reviews, and an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, we take precious metals seriously. Text Jordan to 989898 for your free info kit. So what did being inducted into the Colombo family mean? Well, you know, you can’t just go up to somebody in that life and say, hey, I’d like to join. You know, somebody has to propose you, vouch for you, say you have what it takes to be a member. And for me, it was my dad. He proposed me to membership. And you know, there is a process to becoming a made man or an official member of that life. And you go through a process where you have to prove yourself worthy of becoming a member. And you know, it could have been, you know, there were guys at the time, Jordan, they had an expression in the life where the books were closed from the 1950s up until that point in the mid 70s. They weren’t officially bringing any more members into that life because it was security reasons. And this was all five families in New York kept to that. But then they opened the books again in the 70s. So there were guys actually waiting 20 years to become members of that life. Just, you know, they were just there, 20 years. For me, it was a two and a half year, three year process because like I said, they had opened the book. So, you know, you have to prove yourself worthy. There’s a lot of discipline in that life, a lot of authority, a lot of alleged respect. You know, you had a meeting at eight o’clock. If you weren’t there at 730, you were late. You know, it can never be late in that life. And you just had to follow the orders, whatever you were told to do. You know, it’s difficult for me to say this, but you know, I like to be honest about it. You know, that life at times is violent. And if you’re part of that life, you’re part of the violence. And it took me two and a half years before I proved myself worthy. And it was actually Halloween night in 1975 when I took an oath and became a sworn made member of the Colombo family. And what sort of things did you have to do? What sort of things were you called upon to do in order to be deemed worthy of membership? Well, again, you know, when I first, after my dad proposed me, it was about two weeks later when an official in the family, a captain picked me up and he took me to see the boss. Now, I don’t know if you’re aware, but Joe Colombo had been shot seriously wounded at a big rally that we had in Columbus Circle back in 1971. He eventually died from the wounds. And I was about 12 steps away from him when that happened on the stage. It was kind of the first eye-opening experience that I had in that life. And you know, I was told straight out, they said to me, do you want to become a member of this life? And I said, yes. And they said, well, here’s the deal. It was a new boss that I had taken over. His name was Tom DiBella. Tom has passed on now. And he said to me, here’s the deal. From now on, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you’re on call to serve this family, the Colombo family. That means if your mother is sick and she’s dying and you’re at her bedside and we call you to service, you leave your mother’s side. You come and serve us from now on. We’re number one in your life before anything and everything. And when and if we feel you deserve this privilege, this honor to become a member, we’ll let you know. So from that moment on, you have to do whatever you’re told to do to prove yourself worthy. And you know, there was a lot of menial things. You know, there was times I had to drive the boss to a meeting. I sat in a car two, three, four hours, waiting for him to come out. You know, God forbid you leave, you go to the restroom, go get a newspaper. He comes out, you’re not there. You’re in trouble, you know, stuff like that. I know I did that once and paid the price. It was a real lashing. You know, just a lot of things that are like that. I mean, a lot of times you’re just really hanging out and observing and watching and listening. And you know, I learned to be a very good listener at that point, Jordan. I just listened and observed and seen what it was I need to do and what was expected of me. And look, you know, again, to be honest, there are times when you’re called upon within that life to commit an act of violence. And if you’re told to do it, you need to do it. And before you had gone into medical school and then decided to take this turn in your life, had you been involved in anything that was violent as a child or a teenager? I never was involved myself. I mean, I had fights, you know. I mean, I had a fight, two or three neighborhood fights. I mean, my ribs were broken once I got hit with a bat. You know, things like that, scuffles like that, but nothing major. But I witnessed things, you know. My dad was a fairly violent guy. I mean, I saw him hit people. So I witnessed that. I didn’t really enjoy seeing it, but I witnessed it at one time at a really young age, I think it was 10 or 11 years old, and he had, you know, trouble with somebody on the street. I was driving with him and he was pretty violent with the guy. How did you react to that when you were 11? It kind of scared me. You know, I didn’t see him like that with another guy. So I was a little concerned. I said, hey, you know, in my mind, I guess I was thinking, is this going to get out of hand? What’s going to happen? And two fellows that were with my dad walked over to me and said, I was in the car, and they said, Mike, don’t worry about it. Probably shouldn’t be seeing this, but everything is okay. But it made an impression on me. So, all right, so you, how far had you gone in medical school? Well, I was a pre-med student. It was my second year. I was a sophomore, basically a biology major. What happened with your father? What happened with your attempts to have his case adjudicated, re-adjudicated? Well, my dad actually did 40 years on that 50, and he was paroled. He made parole because he was under the old law where they still had parole in the federal system. Back then, today they don’t have it. You got to do 85% of your time, but he was under the old law, and after 10 years, I actually did get him out on parole, but he kept going back in, and always for associating with other felons, somebody alleged to be an organized crime. So he was paroled five times, violated five times, and went back in. And he ended up doing 40 on the 50. He was actually released in 2017. For the last time, he was 100 years old, the date of his release. He was actually the oldest member of that life in America, probably in the world, and he died at the age of 103, just two years ago. So what did it mean to be, in that time, at that time, what did it mean to be part of the Cozinostra, five families in New York? And why five, and were they bonded together, or were they competing with one another? Well, they didn’t compete with one another, but there were rivalries at the time, but never rivalries that ended up in violence, because in that life, there’s a perception that families used to fight one another. That kind of activity stopped in the 40s. When Lucky Luciano got together and created the commission, and there was kind of a ruling body over the five families, the boss of each family was involved in it, they didn’t fight among one another. They settled disputes amicably. Whenever there was a war in that family, it was always a civil war. It was usually for power or leadership. But I always say this, Jordan, I believe the golden years, if you want to call them that, of mafia in New York, and maybe probably throughout the United States, was really from the 50s until the mid-80s. In the mid-80s, things started to fall apart when Rudy Giuliani started to really use the racketeering laws, and put a lot of guys in prison, created a lot of informants, and that’s when the life kind of made a drastic turn, I guess for the better for society, but for the worse for them. But it was a big deal back then. We had a lot of power and a lot of control in this country. The midterms are upon us, and it’s time for some real change. Inflation isn’t going to wait, and if the current administration keeps handing out free checks, Americans won’t just be hurting, they’ll be fighting to survive. The typical investment portfolio of 60-40 stocks and bonds is down by 34%. It’s worst drop of the century. Millions of Americans are taking a hit. What can we do to set things right? You could invest in assets that aren’t dragged down by the stock market, like fine art with Masterworks. Fine art is so disconnected from stocks that even as the 60-40 portfolio keeps losing, fine art is selling for 26% more than it was last year. Just recently, Masterworks sold a painting for a 21.5% net return to their investors. Go to masterworks.com and use promo code JBP to sign up for Masterworks and skip their wait list. That’s masterworks.com, promo code JBP, or click the link in the description. See important disclosures at masterworks.com slash CD. Yeah, well, it said in your bio that at the height of your activity, you were involved in criminal activity that was generating something between five and eight million dollars a week, and that would be in the 70s, if I’ve got the timeline correct. So that’s an awful lot of money. So what sort of activities were you overseeing and what did that overseeing consist of? Well, you know, you kind of find your own level in that life, and I like to explain it this way. There was kind of two types of people in that life. You were either a racketeer or a gangster. A racketeer was a guy that knew how to use that life to benefit him in business and went out and made money, not only for himself, but for the family. And a gangster was someone that was just not capable of that, and they were kind of a, I guess you can call it a thug. You know, they were the guys who did a lot of the street work. If you were a racketeer, you also had to be a gangster at certain times because you had to do that. That was something you had to do. But normally they tried to keep the guys that were earning money, you know, earning money because no organization survives without money. So I was fortunate. I knew how to use that life to benefit me in business. And I went on to make a very significant amount of money. What did we do? Just about everybody in that life, you know, in that level is into gambling. Like I had a lot of bookmakers that were under my control because bookmakers weren’t really allowed to operate on the street unless they were some way affiliated with organized crime, we wouldn’t let them. You know, I put out money on the street at usurious rates. People couldn’t go to a bank, so they would come to me. We did that. And I was, again, I was very aggressive on the street. I worked very hard. And a lot of people would come to me with different schemes. You know, there’s a misconception that guys in that life sit in their social clubs and look at the next business that they’re going to attack or infiltrate or corrupt in some way. And that happens on occasion. But normally, it’s someone from the business that would come to us and say, hey, we have a scheme to defraud our company or, you know, our business, can you help us? And that happened to me quite often. And the biggest thing, you know, to answer your question that I got involved in was I was involved in a scheme to defraud the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline. And somebody brought the germ of an idea for me. And we