Michael Franzese plays Mafia II game

[Angelo Santino]

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[Lupara]

If Franzese was making what he claims with the gas scam I seriously doubt he would have gotten the lion's share of it. His father not withstanding he would have gotten muscled out of that racket if it was that lucrative.

That or other people would have gotten involved. Had he been making 2 million a month let alone a week I could see Junior telling MF that he needs help to make sure this gasoline thing is managed carefully and he's putting Ally Boy in there to make sure things stay on track. Which, if you know the Persicos that's step one into taking something over something and keeping it for themselves.

Do you think he would've done that to the son of his underboss? He was named the Snake for a reason but I'm inclined to believe he wouldn't do that to someone like Sonny. And if Franzese was as smart as he looks like, he would make sure the Persicos received a cut that would keep them happy. He did mention that they were thinking about killing him for not being truthful about all the money he was making.

I agree that making 100 million a year sounds outlandish. But making millions, perhaps even tens of millions, over the course of several years from such a racket doesn't sound unbelievable ro me.

[Angelo Santino]

If Franzese was making what he claims with the gas scam I seriously doubt he would have gotten the lion's share of it. His father not withstanding he would have gotten muscled out of that racket if it was that lucrative.

That or other people would have gotten involved. Had he been making 2 million a month let alone a week I could see Junior telling MF that he needs help to make sure this gasoline thing is managed carefully and he's putting Ally Boy in there to make sure things stay on track. Which, if you know the Persicos that's step one into taking something over something and keeping it for themselves.

Do you think he would've done that to the son of his underboss? He was named the Snake for a reason but I'm inclined to believe he wouldn't do that to someone like Sonny. And if Franzese was as smart as he looks like, he would make sure the Persicos received a cut that would keep them happy. He did mention that they were thinking about killing him because they believed he was witholding them more money.

I agree that an income of 100 million a year sounds outlandish. But making millions, perhaps even tens of millions, over the course of several years from such a racket doesn't sound unbelievable ro me.

They killed Cutolo who was Underboss. But was Franzese underboss in the 1980's? As I recall reading, the Persico's considered him a threat.

Several million or ten million over a couple of years is very different than several million a week or ten million in 5 weeks. Joe DeFede during his entire time as AB made an estimated 1.4 million, granted this was in the 90's but depreciation shouldn't be that extreme in a 10 year gap of high earning mafiosi.

[Pogo The Clown]

Sonny Franzese wasn't promoted UnderBoss until 2003.


Pogo

[Lupara]

Sonny Franzese wasn't promoted UnderBoss until 2003.


Pogo

I thought he was the underboss of Colombo in the 60s.

[Angelo Santino]

Sonny Franzese wasn't promoted UnderBoss until 2003.


Pogo

I thought he was the underboss of Colombo in the 60s.

He was listed as that on the incorrect 1963 chart. But even if true, the Persicos did not trust him for the majority of their tenure.

[TallGuy19]

Someone should definitely audit Franzese's church to see how many millions are getting funneled through there. If he has any money left over from his old rackets I can almost guarantee he's laundering it through there.

[CabriniGreen]

Things Franzese has just started saying recently...

1. Junior approached him about being underboss.
2. Chin asked him if he wanted to join the Genovese Family
3. He knows Hoffa’s killer, who he says is alive and in prison. He says he has tapes to back it up.

And as far as the gas scam, his numbers are all over the place. I’ve seen interviews where he said they were doing $6M-$7M per week. Other times he’s said $9M-$10M. I will say he has been consistent in saying that he himself usually kept around $2M from the gas scam after they whacked it up.

The guy made millions as a Capo in the Colombo Family. His “dad” is Sonny Franzese. That’s a plenty interesting story. All the extras he likes to throw in there make him lose credibility.

Agreed.

Re. the Gas Scam, I'd be able to believe he was seeing tens of thousands a week but 2 million? I'd buy he made that for the duration of the scam but weekly? I wasn't there so...

Despite it all, I found his candid discussion while playing the game to be interesting, more so than his documentary appearances.

Now if I can just find Nicky Crow Caramandi, I'd send him a fucking xBox and pay him 500 to record himself playing GTA.

If it's true that he had a yacht, a private airplane and mansions in Miami and Los Angeles then he certainly made much more than 2 million, and that gas scam was his bread and butter and fame and fortune.

What are the average estimates this scam produced according to people in the know who aren't Michael Franzese?

