Ex-Mob Boss Plays Mafia 2 • Professionals Play

taking this lock - oh my god only in a videogame would you see this trust me my name is Michael Franzese and I am a former cop okappa regime in the Colombo crime family one of the five New York Mafia families I was born in Brooklyn raised there for many many years then moved out to the coast here I'm in Los Angeles now with my wife and bunch of kids and kind of changed the direction of my life but I was part of that life for over 25 years I did some time in prison was indicted several times arrested more times than I could remember somehow managed to get through it all and Here I am now today I came into that life in an early age I was 24 years old when I was inducted into the family in a very solemn ceremony Halloween night 1975 I was made with five other guys that's the term we used made my father was a heavyweight in that life it was the underboss of the Colombo family back in the 60s my dad unfortunately drew a 50-year prison sentence he was convicted of masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies went to trial was convicted and got a 50 year prison sentence so he had a powerful influence on me I got involved with that life to try to help my father get out of that prison sentence and then I got deeply involved myself I came in as a soldier I was elevated to the position of capo captain capo regime and at one point in time they were slating me to become the boss of that family it went on to make a very significant amount of money I had devised a scheme to defraud the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline ran that scheme for over eight years and at one point time I was bringing in close to eight million dollars a week and became a major major target of law enforcement I was indicted actually five times I had two federal racketeering cases one brought on by Rudy Giuliani the trial that I was acquitted in actually but then in 1985 I was indicted on another major racketeering case by the feds 10-year prison sentence I had a fifteen million dollar restitution I had fallen in love with a young girl who was actually a dancer in a film that I was involved in married her and wanted to kind of change my life so I took the plea as a result of that I did eight years on that ten which was the maximum came out and kind of turned my life around I'm now a public speaker I've written several books I've heard of these mafia games because I've been asked to get involved in them in some way and never really paid too much attention to it my wife would think I lost my mind if I stopped playing video games but actually my boys are dad you should get involved it's fun you know they wanted to play a few times but I I just never did it but I heard of them for sure well there's probably a lot of things in video games that you can't really do in real life I don't know I'm about to find out well obviously we're in Manhattan my old stomping grounds grew up in Brooklyn but obviously spent a lot of time in Manhattan I don't really remember too much about the old country and then one day my father decided it was time to move away oh my my grandparents came over a little earlier than that actually I think 1910 my grandparents first came here my father was actually he was born in Naples on a boat trip that my grandparents went back and he was born there we stayed there for about six months then came back to the States this morning when he got in trouble he was a naturalized citizen otherwise they would have deported him the way the Mafia started to form here in America unfortunately you know some of the street guys were doing exactly this they were feeding off of their own kind yeah it's somewhat realistic yeah I mean this is how it started out kind of preying on their own kind and then it got a bit more sophisticated load this pilot crates under that truck start now and don't take all day they got the dialog right huh these guys must still be from Brooklyn you know mob guys don't usually do honest work when they're in the mob that's for sure well they may do some but it's always in connection to something illegal that they're doing when I said I needed a job I didn't mean slave labor whatever can make a hundred times more working for Barbaro incorporated wait Joe Bob no job Barbaro's a real guy by the way you ever hear of Appalachia back in the 1950s there was a meeting of all the major mob guys from all over the country it was in Appalachia New York law enforcement got wind of it there's a lot of guys there and they actually kind of invaded the place everybody ran away they locked up a whole bunch of guys it was the last time that a major meeting of mob guys from around the country ever happened as a result of that you mind if I give Joe a call so what do you be calling a guy in the font ask about that I don't know I doubt it we didn't use phone calls for situations like that we'd say you know it'd probably say you know I'm gonna meet the guy you know I'll find out come back tomorrow I'll let you know and you better be telling the truth because if you're not you're gonna be in trouble you didn't want to use somebody's name back in the day that would get you in trouble even if you knew somebody and used his name without them knowing about it you'd be in trouble I was in a bar that my father had something to do it I was younger and it was a guy at the bar that was bothering one of the waitresses and so the owner came over to me he said Mike can you talk to this guy he said because he's good a little bit out of control being a little out of hand and I said okay so I went over to him and I said hey you know I want you to leave to go alone she don't want to be bothered you get a little out of hand and you look to me and he said you know who I am the worst line