Michael Franzese

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1986, Fortune magazine ranked Michael Franzese number 18 among the wealthiest and most powerful Mafia bosses in America. He was 35 years old. Franzese was a caporegime, or crew captain, in the Colombo crime family of New York City. Today he warns audiences away from the very life that made him rich. How does a young man leave college and end up on a list like that? Where did money on that scale come from? And why did he walk away?

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• 2. Secret Parentage

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  Cristina Capobianco was 16 and working as a cigarette girl at the Stork Club in Manhattan when she became pregnant by John Franzese, known as Sonny. He was an underboss in the Colombo family, and he was already married with three children. Her son Michael was born in Brooklyn on the 27th of May 1951. To avoid a scandal over a child born outside marriage, Capobianco married a man named Frank Grillo. Later the mob allowed John to divorce his first wife. Grillo disappeared, and John married Capobianco.

  Michael Grillo was the name Franzese says he used until he was 18. He believed Grillo was his biological father and that John had adopted him after his mother divorced Grillo. He questioned the story for years.

  In 1967, Sonny Franzese was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery. He had not wanted his son to join organized crime. Michael was studying in a pre-med program at Hofstra University, and he later settled on Long Island. In 1971 he dropped out of college to bring money home to the family. By then he had come to know his father's friends, among them Joseph Colombo.

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• 3. Made Man

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  On Halloween night 1975, according to Franzese, acting boss Tommy DiBella inducted him as a made man. The ceremony required a blood oath and a vow of omerta, the mob's code of silence. He swore alongside Jimmy Angelino, Joseph Peraino Jr., Salvatore Miciotta, Vito Guzzo Sr. and John Minerva. Every one of them except Miciotta died violently within the next 20 years.

  Joseph "Joe-Joe" Vitacco, a Colombo soldier who lived from 1927 to 1980, briefly served as Franzese's mentor.

  In the late 1970s, a dispute in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, brought Franzese face to face with John Gotti, then a soldier and later boss of the Gambino family. Angelo Ruggiero was in the room too. A flea market owner had complained that his partner was using and selling drugs at the market. Franzese agreed to scare the partner off and take his place. He sent Anthony Sarivola, a Colombo soldier who later became an informant, along with another member who remains unidentified. Gotti, however, claimed the frightened partner was his associate. Franzese later spoke admiringly of Gotti, pointing to his rigid devotion to the mobster lifestyle and his towering ego.

  By 1980, Franzese had risen to caporegime, leading a crew of 300.

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• 4. The Gasoline Daisy Chain

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  In 1981, a man named Lawrence Salvatore Iorizzo came to Franzese with a plan to cheat the federal government out of gasoline taxes. Iorizzo was being harassed by criminals in California. He offered Franzese a percentage if he would step in and solve the problem. The two set up 18 stock-bearer companies in Panama. Panamanian law at the time let wholesale companies sell gasoline to one another tax-free. Franzese also partnered with the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn.

  Three kinds of company made the scheme work. Wholesale gasoline was sold to one company but delivered to another. A third, a dummy firm, sold the fuel on paper and forged tax documents for the company that actually received it. Franzese's crew then pocketed the federal tax of nine cents per gallon. When enforcement agents came to collect from the dummy firm, it declared bankruptcy, and the daisy chain simply continued.

  Between one third and one half of all gasoline sold in the New York metropolitan area came through this scheme. Officials said Franzese kept 75 percent of the profits, or $1.26 million per month, while Iorizzo took $45,000. An associate later testified that Franzese personally made $1 million per week. Franzese himself claimed that at his peak he brought in as much as $8 million per week.

  Revenue officials estimated that $250 million in gasoline tax was stolen in New York state each year. The operation then moved to Florida, which officials estimated lost between $40 million and $250 million.

  Vanity Fair called him one of the biggest money earners for the Mafia since Al Capone. In the 1980s the press nicknamed him the Yuppie Don and the Prince of the Mafia. Franzese bought a home in Delray Beach, Florida.

  Authorities believe the money was laundered through his film production company, Miami Gold, into offshore bank accounts in Austria and Panama.

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• 5. Business Empire

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  By the mid-1980s, Franzese had a firm grip on a wide range of businesses. They included car dealerships, leasing companies and auto repair shops. The list went on to restaurants, nightclubs, a contractor company, travel agencies and video stores. He also owned movie production and distribution companies, and he had been moving into legitimate business since the 1970s.

  In 1980, Franzese became a partner in the firm of booking agent Norby Walters. His job was to intimidate existing and prospective clients. Franzese later testified that he supplied the first $50,000 to start the agency in return for a 25 percent share of any profits. He also met with the agents of entertainers who gave Walters trouble. In 1981 he successfully extorted a role for Walters in the American tour by Michael Jackson and his brothers. A year later, the manager for singer Dionne Warwick wanted to drop Walters as an agent. Franzese met with the manager and persuaded him to keep Walters.

  In 1983, the FBI opened an investigation into the organized crime ties of boxing promoter Don King and chose Franzese as the way in. The plan was to introduce an undercover agent who used the alias Victor Quintana. Franzese had never met King. He says civil rights leader Al Sharpton made the introduction, and that he first met Sharpton through Genovese family mobster Daniel Pagano. Quintana was supposed to look like a man buying his way into boxing, so that King would reveal his criminal associations. The investigation collapsed when Quintana failed to follow through with several hundred thousand dollars.

  Franzese was also president of Miami Gold, which produced the 1986 film Knights of the City.