If it's true. Note if he says "I had access to __" which is different than outright owning. Was he able to justify that income/lifestyle on a tax return? By the 1970's the FBI relied on forensic accounting to trip up guys when informants weren't there to be utilized. They would follow guys around and just keep tabs on what they paid for, add it up and ask people to justify the income and when they couldn't were faced with tax evasion. Happened with Dellacroce.. 1980's? If MF was doing all of that, it was either short lived or he was Merlino'in it by using connections for people to lease him shit such as cars, condos etc.

I have no doubt that he was riding high, likely earning more than 80% of NY's wiseguys were. He was also probably 'smart' for that world. But 2 million a week? That's 5 million today and I doubt he was deposting that into a bank account so where was he stashing the money? Had he spent it at such a rate that would have garnered FBI attention within months.

What was Joe Glitzs take from the gas racket?

[CabriniGreen]

If Franzese was making what he claims with the gas scam I seriously doubt he would have gotten the lion's share of it. His father not withstanding he would have gotten muscled out of that racket if it was that lucrative.

That or other people would have gotten involved. Had he been making 2 million a month let alone a week I could see Junior telling MF that he needs help to make sure this gasoline thing is managed carefully and he's putting Ally Boy in there to make sure things stay on track. Which, if you know the Persicos that's step one into taking something over something and keeping it for themselves.

Do you think he would've done that to the son of his underboss? He was named the Snake for a reason but I'm inclined to believe he wouldn't do that to someone like Sonny. And if Franzese was as smart as he looks like, he would make sure the Persicos received a cut that would keep them happy. He did mention that they were thinking about killing him for not being truthful about all the money he was making.

I agree that making 100 million a year sounds outlandish. But making millions, perhaps even tens of millions, over the course of several years from such a racket doesn't sound unbelievable ro me.

I dont know.... the number sounds outlandish, but the Gas racket was a motherfucker....

The government took taxes on every gallon of gas up to 27 cents a gallon, I think. City, state and federal I believe.

The problem was the slow government bureaucracy that took over a YEAR to ACTUALLY collect said taxes.

So what happened was that Franzese would open up a gas station, sell tons of gasoline by undercutting all the local prices, which he had a 27 cent leverage opportunity to play with because he wasnt paying the taxes.

After a few months of this, he would close the gas station, which was incorporated in like, an immigrant's name so there wouldnt be a legal entity to go after.

Then they just open up shop under a new corporation, rinse and repeat. Daisy chain, classic example.

Now 27 cents sounds like bullshit, until you realize this is like, millions and millions of gallons of gasoline.

And Franzese apparently was always wary of another family muscling in, which is exactly what happened with Joe Glitz....

I know Franzese is kind of a bullshitter at this point, but I dont think the Gas racket was too much of an exaggeration, but I could be wrong...

[CabriniGreen]

Let me back up, the responsibility of paying the taxes fell to the owners of the gas stations, the peoples distributing the gas. This was the weakness that the racket exploited.

Now the G got a little hip to this, and changed the laws so that the Gasoline WHOLESALERS, who sold the gas to the stations, now were responsible for paying the taxes.

The silly thing was the law stated that a Gasoline wholesaler could sale gasoline TAX FREE to another gasoline wholesaler.

So Franzese adjusted the business model to become a gasoline wholesaler. He used contacts to obtain licsensing to become a gasoline wholesaler. Then he would just buy gas in bulk, sell it to a few shell companies on paper, tax free, while they sold the gasoline, this time making his money off the top.

When the G came looking for the taxes, same thing. It would be a maze of paperwork, that lead to a dead end company, with a dead end name on the documents.

( Not for nothing, but this was one of a few reasons the Campos thing stuck me as kinda amateur hour, for a fraud, which was surprising considering they pulled off like, the BIGGEST fraud.. they had thier real names all over the corporate charters....)

Now one has to think about this..... how much gas is sold in Queens? Brooklyn? Manhattan? Daily? Weekly?
How many gallons of gas? How much market share was Franzese able to carve out?

He said he would meet with 3, 4 other gas station owners and tell em flat out, " I'm here, and Im going to be 3-5 cents less than you, you guys should get on board"...

The question I have is exactly HOW MANY gas stations can be verified that were under his control?

Apparently he was doing it in Florida too, and they had even higher ta es on gas than NY, 40 cents if I'm remembering right.....

[Amershire_Ed]

Franzese has said in several interviews that a good chunk of his income was completely legitimate. I think he owned several car dealerships, he had the production company and was making movies.