created that into a huge, huge enterprise, I would say, where we were generating eight to ten million dollars a week. How was that implemented, that scam on the gasoline tax front? Well, initially, in New York and I think throughout the country, the tax on every gallon was collected at the gas station. The gas station operator was obligated to pay the tax. While that was happening, we had 350 or so gas stations that we either owned or operated, and we installed people in all of them. And to make a long story short, you know, it would take the government about ten months before they would come down on a company that wasn’t paying tax. And we had a way to manipulate them so that it took ten months. And then they changed the law. And they said that you had to be a licensed wholesaler in order to collect the tax, and then you had to pay the government. Well, I had 18 companies that were licensed to collect tax on every gallon of gasoline, and the same deal. It took them about ten or 11 months before they came down on us. And we had accountants working for us that were able to keep them at bay for that length of time. And then by the time they would come down on a company, we’d just close the doors. That company would be over, and we’d move to the next license. So we did that for… I ran this operation for almost eight years. So how come the government didn’t clue in if they were losing the amount of money that you were siphoning off? You said you ran this repeatedly, so if I’ve got it right, you set up a company, you had about an 11-month window before the government would come in and enforce its tax collection. So you could collect money for ten months and then just kill the company and then start another one? Correct. And then you managed to do that for eight years? Yes. So why didn’t the government clue in? Well, they couldn’t. They were investigating us, they were trying to clue in, they just couldn’t figure out how we were doing it or what we were doing. And it was a pretty sophisticated operation, and we just tried to stay one step ahead of them, which we were able to do. And it lasted that long. I mean, I had an incident once where two FBI agents, I had also a couple of car agencies, I had a Mazda agency and a Chevrolet agency. And they visited me in my offices once, and they brought me outside, and they said, look, we have an idea of what you’re doing, we know what you’re doing, but we can’t figure it out. Just tell us, help us, and we’ll give you a pass on all of this. Now, obviously, I knew they weren’t going to give me a pass, and I didn’t cooperate with them at the time, but they knew something was going down, they just couldn’t figure it out. We just stayed ahead of them. And so how did it finally fold up after eight years? Well, my partner, who developed the scheme along with me, he was actually the one that brought me the idea. He had a small operation out in Long Island, and he got in trouble on an unrelated case, a tax issue, a personal tax issue that he had. And at the time, he was on trial, and we had a compound in Panama. And the reason we had it there is because there was no extradition between Panama and the United States at that point in time. And so he was flying back and forth to Panama, and there was at some point in time when he thought he was going to be convicted on his case, and he didn’t want to take the conviction, so he fled to Panama. And the FBI somehow, they went and kidnapped him in the middle of the night, so they bypassed the extradition laws, and they brought him into Florida, and at that point in time, he agreed to be a cooperating witness against me. And I was the target at that time. I had several investigations going on me at one time. And once he became an informant and started cooperating, he told them how the whole scheme was coming down, and that’s when it fell apart. So I’m curious about your personality then and now, I suppose. It seems to me that juggling all these enterprises, each of which has a high probability of collapse and a high probability of investigation, I would think of that as something extraordinarily stressful. And so how is it that you were able to keep your head while you were engaged in these enterprises? Because I can imagine if I was doing that, I would be apprehensive all the time as a consequence of being pursued, let’s say. But obviously, you were able to deal with that. And so how were you able to stay composed while engaged in these activities, and why at that time did you think it was worth it? Well, that’s a good question. I’ll tell you, it wasn’t only… I was a target of law enforcement from day one because my dad’s name was so high profile. I mean, I had, throughout my time in that life, I had 18 arrests. They were on me all the time. I found out I also had seven indictments. I had five state indictments, and I had two federal racketeering indictments, one that was brought on by Rudy Giuliani. And I went to trial five times. I was either dismissed or acquitted in every case. And so I constantly was under investigation. And on the other hand, when you’re in that life, you’re constantly watching out for the guy next to you because that’s just the way the life goes. So, I mean, I never analyze myself and say, how was I able to do this? I think part of it stemmed from the resentment that I had from law enforcement, that, hey, you destroyed my family, you took my father away, and I’m just going to continue on this path. But I will say this, Jordan, people have asked me that many, many times. There were things that I had to do in that life that I was very uncomfortable in doing. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t part of who I was, I believe. But in some way, I mean, I just stepped outside of myself because I knew I had to do it, or suffered consequences myself, and I did it. And then I sprang back to who I was before that. I mean, I don’t know how else to say it. Well, you said already that you had constructed a pretty complex identity. You had a two and a half year apprenticeship. And as you get deeper and deeper into something, that’s more and more of who you are. And so the alternative to continuing in that vein is to do something radical, completely radical and different, and that’s no easy thing to manage. And I think people do in their lives step outside themselves quite frequently to maintain what they have. So you said part of it was that you had been embattled on the law enforcement front for a very, very long time. And so you were pretty accustomed to that, and that you felt that the law enforcement agencies were enemies. And so was that part of the, that was part of the justification for engaging in those activities? Yes, I mean, I saw law enforcement as, they’re corrupt. These are not good people. They framed my father, they put him in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. It was very destructive to my family. I don’t know any family of any member of that life, including my own, and not my wife and kids, thank God for that, but mother, father, brothers and sisters, that hasn’t been totally devastated. And I guess I blamed them in a big way early on. I wasn’t blaming my father, I was blaming them. And so anytime I was able to get over them or fight with them or argue with them, I don’t mean argue, verbal argue, but just, I just did it, I went for it. It was very resentful on my part. I had a real resentment for that. I see, okay, okay, okay. So some of the, I see. And so then that also meant that when you’re facing prosecution by the law enforcement entities and the judiciary, you’re still feeling like you’re embattled and that you have a moral obligation in some sense to continue to fight despite the costs. When you look at the situation now, because you’re a changed man, and we’ll get into that, you talked about viewing law enforcement as an enemy and an enemy worth continually battling against, even at personal cost, and not blaming your father. And you said you loved your father and that he was a good father to you. When you look back on it now, I mean, obviously your father, and correct me at any point if I’ve got this wrong, but obviously your father was engaged in widespread criminal activity. How have you, why was that not an issue when you were young? Why do you think that his guilt on that front was more or less invisible to you? And how do you view his participation in these activities and his hand in establishing his destiny, even if he was framed on those charges? How do you view that now? Well, totally different. You know, one of the, you know, I’ve had many defining moments in my life, but when I stepped away from that life and walked away, I had a lot of trouble, Jordan. I mean, there was a contract on my life because you can’t walk away from that life. And everybody thought the next step for me would be to be a cooperating witness because that’s what happens normally. People don’t just walk away. So I was in prison at the time, and you know, we can get into that, how that happened, but the law enforcement, the FBI came into the prison and said, there’s a contract on your life. You’re a dead man anyway, cooperate with us. And they said, and your father went along with the contract. We got word from our informants. Now, I understood that. You know, I understood that because sometimes in that life, if you propose somebody and that person becomes an informant, well, you could be held responsible. In my case, probably not with my dad because of his reputation there, but it was possible. So I understood what he was doing. It hurt a little bit, but it didn’t bother me that much because I understood the life well. And I said, well, these are some of the consequences I’m going to face. I don’t believe my father would ever put a gun to my head, but he might’ve kept quiet, you know, and just, well, hey, my son violated the rules. But it was really later on that I had a conversation with him. And this was many years later, after I walked away, it was probably maybe 10 or 12 years ago. And I said to him, I visited him in prison on his last violation. And I said, you know, dad, our family’s destroyed. I mean, my mother, 33 years without a husband, at the end of her life, she died in 2012, her relationship with my dad can only be described as ugly because she blamed him for everything that went wrong. What went wrong? I had a sister, 27 years old, died of an overdose of drugs. My brother, 25 years a drug addict, I can’t even begin to tell you what he put the family through and me personally trying to keep him alive on the street. Another younger sister, you know, 41 years old, she died of cancer, but she was never mentally stable. And I said, you know, dad, you got to claim responsibility for what you destroyed our family. Because he was asking me, you know, you walked away, why did you do this? And I said, because I didn’t want to put my family through what we went through. And, you know, he looked at me and he said, well, none of this was my fault. I said, well, what do you mean by that? He said, well, I was framed on this case. And I said, dad, you weren’t framed because you were a doctor, a lawyer, or a priest. You were framed because of who we were. I said, you got to come to terms with that because eventually you were going to go down. He wouldn’t accept responsibility. So that’s interesting. So, okay, so let’s talk about that a little bit because that’s extremely interesting. Because you might