you could ever say to somebody in that life and I said no tell me who you are he says you know who owns this place that should not tell me who owns it he said guy by the name was Sonny Franzese I said really he said yeah he said let me tell you this he said Sonny's doing time right now he's away but I make one phone call and I'll have his son Michael down here in five minutes and he's talking to me okay so needless to say I'll tell you what coming to back since you mentioned such a strong name I want to talk to you you know we took him in the back and I guarantee you this guy never would mention somebody's name again that was commonplace in New York people mention each other people's names all the time get him in trouble so he's a collector so in other words had money on the street and he's collected a common job when I was a captain I had a lot of guys around me I used to give the money to them at one or two points a week and they in turn would lend it out you know add another point to two for themselves so they can make some money because we had a lot of guys around us that couldn't earn five cents if we didn't help them you know give them something they wouldn't have any money so but everybody any mob guy that has any kind of money he's always putting it out on the street when I went to prison I had about a million dollars on the street I was collecting 2% of week so do the math there was a lot of money now get out of here before I kick your ass well you know what as soon as he said that that's what would happen now be honest what I never usually there's no fight like that normally it's one punch or one kick and he's down that's it and the money comes back when a guy who is money they're not fighting back they're gonna pay because they know who they are it to and they know that if they don't pay or if they do anything out of turn they're gonna be in trouble now remember in that life you know you make a mistake you pay for it you could pay for it with your life I mean it could be serious so you don't see fights like that they foul their needs you to pay the fee for the bottom yeah mister forgot her something next time try to pay on time okay thanks and that's how it would go normally hey Derek needs you to pay the fee for the bottom sure I don't want no problems don't leave it until the last minute next time yeah this is normal boys you collect the money off all of these guys that are just workers there must be gamble asleep out there got to be a gambling debt because she wouldn't be lending money to guys like that this is not real I gotta tell you this is not realistic you don't see fights like this see one thing you got to remember we didn't fight on the street if we fought there was some spontaneous thing that happened in a club or whatever if somebody got out of hand and they didn't pay it I'd be in the hospital I mean they may as well be in a boxing ring this is not realistic at all that's it good kick smell out of that a lot of this was unrealistic first of all these are guys that they're working stiffs if money was led to them I'm sure it wasn't a lot you lend to what you know you're gonna get paid back when you put money out on the street guy can keep it forever as long as he pays the interest that's the whole deal they don't have to pay the principal back for as long as he keeps it as long as he doesn't miss them an interest payment you miss a payment you're in trouble you'd never see a fight over that you know maybe the mob guy would hit the guy that didn't have the money but nobody's gonna hit back that's the least traffic I ever seen him Manhattan I need gas tips what the fortune not because it again shortage yes stamps wait can we get him pretty close to home for me the case that I finally got convicted on I took a plea on was a case in which I defrauded the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline I ran that operation for about eight years I had all the Russian mobsters and with me on that and at the height of my operation I had 350 gas stations I either owned or operated and I had 18 companies that were licensed to collect tax on every gallon of gasoline the height of my operation we sell on a half a billion gallons of gas a month and we were taken down 20 30 40 cents a gallon close to eight nine million dollars a week I have my own jet plane I had a helicopter I had houses all over the country so I mean I had it going on if you have guests it's like having money you know I had a terminal out in Long Island in Oceanside and we always had three or four million gallons of gas in the ground and that was like cash so the object here is this guy Vito is supposed to go in to pass security guards without planning this without thinking about it without putting a crew together somehow get through the security guards in a place that he's never scoped out before cuz normally you're gonna scope it out you're gonna see what's why you got to plan something like this and then how you're gonna get into the safe he's got no tools with him he's just walking in there and somehow magically gonna open the safe would never happen that way I want to see if he's gonna case it out first if he's gonna look see how many security guards there he didn't get any information whatsoever on what that safe looks like what kind of safe it is so how do you just go in there and crack a safe without knowing anything about it or having any tools or figuring anything out what is he gonna do with the security guards how's it going to get past them what is he going to tell them gonna sneak in a window you drive a marine out to the hospital is coming in through a window right never happen how many guards are they she didn't say what do they guard it front to back are they walking through the halls I mean you're