I tend to think a lot of the dollar figures he’s quoted are mostly close to being accurate. Fortune Magazine listed him as one of the 50 richest “mob bosses” in 85. Obviously it’s just a guess but this was before he flipped and started telling all kinds of tales.

[Wiseguy]

I've always been sceptical of the higher-end estimates we've seen. And then it gets really convaluted because there are a lot of figures thrown out, as well as what exactly those numbers are referring to - how much was Franzese making a week? How much was his operations (his guys and their other rackets) making a week? The overall take from the gas tax scam involving the other NY families and the Russians? What areas are we talking about - New York/New Jersey or Florida? Are we talking about the time frame that Franzese and his partners ran their scam before being indicted or are we talking about the entire time the LCN was involved in gas tax scams? And so on. This is often not clearly spelled out in the articles you read. And the numbers have fluctuated over the years when Franzese himself as told the story.

Iorizzo testfied that he was personally passing anywhere from $12,000 to $50,000 a week to Franzese. It's obvious Franzese made millions, probably tens of millions, for himself and the Colombo family when he was involved in the racket. The other families obviously made millions as well.

The figure I've seen for the amount of gas stations connected to Franzese and his operation was 350. That may be an exaggeration but who knows.

[B.]

I tend to go with the most conservative estimates when it comes to racket-generated income. When you look at most wealthy mafia members throughout history, their true wealth seems to come from legitimate interests. These interests benefited from mafia influence and crossed into grey areas of legality, but they are not necessarily straight up "scams".

There are some exceptions, like bootlegging, which created a major boom for many members but we also don't have an objective way of knowing how much money was truly made then and how many members benefited significantly -- it is mostly anecdotal and some of those who were described as bootlegging kings were already significantly wealthy before prohibition. Look at Maranzano or Siracusa in Pittsburgh. Both were already wealthy and it was their ability to invest money they already had that placed them at the top of the bootlegging pyramid. That's typical of any free market -- it takes money to make money.

This gas scam's more conservative estimates are still worlds beyond other rackets and for some of the reasons already discussed, I lean toward the "smaller" numbers that have been given. My view on racket-generated income is similar to my view on the caps/peak membership -- I go with the most conservative estimates, but the caveat is that I believe they've been able to maintain and sustain those numbers more often than not, naturally with some ups and downs. I believe most mafia members have been and continue to be middle class, but like many middle class people their spending priorities are twisted up and just because they show luxury doesn't mean they have the savings to back it up.

By the way...

Scarpa reported to the FBI that Carmine Persico placed a murder contract on Michael Franzese and sent word to break up Sonny Franzese's Long Island crew and take over his operations as punishment for his son's actions. Franzese's crew resisted, however. This was right before things started to heat up in the family and bigger problems took precedent.

[Wiseguy]

I tend to go with the most conservative estimates when it comes to racket-generated income. When you look at most wealthy mafia members throughout history, their true wealth seems to come from legitimate interests. These interests benefited from mafia influence and crossed into grey areas of legality, but they are not necessarily straight up "scams".

There are some exceptions, like bootlegging, which created a major boom for many members but we also don't have an objective way of knowing how much money was truly made then and how many members benefited significantly -- it is mostly anecdotal and some of those who were described as bootlegging kings were already significantly wealthy before prohibition. Look at Maranzano or Siracusa in Pittsburgh. Both were already wealthy and it was their ability to invest money they already had that placed them at the top of the bootlegging pyramid. That's typical of any free market -- it takes money to make money.

This gas scam's more conservative estimates are still worlds beyond other rackets and for some of the reasons already discussed, I lean toward the "smaller" numbers that have been given. My view on racket-generated income is similar to my view on the caps/peak membership -- I go with the most conservative estimates, but the caveat is that I believe they've been able to maintain and sustain those numbers more often than not, naturally with some ups and downs. I believe most mafia members have been and continue to be middle class, but like many middle class people their spending priorities are twisted up and just because they show luxury doesn't mean they have the savings to back it up.

By the way...

Scarpa reported to the FBI that Carmine Persico placed a murder contract on Michael Franzese and sent word to break up Sonny Franzese's Long Island crew and take over his operations as punishment for his son's actions. Franzese's crew resisted, however. This was right before things started to heat up in the family and bigger problems took precedent.

Agree 100%.

[Lupara]

^^^ Also agreed. Hey, we're in agreement! Good times ahead.