think that given that he had lived an exceptional criminal life, that he would have been willing in some sense to accept the guilt that would be part and parcel of that. I mean, if you engage in criminal activities, then you’re doing criminal things. And obviously that’s wrong in some sense, or it wouldn’t be called criminal. And you’d think that that would be part of the price you’d pay for whatever success and respect you might generate as a consequence of doing that. Maybe whatever adventure you might have as a consequence of doing that. But the fact that he dwelt on the narrow fact of his innocence in that regard means to me in some sense that he was denying his, and I think this is what you’re telling me, is that he was denying his culpability. You know, when you often hear that, especially the high-level criminal types are without conscience, but that doesn’t seem to be an appropriate description of the situation with your father because if he was without conscience, he would have just said, well, of course I was guilty and they frame me, the sons of bitches, but that’s exactly what you’d expect. But you know, I had it coming to me in some sense because of all the other things I did. But you said that he was clinging to his innocence and also unwilling to take responsibility for what he had done. And do you think that’s an exaggerated version of what you had to do when you stepped outside yourself, so to speak, to commit the sorts of acts that you didn’t regard as part and parcel of you? Yeah, I think it could be described that way, yes. You know, and I got upset with him during that meeting too because I said, you know, how could you not claim responsibility for any of this? I said, our family was destroyed. And he refused to do it. He was very, now again, I don’t know if he just couldn’t face me and say it. Maybe inwardly I can’t look into his heart and his mind, but he was very adamant about denying it. And maybe in some sense, I don’t know, maybe that had a carryover effect on me during my time in that life. Because my dad did teach me one thing. He said to me, or he taught me a lot of things that I thought were very helpful to me. But one of the things he said is never admit to anything. Never, no matter what. You don’t ever admit to anything. Let them prove it, let somebody else prove it. And I saw that as being wrong later on, but during my time in that life and growing up, that’s how I would never admit to anything. If you guys want to get me, you got to get me. I’m not going to help you. So that was my mentality back then. Right, right. And do you think that did carry, did that also carry over? Do you think, it’s hard to practice something without it becoming habit, let’s say. And so you might say, well, did that carry over to your attitude to yourself? Because I am very interested in that idea that you brought forward earlier about having to step outside yourself when you saw yourself doing things that you didn’t regard as essentially you. It’s a strange distinction, right? Because there’s the real you that’s doing the things that are good, and then there’s the sporadic you that are doing terrible things, but that’s not really you. There’s a line of denial there. And that’s not conscience-less in any sense. In some sense, it’s the denial of conscience. And you did say that your father seemed to manifest the same attitude on a very large scale. When you decided to get out of that criminal life, was that a consequence of willingness to preserve your family from the catastrophes that your birth family had been through, or to what degree was that also your willingness to look at those things that you’d done and to start seeing them as part of you instead of part of whatever it is that you were being when you weren’t being you? Well, there were a couple of things that led to that. Jordan, one of the horrors of that life is that you make a mistake, your best friend walks you into a room, and you don’t walk out again. And there was a night when I had that experience. There was a lot of talk about me on the street. I had a very big crew at that time. We were making a lot of money. There was a publication, I think it was Newsday, that wrote a story that said I was getting powerful enough to break away from the Colombo family and start my own family. There was no truth to it. It was fictional story, you know how the media is. And so guys on the streets start to get a little bit nervous of that, especially my boss at the time. So without going into all the details, unless you wanted me to, I always walked into a room one night and I didn’t think I was gonna walk out again. And it was one of the scariest times of my life. It was not heroic that I walked in. It was more robotic. I just said, hey, if this is it, I was such a product mentally. Well, I’d like to hear the details. Tell me what happened. So you were becoming very successful and a story was generated about you in the press, about your ambitions. And obviously that caused some concern. So yeah, tell me the details. Okay, well, my dad was on parole at the time and I was a captain in a family. They had elevated me to that position. That’s a powerful position, cap regime, captain. And my dad was also a captain. And I went to see him, he sent for me. I went to see him and we were in the driveway of his house in Long Island. And he said to me, the boss wants to see us tonight. And because my dad was on parole and I had no record at the time, I drove him everywhere. I tried to shield him from people because he kept getting violated. So wherever he would travel, he would go with me. I’d keep people away from him. So I said, okay, what time do you want me to pick you up? Because we knew it had to be a covert meeting because the boss was also on parole and we couldn’t all get together because there would have been a violation for the two of them. So he said, well, they want to do this differently. They want me to come in first and they want you to come in second. And I said, well, why do they want to do that? I said, no, we’re not going to do that. You know the talk on the street. I said, we’re not going to do that. Why would they separate us? I said, we’ll go together. Lowick story showed it was the first time I really had an argument with my dad ever in my life because I always respected him. Even if I disagreed with him, I did it nicely. But he was very adamant, very insistent. He said, we had an order. We got to do it that way. I said, okay. So another captain in the family called me and he said, meet me in Brooklyn on 18th Avenue. And so I drove in from Long Island. I met him, I parked my car and I got into his car. Now this is somebody I knew my whole life. He was another captain, equal rank with me. When I got in the car in the passenger seat, there was somebody sitting behind me who I recognized, but I didn’t know well. And I started to get a little like, what’s going on here? And it was about a 15 minute ride to the house where we were meeting the boss at that time. And we had to do it covert to make sure nobody was following us. It was a summer day in August. And when we parked the car, we get out of the car and it was about a 30 yard walk from the car down to the basement apartment where we had to go. And I get out of the car and I start to walk and the fella’s name was Jimmy. Jimmy, I assume got behind me and the other fella got out behind him. And this was a very bad setup, Jordan. I said, something is dramatically wrong here. I said, this is wrong. And you know, when I think of this, I’m telling you, every time I think of it, it was that intense for me. I can hear like the crickets chirping and I see these little lightning bugs that we had at the time in New York. And as I’m walking down there, I’m saying, this is bad. I may not walk out of this room. And I started to get very nervous, scared, started praying. I wasn’t a grateful guy at that time, but I started praying. And I knew the setup, you know, walking down those steps, that door opens and might be the last thing I ever see. I don’t know how I didn’t faint when the door opened. But anyway, we go in, I sit with the boss. My father wasn’t there. And we go back and forth, back and forth. And they were grilling me over money and all this stuff. And what happened, I started to get mad. I was getting angry. And I realized you don’t ever get angry with the boss. That’s a bad move. And I said, look, it looks like I’m walking out of here. Let me just keep my cool, which I did. And when it was over, you know, hey, let’s have a glass of wine and everything is good. And we’re hugging and, you know, I just wanted to leave. So I told Jimmy, the fella driving, I said, Jimmy, drive me back to my car. I got to go to Long Island. It’s a long drive. So we get in the car and I was really just about to, I was very angry with him because this is somebody I knew all my life. And I wanted to tell him, why didn’t you prepare me for this? This was serious. And he looked at me and he said, before you go any further, Michael, he said, I want to tell you this. He said, this was very serious tonight. You held yourself well in there. Could have been a problem. When he said that to me, I got even more upset with him. I said, you’re my friend. You don’t let me know. You don’t prepare me, give me a hint. And he said, no. And I’m sitting there and he said something to me that really got to me. He said, if it was the other way around, would you have told me? And I thought about it for a minute and I honestly said, no, I wouldn’t have. He said, well, you know this life is well or better than anybody, you grew up in it. He said, this is the life we lead. And I was in silence for about 10 minutes. I was just thinking about all of this. And then when I went to get out of the car, he grabbed my arm and he said to me, I want to tell you something. You’re not going to like this, but you can take this to the bank. He said it just like that. He said, your father was in there earlier tonight. He didn’t help you one bit. He hurt you in there tonight. And I was pretty stunned. I mean, to the point where I couldn’t even ask him, what do you mean? But as I was walking back to my car, Jordan, knowing my father so well, I knew what he did. He didn’t help me. He said, look, if my son is stealing money or anything is going wrong, I have no idea. He handles everything. I’m on parole. I don’t get involved in anything. He threw me under the bus. And I found out later on, that’s exactly what happened. So it made a real impression upon me. I said, man, if this life can separate father and son, after the bond that we had, both the blood oath that we took and father and son, I said, what do we really have here? And it was two years later that I met my current wife, which was really my motivation for walking away. But I still say to myself, I wonder, and I’m not sure. I’m saying, if that incident never happened, would I ever walked away? Because my dad had a very strong hold on me, as did the life. So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if I would have ever walked away. Well, it sounds to me, given everything you’ve told me so far, is that the people who were involved in that life, set up a morality of, it’s something like a morality of patriarchal loyalty that goes above all else. Is that there are military, that military style obedience is required. And that all morality is therefore now a consequence of abiding by the rules of the game. And that would mean you sacrifice your personal happiness, you sacrifice the stability of your family, you might even sacrifice the relationship you have with your son. But the manner in which your moral is to abide by the code of the family. And that sounds like what’s inculcated. Does that seem accurate? Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so that would also mean that when you were viewing yourself doing things that you didn’t think were say, integrally part of the real you. One of the other justifications for that is, well, that’s the code that I’m bound to abide by because I’ve decided to enter this life and I’ve put my word on doing so. And so at the moment, in order to continue that and to abide by my word, I don’t really have any choice. That’s accurate. Yeah, one of the things that really disturbed me about my dad is that he wouldn’t take any responsibility for it, none at all. And what I had said to him on a few of his violations, I said, dad, the family’s falling apart. You need to leave New York because you can’t make it in New York. You need to get away from everybody and preserve the family. And he wouldn’t do it because his legacy in that life meant more to him than anything else. He wanted to be known as the guy that would die with his boots on. He would never be an informant, no matter what. He stood up with a 50-year prison sentence. That’s what he wanted to take to his grave and that’s what he did. But in the meantime, the whole family was destroyed. Yeah, well, I think that part of the reason that the mafia life has such a grip on the popular imagination is because of that weird paradoxical relationship between the strict moral code, which is admirable, being able to abide by a moral code is disciplined and admirable. And then that juxtaposed with the criminality and the chaos that goes along with that and the family price. I mean, if you’re just a run-of-the-mill, idiot street shoplifting thug and spinning off your idiot criminal enterprises, which are likely to end in catastrophe in a chaotic manner, there’s nothing that interesting about your life. It’s just kind of pathetic. But the thing that, and it usually has a pretty pathetic outcome and generally isn’t very productive, but the thing about the organization that you’re describing is that there really is an iron shod ethos that goes along with it. But what’s interesting about it, so imagine that we look at your situation, we think you had decided to abide by an ethical order and that was the order of the cosinostra of families and you’re bound by that. And then you might say, well, that defines you. But it doesn’t exactly because you said by your own testimony that despite the fact that you had identified with that ethic, when you saw yourself doing certain things, you didn’t feel that was the real you. And so then the question would be, well, who is the real you that that mafia ethic is transgressing against? No, if it’s something you did by choice, which was the case, and it was something that you were disciplined to do, you might think, well, that’s you, but that isn’t the case. What you felt from what you’ve told me is that you felt you were violating the real you when you were doing terrible things to abide by this ethos. And so what do you think now, you’re much older and you’ve gone through many transformations, what do you think the real you that was being violated was? And why wasn’t that the cause of Nostra you? Well, the fact that I was so uncomfortable at times doing the things that I was told to do, I don’t wanna not accept responsibility for what I did, because I think that’s wrong, especially at this stage of my life. But I can’t say that that’s something, let’s put it this way, had my father never introduced me to that life, I would have never gone down a criminal path. That’s not who I was. I wanted to be a doctor or go on with my life in that way. But on the other hand, I had it in me to do what I had to do. So I wonder myself sometimes, what is the real you? In other words, if you were presented with a situation when you had to do something, you did it, is that the real you? Even though you were uncomfortable? I’ve asked myself this question quite a bit. And I don’t know, like now I wouldn’t think of it. I don’t wanna hurt my family in any way, I don’t wanna do the wrong thing. But being I was capable of doing it back then, was it the real me? Is it the real me? Well, that is the question in some sense. And I suppose that’s also the question that is relevant with regards to a conversion is what is the real you? And I don’t mean just you specifically, I mean the real human being. You might think that because you, as I said, because you had decided to abide by this moral code and that it was a moral code, that you wouldn’t be conscience-ridden for doing some of the things you had to do to stay part of the family. Because you’d already defined yourself in that way and also defined that as ethical. But it was still grating against something in you. And I would say, hopefully, that whatever was calling you to conscience was more the real you than the you that was stepping outside of your conscience to do the terrible things that you did. I do believe that people have an intrinsic sense of, well, I think it’s an intrinsic religious sense in some sense. And that’s why they’re called upon by their conscience, period. Now, exactly what that means in the final analysis, I don’t know. But it’s very interesting to me that despite your oath and your discipline following of the appropriate practices that you were still guilty. And it’s also interesting to me that your father had to insist on his innocence and that that was what he used to escape responsibility. Because you wouldn’t necessarily think that that would be vital under those circumstances. But it was how he, apparently, it was how he lived with himself. And you said there was a kind of, I hesitate to use this word, but there was also a kind of narcissism of legacy associated with that that’s prideful, I suppose. You said that he wanted to be viewed, and you can understand this. And it is tough in some sense that he wanted to be viewed as the guy who was so loyal that he wouldn’t crack no matter what. And even though that’s misguided, it’s not nothing, right? It’s not just complete chaotic rule by whim. There is an ethos there. But you said your birth family was completely destroyed by that ethos. It turned out that that doesn’t work very well in the medium to long run. And that would be despite the money and the respect and the power and all of that that went along with it. Why do you think it was so destructive for your family? I mean, it was partly because your father was jailed, but that wouldn’t be all of it. Well, a lot because my mother was a very difficult woman. She was difficult with all the kids in the family. She couldn’t handle motherhood alone. We needed a balance in the household. And he wasn’t there to do that. When he was there, there was a balance. Even my brothers and sisters were younger than me. I kind of became the father figure in the house when he went away. But my mother was such a strong personality and there was nothing to balance her out. And then I think all the kids had that same resentment for law enforcement, all of them. And so it just worked against them. And then dealing with my mother, it was so difficult. Like my brother, I’ll tell you what happened to another dynamic. My brother got himself in trouble because he was constantly in and out of trouble with drugs, low level stuff. I mean, he was a drug addict and he would do what drug addicts do. And he got himself in trouble and he wore a wire against my dad and other people for over a year. The last violation that my dad got and the last case that he got, my brother brought it and actually testified against him in court. He went into the witness protection program. We didn’t see him. I didn’t see my brother for 10 years. When my dad was on trial and I went to see the trial, I was shocked seeing my brother on the witness stand. But since then, my brothers cleaned up his act and that he’s no longer a drug addict. He’s been clean for a while. And I sat down with him and some of the things that he was telling me about his feelings inside, I believe he’s being honest with me. I guess I never realized how tortured my brothers and sisters were over my dad being away, my mother being the way she was, me being not out of their life, but I got married and went to do my own thing. He just couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t handle it. I had a big resentment to my father, big resentment. And that’s what, he didn’t think he did anything wrong. I said, John, his name was John, I said, dad almost died in prison as a result of your actions, still your father. He didn’t view it as anything wrong. He said, I had to do this. Well, you guys were definitely in a bind with respect to your father. So one of the questions that popped up for me is you still speak of your father, as far as I can tell, with both love and respect. And so one of the things I’m curious about is, you know, you’ve told me that his actions destroyed your family. You told me that he was involved in high level criminal activity, that there’s no doubt about that. And although he was framed on the charges that he went to prison with, and that he bears a tremendous amount of moral responsibility for the havoc that was wreaked in his wake, but it’s clear to me that you still love him and you respect him. And so I’m curious about why you loved him and respected him first. And then, well, let’s proceed from there. So what was it about the way that your father interacted with you when you were a kid and a teenager, let’s say, and maybe even later, that produced this love and respect, despite the other elements of his character? Well, he was always very supportive of me when I was younger. He really did want me to be a doctor. I think I was the only one in the family that ever paid attention to him in a way that he wanted me to, wanted all of his kids to, because he was married once before. He had three children from another marriage. So there was seven of us all together, kind of a blended family. And I was really the only one that paid attention to him. And I did everything to try to please him when I was younger, for some reason. I just, I wanted to please him. And I tell you this, Jordan, maybe this had a lot to, well, obviously it did. I got to go back. My dad met my mom when she was 15 years old. And he was married at the time. And the way the story goes, and this is probably gonna blow your mind a little bit, my mother got pregnant at 15, and I was born when she was 16. And my father at that time, being that he was married, in that life, you weren’t allowed to get a divorce. You weren’t allowed. It was against the Kosovo rules. So my grandparents, my mother’s parents, were so upset because back then you didn’t have a child at a wedlock. They forced my mother to marry someone else to say that I was her, his child. And so I grew up for a short time believing that my father, Sonny, was my stepfather. I believed that. He adopted me at an early age because then he left his wife and then my mother and him got married. I think I was, I don’t know, four or five years old. But his first wife ran away on his kids, and so we had a blended family. My mother was like 20 years old when his kids came into the