gonna pull the job off like this you're gonna want to know everything as in detail as you possibly can so you know what you can do and what you can't do now the problem with this you know also is Maria is if this heist does take effect she's a potential witness you right off the bat I can tell you this is not a one-man job you'd have at least two people there you know somebody watching out for him maybe somebody trying to distract the security guards there would never be a one-man job alright well that was convenient the window was left open he's in the men's room he's the kid now I gotta get to the safe find the safe and steal the stamps okay you wouldn't count on trying to get around the guard and sneaking around you'd probably just get the garden if I'm in the back of the head knock them out and then go about your business because you don't even know where the safe is you got to go look for it so you can't keep sneaking around from the guard you just take him out right away okay well the guy is not a safecracker he's never done anything like this in his life but he's gonna go in there and he's gonna crack a sophisticated safe no that's not happening now we did have people that were you know safe crackers they knew how to do this but you're not gonna tell a guy cold to go in and crack us safes not gonna happen picking a lot very difficult again you got to be a locksmith you got to have tools you gotta know what you're doing you can't just walk in there cold and pick a lock I wish it was that easy we would have been a lot wealthier no he's pretty good you got done somehow now this looks like a pretty secure safe it looks like a be like a bank vault almost now how's he gonna open this pickin this lock - oh my god only in a video game would you see this trust me now first of all he wouldn't only take the stamps you take everything in there all right so the alarm went off security guards are still roaming around this is why you take them out there's no way that he would get out of this bloody no way in a way this whole scene is totally unrealistic had somebody shoot at me once but it was a mistake I was getting out of a car and at a diner in Brooklyn was three of us drive by a guy shot at us they thought we were somebody else he stamps you took have an expiration date you didn't say anything about any expiration dates this would blow up real bad in real life real bad guy went through all that trouble I didn't hear him say anything about expiration dates on stamps he almost gets himself killed he gets in gets what he has to get gets out hands him the thing and then he said this isn't any good that would end very badly for one of them dad trust me what the hell is this this is the Irish mob any Italian guys they're pulling off a heist at the same place at the same time pretty unrealistic now you got to understand you know back in the day back in the 30s 20s 30s 40s when things were on organized possibly something like this could have happened but in later days when you know the families were formed and we got a lot more sophisticated something like this would never happen there would never be a major shootout in the street you know among rival gangs that would never be cops coming all at one time so this is pretty unrealistic in my day other than the Lufthansa heist which you might have heard about it was a big big heist in in the airport at the time I don't remember anything like this ever occurring in the 25 years that I was part of our life know that I ever hear of anything but again you know back in the 20s 30s possibly but certainly not in the Mafia that we know there's two guys they're gonna go in against an army of cops and it would never happen you know these guys would be running for their lives try to find someplace to get out of it I don't think the game was very realistic it certainly was intriguing I mean you know the graphics were amazing you can tell that you know who's ever creating these games they don't have a real knowledge of the life and that's not really knocking them because you're new unless you're an insider you don't really have knowledge of that life you wouldn't see shootouts in the middle of the street you wouldn't see warring gangs going after each other it was a fun ride for realism on a scale of one to ten I'd give it a four or five after watching this and playing this game a little bit I mean it's so sensational so to speak I don't see how anybody can look at this game and actually you know let it affect their life to the point where they would want to go out and commit a violent act I mean I just don't get it to me it's there's no relation to that whatsoever it's a game [Music] [Music]

Channel: BuzzFeed Multiplayer

Views: 7,039,086

Rating: 4.930583 out of 5

Keywords: GMSC, Mafia video games, Mob Boss Reviews, PL-ProfessionalsPlay, STSC, american mafia gangster, buzzfeed, buzzfeed gaming, buzzfeed mob boss, buzzfeed multiplayer, colombo crime family, crime, expert reviews, game reviews, gameplay, mafia 2, mafia boss, mafia games, mafia games real, michael franzese, michael franzese buzzfeed, mob boss, multiplayer, new york mafia, organized crime, pro play, professional plays, professionals play games, video games

Id: ycFziHLcxdY

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DoomPat]

Don't anger the man or you'll wake up with no toes and fingers

[u/Jakubisko95]

Lol, mob bosses went from "retiring from the business in some huge ass vila" to making videos on Youtube. Tbh tho, he lived the life and decided that it isn't worth dying for or spending life in prison. His videos are always very informative (same goes for Larry Lawton and his book summaries on Youtube).

[u/scipio211]

I see this guy around a bit. My instinct is to call him out but he's very "informative".