  In 1985, Walters set up a sports management agency with Franzese as a silent partner. Franzese agreed to hand over $50,000 for a 25 percent interest. That agency would later put Franzese in a witness chair at Walters's trial.

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• 6. Indictments and Prison

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  In April 1985, Franzese was acquitted of racketeering charges. Eight months later, in December 1985, he was charged in both Florida and New York over counterfeiting and extortion tied to the gasoline racket. In New York he was one of nine people indicted on 14 counts. In Florida he was one of 26 people indicted on 177 counts after a 16-month investigation called Operation Tiger Tail.

  Iorizzo had already been sentenced to five years and ordered to pay $1.7 million for his part in stealing $1.1 million in gas taxes. Placed in the witness protection program, he began testifying against Franzese and others in March 1985.

  On the 21st of March 1986, Franzese pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of tax conspiracy. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay $14.7 million in restitution. He agreed to sell his assets, including a mansion in Old Brookville, New York, and Miami Gold, and to use proceeds from the film Knights of the City. A plea deal in Florida brought nine years for state racketeering, to run alongside the federal term, plus another $3 million in restitution.

  In March 1989, Franzese was subpoenaed to testify at Walters's trial. Walters had invoked Franzese's name to frighten college athletes into signing management contracts, among them Maurice Douglass. In exchange for his testimony, Franzese received immunity from prosecution in that case. Walters was found guilty, fined $395,000 and sentenced to 5 years, and the judge cited the importance of Franzese's testimony. Franzese was released on parole after serving 43 months. In September 1990, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Walters's conviction on a technicality.

  Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's 1990 film, included a character based on Franzese, played by Joseph Bono.

  On the 27th of December 1991, a New York court sentenced Franzese to four years in federal prison for violating the terms of his 1989 release. He had been arrested in Los Angeles on a tax fraud accusation and sent back to New York for the hearing. Prosecutors complained that he had only started paying the balance of his restitution earlier that year. United States Attorney Andrew J. Maloney said after the court session: "Mr. Franzese has led the Government on a long, merry chase for a number of years. We essentially view him as a con man." Prosecutors added that the government no longer considered him a federal cooperating witness.

  While imprisoned in 1991, Franzese became a born-again Christian after a guard gave him a Bible. He also spent three years in solitary confinement. In 1992 he co-authored an autobiography, Quitting the Mob, which covers his criminal activities and his life with his father.

  He was released on the 7th of November 1994.

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• 7. The Second Act

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  In 1995, Franzese retired from the mob by moving his wife and children to California. The move also followed multiple death threats and contracts on his life, including one that his own father approved. Since his release he has publicly condemned organized crime. "I never glamorize my mob life. It's an evil life," he has said. He has also said: "I don't know one family that's part of that life mob life that hasn't been totally devastated." He became a motivational speaker for youth, appearing at schools, prisons and other venues. He also speaks at Christian conferences and churches, including Willow Creek Community Church in 2016.

  On the 23rd of July 2002, Franzese appeared on the HBO program Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and made a striking claim. He said that in the 1970s and 1980s he persuaded New York Yankees players who owed money to Colombo loansharks to fix baseball games for betting purposes. The Yankees organization immediately denied the accusation.

  In April 2013, Lionsgate released a documentary called The Definitive Guide to the Mob, with Franzese as a commentator. Later that year he appeared in Inside the American Mob, a National Geographic documentary. In 2014 came God the Father, an autobiographical film shown in theaters across 20 cities in the United States. It mixes stock footage, animated recreations and interviews, and it credits religion as the reason he changed his life. In March 2015 he appeared in a two-part documentary on the American Mafia with television presenter Trevor McDonald. There he spoke about his wealth and about the toll that Colombo family membership took on his family. In 2017 he played a reformed mobster in the Kevin Sorbo film Let There Be Light. A stage musical he hosted, A Mob Story, opened in October 2018 at the Plaza Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, created and directed by Jeff Kutash. In July 2020 he appeared in the Netflix docuseries Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, and in 2024 in American Godfathers: The Five Families.

  Seven books carry Franzese's name. After Quitting the Mob in 1992 came Blood Covenant in 2003 and The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven in 2009. I'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse followed in 2011 and From the Godfather to God the Father in 2014. A book titled Blood Covenant: The Story of the "Mafia Prince" Who Publicly Quit the Mob and Lived appeared in 2018, and Mafia Democracy in 2022.

  In 2019, he co-founded a national franchise of pizza restaurants called Slices Pizza. It serves Sicilian-style square pizzas, with ingredients sourced from Naples and Campania and ovens from Venice. The franchise began in California and reached five branches across the country at its height. In 2022 he founded Franzese Wines, a line of Armenian wines.

  In June 2020, Franzese started a YouTube channel. He tells stories about his past life, conducts interviews, and reviews mafia-related films, television shows and video games, judging how accurate they are. His subscriber count passed 1.9 million in February 2026.

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• 8. Family Ties

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  Franzese met his current wife, Camille Garcia, in 1984 while shooting Knights of the City in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She is a Christian, and she influenced his decision to leave the mob. Franzese is also a Christian. He has been married twice, has seven children, and lives with Camille in Newport Beach, California.

  In 2010, Franzese's brother John Franzese Jr. wore a wire during conversations with their father, Sonny, and then testified against him in a racketeering case. Michael described his brother as a "nobody in the mob life." He said that his father "felt sick" that one of his sons had "betrayed him like this." Sonny Franzese was sentenced to eight years in prison. He was released in 2017 at the age of 100 and died three years later.

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