house, and she didn’t react well to that. And there was a lot of dissension in the household, and I grew up believing that my mother was kind of mean to his kids and that my father would turn on me because I wasn’t his real son. But he never did, never did. He always treated me as well or better than anybody else. And I used to get mad at my mother. I used to say, Mom, why are you doing this? He’s going to turn on me one day. And she would always say, no, he won’t, he won’t. Don’t worry about it. But I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t until years later, years later, when I found out that he was my real father. So maybe it was me always trying to please him and him always treating me right, that I had this real love and respect for him that never went away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, that’s very complicated. You know, I read this book by Frank McCourt called Angela’s Ashes. And Angela’s Ashes is a tremendous book. And Frank McCord is a brilliant writer. And his father was an absolutely destructive alcoholic. They grew up in Ireland, many, many kids. They grew up in poverty that was unbelievably extreme. They lived in a tenement house at one point that had three inches of water in it in the spring. And he had siblings who died of, I think it was tuberculosis, doesn’t matter. It was an illness induced by poverty and privation. They often didn’t have enough food. His father was always off drinking up every cent the family had on these alcoholic benders that went on forever. And that was their life. And you know, Frank was a very wise child. And he, in some ways, compartmentalized his father into two different persons. There was sober morning father who was a pretty decent guy and who actually loved him and who spoke words of encouragement. And then there was drunk and useless nighttime father. And he more or less ignored him. And what Frank did was concentrate on the positive aspect of the relationship with his father. And it’s an amazing book because it’s written almost entirely without resentment as far as I could tell. And you could also tell by reading the book that Frank benefited from the positive attention of his father to the degree that he was able to garner that even though overall what his father did was just murderously destructive in the most irresponsible possible manner. But you know, you said that your father, so you could imagine that the best of your father came out around you and the best of your father was serving the best in you. He said he really did encourage you. And that does produce an intense bond, you know, because I don’t think that there is anything more important that a father can do for a child, particularly a son, although not uniquely a son, than to encourage the best in them. In some sense, that’s almost the definition of paternal love. So then that would put you in a terrible bind because you have the father whose benevolent aspect is actually genuine and genuinely focused on you and you have a real relationship. And then you have outside of that father, the criminal father, who’s doing all these other things that are in some ways completely contradictory to that. And you know, and your response was intense loyalty to your father. Yes, yeah. And I guess because he never turned on me in any way, I just always appreciated that. So no matter what he did later on, it never interfered with my love for him. I might’ve gotten upset with him, but I couldn’t not love him in any way. So, you know, the other thing too, George, when I left that life, it was extremely difficult because I felt that I was betraying my oath. So I would go to bed at night, leaving the life, and I would wake up staying back in. I mean, it took me years before I finally got over it. And I’m over it now, obviously, but it took me a long time. It was a real struggle and challenge. That’s how much of a hold that life had on me. And I think not only because of the oath that I took, but really because of my father. I didn’t want to let him down in any way. It was really a struggle. So let’s turn to that. You said that one of the turning points evening that you described earlier, where you weren’t sure if you were gonna walk out alive, and the fact that your father, in some sense, threw you under the bus before that meeting. And then also your realization that had you been in the same position as perhaps your father, and certainly your friend, Jimmy, that you might’ve done the same thing. That obviously perturbed you to a great degree. But then you also said that you met the woman that you are now married to not long after that, and that that was also a turning point. And so how did you meet her, and what were you engaged in at that time, and how and why did meeting her change you? Well, I met her on a movie set. I was producing a movie. I had a film distribution company, production company, at the time that I was involved in, independent. And we were filming a movie in South Florida, and she was one of the dancers. It was a dance movie. I met her on the set. She was 20 years old. And again, very long story short, I fell in love with her. Really fell in love with her, obviously, 37 years later. And I just said, she was a Christian, and her mom was a very devout Christian. And I said at the time, when I was falling in love with her, I said, my life is a direct contradiction to what these women believe. And they didn’t really know anything about me. They were from Anaheim, California, and I’m from New York, so they didn’t really know anything about me. But when I fell in love with her, and I knew there was something happening there, I said, am I gonna marry this girl, and then put her through the same thing my family went through? Because Jordan, I became such a target. They were gonna take me down at some point in time. You only have a winning streak for so long. And I said, I gotta make a choice. It’s either her or that life. And I chose her. And that’s when I started to try to engineer this way for me getting out of the life. And part of that was pleading to a racketeering case. The underlying act was tax fraud. And accepting a 10-year prison term and a $15 million restitution with forfeitures and all of that, marrying her, moving out to California, and trying to preserve my life. And again, with the 10-year sentence, I was under the old law at that time, so I knew I could make parole at some point, which I did after five years. But that was the whole plan. She kind of became more important to me. She overtook even the love I had for my dad. Did you get married before you went to prison? Yeah, we got married in July of 85, and I went to prison in December of 85. Okay, so what was it about, let’s talk about love for a minute there, because you also said that your love for her transcended your love, both for the life that you had embarked on, and also transcended the love that you had for your father in some real sense. And so what do you make of that love? I mean, how old were you when you fell in love with her? I was just about 32 years old. Okay, okay, and so what was it about the relationship you had with her and about her that had that transforming, how do you account for that transforming experience? Well, step back a little bit. I had been married once before. I married young, I married at 24, and the girl I married, who I cared for, but I don’t believe I was ever in love with her. I loved her, she was a good person. She stood by my side when we were going through all these troubles. She was very close with my mother, and that kind of, you know, almost I had to get married in a way, but I wasn’t in love with her. And so that marriage was kind of falling apart mutually, and then I meet her. We had been separated, my first wife, and then I meet her, and I just knew that she was it. That was it, it was the love of my life for some reason. It hit me in that way. And I don’t know, I just said, you know, I want to be with this woman. And, you know, let me also be fair in saying this. I had become such a target. I had just was acquitted in a huge case. Rudy Giuliani indicted me on a big racketeering case. I was a lead defendant. I had 15 co-defendants. And at the day of my arraignment, he gave me a million dollar bail at the time. He told me in the courtroom, he said, if I convict you on this case, you’re going to get double what your father got. I’m going to give you a hundred years, Michael. Because again, I had a 14 agency task force that was assigned to bring me down because I had beat them so many times. And after a several month trial, I was acquitted in that case. Some of my co-defendants were convicted. I got 30 years. So I said, he would have given me at least 50. I said, there’s no way that I’m going to, you know, beat this forever. So I started seeing a lot of things going wrong with the life. The racketeering laws were becoming very successful. A lot of guys were becoming informants. And I think there was two parts to it. I fell in love with her and she was the catalyst that said, okay, now’s the time to make a move. I don’t know if I would have made it if I wasn’t with her. She was definitely the motivation. But so it was all these things kind of happening at one time in my head and bingo, I meet her at that time. And I said, this has got to be my exit strategy. I got to get out of the life. I want to be with this woman. I don’t want to go into the witness protection program. I don’t want to cooperate. I don’t want to hurt anybody. And that was a real dance. That was very, very difficult. Okay, so let me ask you for your thoughts on this. So you talked about the two different elements of you emerging when you were called upon to do things that you didn’t think were central to your nature, let’s say. And then there’s the part of you that did do those things. Which of those two parts fell in love with her? Hopefully the better part. Yeah, I- Yeah, well, this is what I’m curious about, because obviously she was attracted to you as well, which is a mystery in some sense, right? Because you would think that given your description of her and her straight life and her Christian origins, that you would be a dicey bet to say the least. And so what do you think she saw in you that made her fall in love with you? Was she looking accurately at the positive part of your character, do you think? I do, because I’ve been a good husband with her. I mean, she’s the most important person in my life. I always put her on a pedestal in many ways and always treated her well. Very appreciative, she waited for me all that time, because I ended up doing eight years in prison, and she waited for me all that time. So I like to think that that’s the real part of me that she fell in love with. But the fact that you know you’re capable of doing other things, I was conflicted with myself as well. Who is the real you? I mean, yeah, you were uncomfortable doing these things, but you did them anyway. So that’s still part of who you are anyway. So I don’t know, it’s hard to say. But one thing that really motivated her too, her mother was a very, very devout Christian, wonderful woman, she’s passed on now, but she took a real liking to me. And she prayed for me every day, every single day. And she was very supportive of me. When I went into prison, she held her daughter up. She really did, as well as the church that we were involved in. And she said, this is the choice that you made with this fellow, you’re gonna wait for him, because that’s the right thing to do. And so her family became very supportive of me also. And all of those elements combined, I think, were very helpful in maintaining the marriage, because very difficult. I had a difficult prison time, because the government was very upset with me. They were trying to get me to cooperate. They shipped me to different prisons around the country. I actually spent 29 months and seven days in solitary. It was a six by eight cell, 24-seven. And that’s very destructive, Jordan. I don’t agree with that, especially for young people. It’s very hard to get through that. And I saw a lot of guys that it destroyed them, totally destroyed them. But she waited on all of this. How did you get, okay, so we have two mysteries there now on the table. One is why this family decided to support you. Obviously that did provide you with a bridge out of your previous life. So that’s one mystery. What in the world did they see in you? And why were they willing to stake their, like eight years of their daughter’s life on that? And then the second mystery is how in the world did you survive with your sanity intact through that period of solitary confinement? So let’s start with the first one. Her mother really liked you. Now, why in the world was that, do you suppose? Because you’d think in some sense that her attitude would have been, oh my God, get my daughter away from this guy as fast as possible, given our Christian background and his behavior. So what in the world went on there? Well, I think it goes to the type of woman she was. I had a conversation with her one day and I told her, her name was Irma. And I said, Irma, look, I’m bringing some baggage into this relationship because of who I am and what I’ve done in my life. I said, but I love your daughter and I promise you I’ll never hurt her. And I said, I love her very much. And I said, I’m gonna do everything to help her. I said, when I go to prison, I said, I’ll make sure that she’s comfortable. One of the reasons why I took a plea was so that I can maintain my wife’s lifestyle. When I say lifestyle, she wouldn’t have to go to work, she wouldn’t have to do anything. So it was part of the negotiation where I’d maintain the house and money and all of that, even though I paid a big fine in restitution. So I said, she’s gonna be comfortable while I’m away. I said, and I’ll never hurt her. And from that moment on, she became my biggest supporter. She believed in me. And because of her Christian faith, she was very prayerful in that. And she said, to her daughter, this man loves you and if this is the choice you’re making, then you have to stick with it. And her grandmother was the same way. And I think that was, Chris Cammie was 21 years old when I married her. She was a good girl. She was a Christian, but she was still a young girl. She was a dancer at the time. So I think that had a lot to do with it. And even when I was in prison, I tried to maintain, one of the things that really, really scared me in prison wasn’t the prison experience. But when my dad went to prison back in his day, he was allowed one visit a month and one three minute phone call. As a result of that, he wasn’t, you know, he just became so separated from the family. You know, my brother had cancer in his leg. We never turned to my father. Everything that went wrong in the house, we didn’t turn to my dad because he wasn’t there. We couldn’t even discuss it with him. So he had no input. And him and my mother grew apart. That’s when the kids started to grow apart from him. I maintained a relationship because I’d go and visit him every month. And so I was afraid of that. I said, I don’t want that to happen with me and my wife. So fortunately, the laws changed. You were allowed to get on the phone. When I made my deal, you know, to take a plea, part of the negotiation was they’d send me to prison out in California so I’d get visiting. So I’d maintain that relationship with my family. All I cared about in prison was maintaining a relationship with her. I was able to do that. So, you know, I took care of her in that regard. Her mother just believed in me. And her father, her father was kind of a, he had some, he was an alcoholic. He had some petty little stuff on the street. So he liked me a lot, you know, in that regard. I think maybe he looked at me and wow, this is big time for him. I don’t know. But, you know, that’s what held it together. And then, you know, she’s a genuine person of faith. She’s very sincere in her faith, as was her mother. So, and then, let’s look at the experience in prison. So you were in solitary, you said, for 29 months. Yes. Okay, so how in the world did you get through that? And what did it do to you? And was there any utility in it? Or was it just torture? Well, emotionally and mentally, it’s torturous. You know, when you look back on being in solitary 29 days, I can’t differentiate one day from another. I can’t differentiate one hour from another. If I think back and you, I don’t know, it was one long day, one long day, that was it. And for me at the time, I dove into my Bible. This is when my faith-based transformation took place in solitary, dove into my Bible. I had my wife send me in several books on all faiths, and I started to study all different faiths. And it sustained me in a big way. I had a Sony Walkman. I was listening to a lot of the pastors that were interpreting scripture. I was trying to make sense of it, Jordan, because, you know, evidence has always played a major role in my life, because I was either fighting my dad’s case, my case. It was all about evidence for me. So I like to see proof when I’m buying into something. And for me, there was enough proof, it was almost overwhelming to me, that scripture was real, the Bible was God’s word, and that Jesus was my savior. And I came out of there with that concept, with that belief. And that’s where the transformation really started to take place, because I said, you can’t have one foot in, one foot out. If you’re going to be a different person, you’ve got to be the right person, and you’ve got to maintain that. And even though, you know, I say this, you can take the boy out of Brooklyn, you can’t always take Brooklyn out of a boy. I still have things that I think about in my head, and sometimes reactions that I hold back from, thank God. But overwhelmingly, my faith has won out, and kind of keeps me on track, that and family, obviously. So, okay, so you had three things going for you then when you made your transition to your new life. You had the love of your wife and her family. You had faith, and you had your proclivity for loyalty. You said, well, when you went into your new life, you went all in. And so, and then, you also talked about the experience you had in solitary, and the evidence that you gathered. You were reading about different faiths. What was it about? Why did you decide at that point to start studying faith traditions, and more particularly, the Bible? Was that a consequence of the influence of your wife, or what do you think was happening there? Well, it was, to me, it was divine intervention, because the first night I was in the hole, when they violated my parole, a couple of things happened. I was walking out of a bank in Brentwood, California, and 15 agents captured me, threw me in the paddy wagon, and just took everything I had at that point. And they were upset with me because I wouldn’t cooperate, basically. I was playing a game with them, making them think I was, because I was trying to just get on the right side of the government, but not really giving them anything that they can work with. And finally, they knew that I was playing a game with them. They violated my parole, and said they were going to indict me on another case, and that I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. And they drove me to the lockup in LA at that time. They were going to transport me back to Brooklyn in the morning where the case was. And that first night in the hole- Okay, so let me get, sorry, I’m confused here. So tell me when that was happening. This was before you struck the plea bargain with the government? This was after I had done five years. I was out on parole for 13 months. A very difficult 13 months. And then the violation. And that- Okay, okay. Yeah, that first night in the hole was honestly, I was a guy that was pretty much, I can accomplish anything that I want to accomplish. I was very determined. I had confidence, not arrogance, but confidence in myself. And this was the first night when I said, I think it’s over for me, I’m done. I said, they took all my money because they leaned all my bank accounts. They said they were indicting me on another racketeering case. And I know by fast experience, you don’t beat a case with a public defender. It cost me millions to defend myself. And become victorious at these trials. I said, my wife, she waited for me five years. 13 very bad months on parole. I had a rough time. People were after me. It was a very difficult game that I was playing with them. And I said, how’s she gonna wait for me now? I’m gonna lose the girl I did all of this for. We had two little babies. I said, and they’re not gonna put me out on the yard. I said, I got people looking to hurt me still because I walked away. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in this hole. And I really felt for the first time in my life, hopelessness. It’s the strongest emotion that I ever experienced up to that point. And quite honestly, Jordan, if I could have closed my eyes and not wake up, that’s what I wanted. It was too painful to think about my future. So I was only 40 years old or something. I said, this is it, I’m done. And a prison guard walked by my cell and he looked in and he said, you don’t look good tonight. And I said, are you okay? And I chased him away. I said, get away from me, leave me alone. I don’t wanna see you guys. And he came back about a minute later and he pushed the Bible through the slot in the door. And it was after a little bit of time that I picked up the Bible. And that’s when I started my journey. And it really started with the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs really got me because of the wisdom and the intelligence of Solomon. I was, wow, I’d never read the Bible. I grew up a Catholic, but in Catholic school, you don’t read the Bible, you read the catechism. Priest reads the Bible from the pulpit on Sunday, he reads the gospel. So it was my first real experience reading the Bible. And I just got hooked. And that’s when the journey started. And I said, look, the way I reasoned, I said, I made two very bad decisions in my life based upon loyalty. I followed my father blindly into this life. I took an oath and look where it got me. I said, I can’t do this a third time. What my wife and my mother-in-law are telling me about eternity and Christ is true. I wanna see it. I wanna believe it, I wanna see the evidence. And so my journey was really in a search for evidence that this was the truth, not justifying it. And that’s why I asked her, I said, I wanna read about Hinduism, I wanna read about Judaism, I wanna read about all religions, send me books. And she did. And I just came out of there believing. That was a long time ago, obviously. It was in 19, I violated the parole in 1991 and spent from 91 to 95 in there. But that’s when my journey started and I just came out of there very positive that Christianity was the right way to go. So in the first four or five years that you spent in prison, you were already affected in a positive manner by your wife’s love and by your decision at that point already to leave the life that you had led. Yes. But you got out on parole and things didn’t work out well. And you said that had you violated your parole when they picked you up? Well, I don’t wanna say this, but not really because I had failed to file my income tax. And the reason I failed to file it was because they claimed that I had money buried in certain places and my lawyer advised me, he said, Mike, if you don’t file, it’s a misdemeanor. If you file fraudulently and they ever find money of yours anywhere, he said, that’s a felony, they’ll indict you again, you’re gonna spend another 10 years in prison. So he said, just don’t file. So I didn’t file when I was on parole. However, I had to report my earnings to my parole officer every month. So I wasn’t not, I was still letting the government know what I was earning, but I didn’t formally file my income tax. And that was a violation. And they tried to, I honestly, Jordan, I don’t even remember some other silly little things they put together, but when they wanna violate your parole, they’re violating you, they don’t need much at all. So, but that was the basis of it. I see. And so it was the second time that you were put in prison that really did you in the night that you were thrown in? Yes. That made you like rock bottom hopeless. You’d rather be dead than to continue the way that you were. And that’s also when this prison guard showed up with a Bible, despite the fact that you chased him away. Yes. And so what do you think you found so compelling about it, especially when you were reading about other faiths at the same time? You know, I think there was two things. I mean, obviously, so many stories in the Bible were compelling to me, but one of the things that got me, I became a New Testament guy, because I really focused on the manhood of Jesus, number one. I wanted to really look into Jesus’ character, since he’s the basis of our faith, and what kind of a guy he was. Because remember this, George, my whole life, from the time I was a kid, right through the time I was in that life, the standard we had to live up to was to be a man’s man. That’s it. You had to have integrity, you had to be strong, you had to be courageous and tough and treat women the right way. It was always that. So I wanted to see, I wanted to study Jesus of Nazareth first to establish if he was the kind of man that I would follow. And he obviously came through with flying colors for me with that. And then one of the things that really got me was that after the apostles, you know, again, it’s always this legalization that I put in my mind. After the apostles, after Jesus’ death, the way the apostles stood up and went to their death for someone that had died, I really believed in the resurrection. And if there’s no resurrection, there’s no really Christianity. It’s all about the resurrection. And their testimony, their witness meant so much to me. It was so powerful. And I said, man, I know guys in the life that were turning in formants left and right, and we were a life supposedly built on loyalty. And here’s 12 men, or 11, whose leader was dead. And yet they were willing to go to their death as a result. That was very powerful evidence to me. And then things just kind of stemmed from that because you don’t die for something you don’t believe in. You don’t die for something that is not real to you. At least I can’t see that. You know, even if it’s wrongly real, if it’s real to you, you may sacrifice yourself for it. But if it’s not, you’re not going to. So that speaks to that loyalty, that speaks to that loyalty that we were talking about earlier, that ethos of loyalty that you had. And so, and then you also said that the rules that you had abided by were the rules that you might say a man’s man would abide by, but they were insufficient in many ways, given, let’s say, what happened to your family, and also your own experiences. Why did you find the example that you encountered in the gospels more compelling than that? You said because people were willing to die for their testimony, and that spoke to the loyalty, but what was it about the particulars of the life of Christ that also you found convincing, and convincing in a manner that would change the way that you were interacting with the world? Well, you know, I started to think about where the loyalty really was in our life. And I, you know, loyalty could be built on love, could be built on fear. And I started to think about it, the loyalty in mafia and cause and effect, to a great degree, was built on fear, fearing of the consequences if you did something wrong, so you were loyal. And then I realized when all of these racketeering laws started to come into play, the fear of the mafia was transferred to the fear of the government, because the government now would tell somebody, listen, you’re going to do 100 years if you don’t cooperate with us. And all of a sudden, you know, the fear was transmitted to that. And so I said to myself, you know what, real loyalty is based upon love, it’s not fear. And because if you love somebody, you’ll go to your death for them. I mean, I know I would for my kids, my wife, and… Yeah, well, you also said that the loyalty that you had to your father was basically based on love and not fear. It was, it was, it was based upon love. I didn’t fear my dad in any way. And like I said, I mean, I would have walked into a room with him even after they told me, you know, he went along with the contract, because I don’t believe he would have ever done that. And if he did, well, you know, it would have been my tough luck, but it was always love with my dad. But, and I just saw the way Jesus expressed himself to his followers. And you know, no greater love than for someone to give their life for the people that they love. And I just saw that as very powerful. Now, before that, without getting into all the detail, I had to first establish that scripture was real. What I’m reading is real. It’s not a novel or a fairy tale or fake or any way. And, you know, I put that together methodically in my head at that time that, no, this is real. This is trustworthy. I can trust the Bible. The evidence is pretty clear. And so it’s almost like I went to trial. I took the Bible on trial during that time. I had nothing but time on my hands, Jordan. So, you know, I often wonder if I didn’t get in the hole during that time, if I ever would have strongly become a Christian, because I think I needed that time totally to myself with no distractions whatsoever, other than worrying about my family on the outside in order to really convince myself through this search that it was real. You know, in the past 25 years, it’s only become more real to me, you know, not only in my life, but in the life that I’ve seen, you know, in others that God has done. So, you know, I tell people, you know, this is not based upon some whim or some fairy tale or, hey, it’s, you know, it feels good to go to church and hear the message and see the, you know, get involved in the worship music. For me, it’s pretty real. Not saying that I’m perfect in any way, you know, because you still have sinful tendencies, no doubt, but you get better. You have to be better. If you’re not better, then something’s wrong. Then it’s not real. So how did you start to change during the second prison term as a consequence of this unfolding decision? What did you stop doing and what did you start doing? And how did that change life for you in prison? Well, again, in the hole, there’s not much you can do. You’re just there 24 seven, but you know, something happened during that time, Jordan. This hatred that I had for law enforcement, there was a case going on in Chicago and they wanted me to testify in that case. As a matter of fact, they said they were going to indict me, probably something they could have indicted me. It was somebody that I knew. And I’ll tell you what happened. They came and picked me up in the middle of the night and one FBI agent came and was bringing me to Chicago to talk with the US attorney. And it was me and him. I was handcuffed. We were on a flight and we get to the airport in Chicago and I hardly even spoke to this guy. Didn’t want to talk to him. And we get to the airport and he says to me, wait here. He took the handcuffs off me. He said, I’m going to get my car. I said, what? I said, I’m a federal inmate. I said, he’s leaving me in the airport all alone. Now I’m wondering if this is a setup. I’m saying, what’s going on here? I’m starting to get a little nervous, you know? And he doesn’t come back for about 20 minutes. And I’m in the airport by myself. I’m looking around, I’m saying something’s going on here. This guy, first of all, he’d lose his job if I ran away, be in a lot of trouble, he just left me there. And then he comes back and I get in the car with him and I’m driving with him and I told him, his name was George, I said, pull over. He says, what? I said, pull over right now. And he says, what’s wrong? I said, no, what’s wrong with you? What’s going on here? As you leave me in the airport, you’re a federal agent, 23 years on the job, I hear. And I said, you could have lost your job if I ran away. He said, I’m trying to establish some trust with you. He said, I just put myself on the line with you. He says, you got to be able to trust me and I got to be able to trust you. And that whatever I’m asking you, you’re going to tell me the truth. Something happened. I had never witnessed anything like that from a federal agent or anybody in Longfoy. Well, local cops different. I established a friendship with this guy and I said, I’m going to tell you the truth. It’s not going to help your case, but I’m going to tell you the truth. And he became a dear friend. He turned my whole head around about law enforcement because I used to look at them like they were some aliens. Like they didn’t know how to tell the truth. They were corrupt. They were just bad people. And that put me on the road of changing my own attitude and accepting the fact that no, we were the bad guys. I mean, there’s bad in everything, but we were the bad guys. These are decent people. And since then, I’ve met so many, I have so many friends in law enforcement now. Yeah, well, it’s a rough thing when you put the locale of evil somewhere that’s convenient. It should be somewhere inconvenient, right? It should be in the middle of your heart. But if you see it in other people, then as soon as you see it as essentially in other people, then you’re justified in taking whatever stance you want against those other people. And then you have no responsibility except to take that stance. And that’s pretty convenient for you, right? Because it’s not your moral problem then, it’s them. They’re bad. They’re the ones who are bad. Right. You know, and now even on social media, I have a big platform also. You know, people, if I’ll say something about my dad, they’ll come out and say, well, why do you defend your daddy? He was a murderer and he was this and that and that. And I don’t even get offended by that anymore. Because I understand that’s the way people should normally think because that’s the life that my dad was part of. That’s the life that I was part of. At one time would have been terribly offensive to me, but now I get it. I understand that’s the right way to think in many ways. So, you know, I think it was a whole, this had to be a whole change of mindset that occurred in me over a period of time, just from meeting different people, studying my faith. You know, I met so many genuine people. One of the pastors in my church, the guy that married us, who was Dr. Myron Taylor, he’s passed on now. But when I was in prison in the hole, he was sending me books and then he’d send me money for commissary. And I told my wife one day, I said, why is he doing this? I don’t know him well. He doesn’t have to send me money. I don’t feel right. And she told me, she said, listen, he loves the Lord in turn he loves you. Just don’t worry about it. Buy some soup and commissary. And he was such a genuine person, genuine, he wasn’t looking for anything, he wasn’t anything, he was just a real person. And he was true about his faith. He didn’t hit me over the head with it or anything like that. But I just started to meet people that started to turn my head around and break this other mentality that I had. It took time. Yeah, well, it’s a 180 shift. And with shifts like that, there’s often plenty of backsliding. I mean, you don’t develop a whole new you overnight. It takes a lot of discipline. It takes as much discipline to become good as it took to become bad to begin with, I would think, or perhaps more. So what have you done since this transformation that you think has been good? And do you think that, do you think, do you believe, do you feel that you have in some reasonable measure atoned for your past? Well, it’s very interesting that you say that. I don’t believe that we can ever make up for our past. What’s done is done. And that’s one of the things that really attracted me to the Christian faith. How do you make up for some things that you’ve done in your life? They’re already done. They’re done, you know, especially in that life. But based upon Christianity, if you’re sincerely sorry for your sins and accept Christ, well, then your sins are forgiven. So do I believe my sins are forgiven? Absolutely, I 100% believe that because that’s a basis of our faith. I didn’t believe that, there’s nothing to believe in. And what happened, Jordan, when I was coming out of prison that last time, they finally let me out of the hole for a few months that I had left for my time. Well, the FBI came to me and they said, we need a favor from you. We want you to participate in a video that all the pro leagues are getting involved in about the dangers of gambling to their athletes. Very long story short, I participated in that video inside the prison and said, this is how we set up the athletes. This is exactly how we did it. And this is what they should watch and be careful of. Well, when I got out, the leagues came to me directly. And to make a very long story short, I started speaking to all the ballplayers back in 1996 when I got out of prison about the dangers of gambling, the relationships that they keep. That led to me speaking in churches, giving my testimony. And that’s been going on since 1996. I’ve been all over the world and all different forums. I’ve spoken at over 1600 churches and ministries throughout my time. So I think that was God’s plan and purpose for me. And I totally believe, totally believe that, what the enemy meant for bad, God will turn around and use for good in our life if we allow him to. So I think the platform that I went into was used because people are so intrigued with the mob life everywhere you go. I mean, I found out, you know, in China, the biggest movie ever in China was The Godfather. I’ve experienced that in Singapore, Australia, you name it. I just did a 16 city tour in the United Kingdom and you would have thought I was a rock star. I couldn’t believe it. Yeah, well, I think it does have something to do with that strict sort of hyper-masculine ethos that’s, you know, we live in pretty chaotic times morally. And any example that constitutes abiding by a strict code is therefore extremely attractive at an unconscious level. I think one of the things that’s so interesting about your story is that you abided by that ethos. You saw that despite the fact that it was strict and had a certain degree of admirable loyalty, let’s say associated with it and a willingness to make sacrifice that all things considered, it was still extremely destructive and counterproductive, especially at the familial level, but also socially more broadly. And then you found a path that you regarded as equally admirable or with regard to loyalty and the willingness to make sacrifices, but also had additional components that your previous lifestyle didn’t have at all. And so that’s resulted in this transformation. And so it’s a story that’s remarkable in two fronts, is one is, well, you were an exemplar of this first ethos that has this unconscious attractiveness associated with it. And second, you found that that wasn’t good enough and you needed something and found something that served you and everyone else better. So makes quite a compelling story and it’s a hard one to deny, especially when you’d been that far out on the criminal front and then flipped around 180 degrees and also how painful that was to actually manage. Yeah, let me ask you this. I have said this many times. I don’t think that everything that’s illegal is not necessarily immoral. And I’ve said this, I’ve said it from the stage in church. I said, I have no moral issue whatsoever with stealing tax money from the government. I’m being honest. I would not lose a night’s sleep in doing it. I won’t do it because I’m accountable now to God and to my family. I don’t want to put them in trouble. I don’t want to make mistakes like that. People rely on me for a lot of things. But morally, I don’t have a problem with it and I’m being honest. And I often wonder myself, I say, well, why don’t you have a problem with it? It’s illegal, you’re not supposed to be doing it. You’re supposed to abide by the law. But, and like I said, I won’t do it. But I don’t have a moral issue with it. So I don’t know where that puts me at times. Is that still the old me or is that justified? Because I believe the government is corrupt. I mean, I read about it every day. I just wrote a book, Mafia Democracy, about the government. Yeah, well, maybe you can’t fight corruption with corruption, you know? Maybe that just doesn’t work. Even if your fundamental point is accurate, you know? And maybe that’s part of the ethos of turning the other cheek, which is a very complicated thing to think through, right? Because it can look like weakness, that’s for sure. And I think often when people do it, it is weakness. It’s not out of moral virtue, but it can be. I know, I think if you turn the other cheek and you don’t have to, well then maybe that’s something that’s ethical. And I do think it’s very, it’s a dicey thing to fight corruption with corruption. Maybe that was part of the problem with you regarding the police as enemies, you know? And then being willing to engage in criminal enterprise in some sense for revenge is that even though to whatever degree your supposition was correct, the manner in which you chose to fight wasn’t productive. It was just gonna make the problem worse. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, another thing, I have this issue with my wife. Maybe you can help me there too. My father always taught me, he said, “‘Michael, don’t ever lie to hurt somebody. But if you have to lie to help somebody, that’s okay.‘” And I’ve lived by that code throughout my life. I’m not gonna lie to hurt somebody, but I’ll definitely lie to defend somebody and help somebody. And my wife said, “‘A lie is a lie. It’s wrong.‘” And I try to explain it. I said, “‘Well, wait a second. If I had to protect our son from something that he did, would you want me to just give him up if he was wrong? Or should I protect him?’ I said, “‘My instinct is to protect him. I don’t know how to do it any other way.‘” I said, “‘I couldn’t do it.‘” And she, you know, she has a problem with that. I think you can find yourself in situations where the best alternative that confronts you is to lie about something. But then I would say, in all likelihood, there was a whole series of micro lies that put you in that circumstance. And so you have to be hyper awake to make truth always work for the good. You know, there’s a poet in Canada, Leonard Cohen, and he said, “‘There’s no decent place to stand in a massacre.‘” And the idea would be, well, by the time you’re in the massacre, you’ve made so many moral errors that all you have are variant forms of hell around you. There’s no, there’s lesser, there’s lesser hells and greater hells, but that’s it. And I think very often when people are called upon to lie in the service of something positive, they’ve already compromised themselves so badly in 50 ways that that’s the best alternative that lays open to them. You know, I think your wife is fundamentally right. I also think though that sometimes it’s, your best bet, you know, there’s a classic example. Let’s say if you were in Nazi Germany and you had Jews hiding up in your attic and the Nazis came to the door and they said, do you have any unwarranted people living in your household, unauthorized people? Well, if you weren’t gonna lie, you’d say yes, and then those people would die. But then I would say, well, you know, 10 years ago, you should have said something about the Nazis when they were first starting to gain power and you didn’t. And now you’re in this hellish situation where you have to lie for the good. And that means that you have already put yourself in a place that’s not tenable. And so that’s how it looks to me. Interesting. That makes sense. Yeah, well, it’s a hard thing to make sure that you’re stepping on firm ground with every word all the time. That’s a very rough challenge. But I do think that’s what living in truth fundamentally means. It’s a call to being awake nonstop. And that may mean if you’re not awake enough, you may find yourself in a position where the best you have is a white lie. You know, people have asked me these sorts of things trivially, like if your wife comes to you and she’s bought a new outfit, and she says, well, how does this look? Your best bet is to say, well, it looks great, dear. And I would say that’s not really your best bet because it’s better if she can rely on your word. And maybe the right answer in that situation is, don’t ask me questions that you don’t want an answer to. Right, you know what I mean? Is that if you step carefully enough, sometimes even in awkward situations, and I know that’s a relatively trivial example, you can find a way of telling the truth that serves the good and doesn’t betray someone that’s still true. You know, you have to wrestle with yourself to make that happen, but you can make it happen. Almost always. Understood. So, yeah. Well, look, we’re running out of time on this front. I want to talk to you for another half an hour behind the Daily Wire Plus platform, as most of you who are watching and listening now know. I do an extra half an hour interview with all my guests to walk through some of the more details, some more of the details of their life, and to find out, I suppose, what success looks like. And so that’s what we’ll be delving into. Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guests on dailywireplus.com.