How The Mafia Works | Insider Review

you had to be a full-blooded italian in order to be made well during my time know your father had to be italian and that had to be proven you know through your ancestry through your history your mom did not have to be italian i don't think that changed maybe with the lucasies and in john's experience you had to be full-blooded during my experience you did not as long as your father was italian you were able to be made [Music] so [Music] hey everyone welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody is doing well all is blessed on this end and as always we praise god for that for all those of you have subscribed a special thank you to all of you who are on a march towards a million and it's thanks to your loyalty and you're enjoying the content that we're getting there for all my viewers thank you very much if you haven't subscribed please do so you get alerts and you just kind of stay on top of what we're doing we work hard to try to give you the best possible content and all my people in my inner circle a shout out to you michaelfrancis.com if you're not part of my crew of my inner circle you should look into it it's something that i know is going to benefit you people are having a great time they're getting knowledge they're getting encouragement it's a community that we've created that's part of my legacy and i hope you will look into it maybe join it and today i'm going to do something a little bit different i've never done this before but i'm going to comment on someone else that has done something on the insider his name is johnny panissi he was i should say a made guy with the lukaze family and he did something on that platform the insider platform that i've done some things for it's a big platform they got a lot of subscribers but he talked about the rules of the mafia and i thought it was pretty interesting and i want to comment on it because the interesting thing to me is we're from two different areas john was with a lucky's he was made in 2013 he had about a five year run he left that life in 2018. i'm not going to really comment on the circumstances as to why he left other than what he stated and that was that some people in his family were accusing him falsely he says of being an informant and of course in that life it's dangerous you can't be accused to be an informant he kind of had to watch his back a little bit and as a result of that because he was falsely accused he left that life and the circumstances after he left i'm not aware of john and i don't know each other he seems like a nice enough guy he's well spoken he carries himself the right way so i thought i would comment on some of the things that he stated and give you kind of some of the differences some things we agree on some things we don't agree on and you know there are differences in that life between rules and policies remember in new york there are five families and all kozanostra had the same rules that we had to abide by and john comments on that but different families might have had different policies now there is a difference a rule is a law you don't break it it's uh you know held by all five families a policy is a little bit different you know it maybe works for one family doesn't work for another but as long as the policy doesn't break the rules it's okay so i want to get into that a little bit like i said john and i don't know each other i'm going to disagree with some of the things that he said because they might have been different in my era and for my family than what john experienced during his era and his family but i think you'll find it interesting so here we go and first thing i got it written down because there was a lot of them and obviously i have to remember them got to put my glasses on unfortunately but that's how it goes at this point in time the first thing that john said that i i kind of disagree with he said the biggest misconception of closing austro mafia today is that there is honor loyalty and respect and according to john this has been replaced by selfishness and greed well let me tell you this you know cause an ostrich of the mafia it's always about honor loyalty and respect but from the beginning of time there's always been corruption in that same way there's corruption in the government when the government official takes an oath what is his oath you know to honor to protect to serve the people how many of them are corrupt corruption happens in every facet of life i don't care if you're in business i don't care if you're in government i don't care if you're on the street i've said this in a prior video unfortunately it even happens in the church and whatever church that might be or whatever faith it might be corruption is a part of life it's no different in the mob when i came into that life i had a very idealistic view of that life hey it's a life of honor it's a life of respect you know it's a life of royalty but like anything else there is corruption is there greed of course is everybody greedy no is everybody in that life corrupt no and i think john has a different sense of that maybe during his time that's what he experienced i didn't experience that in my life i thought there was honorable people in that life i really did so i think it's just part of the life it's just part of any life it's part of any organization you know you may go in with an idealistic view you may have the right principles set up going in but then like anything else things get corrupt so i don't think it's been replaced you know i think it's just part of life it's part of any organization it's part of kosonostra the same way as part of the government or anything else so i want to clarify that now he went through the rules and uh rule number one you never hit a made guy absolutely you raise your hands to a made guy you're signing your own death sentence you're not allowed to do that i don't know of any time in my former life where anybody raise the hand to a made guy and live to talk about it afterwards something you just can't do so that held fast during john's time and also during my time number two you never date the wife or the girlfriend of another made guy obviously that's true also you didn't mess around with the wife the girlfriend the sister the mother the daughter of another made guy you do that you get in trouble and in my lifetime during my time rather people paid that penalty i know of a few that did that and the consequences were very severe you don't do that so john and i agree on that number three you had to be a full-blooded italian in order to be made well during my time no your father had to be italian and that had to be proven you know through your ancestry through your history your mom did not have to be italian i don't think that changed maybe with the lucasies and in john's experience you had to be full-blooded during my experience you did not as long as your father was italian you were able to be made number four john said that we weren't allowed to file lawsuits i don't know that to be true now it wasn't the chosen plan of action obviously we were able to handle things differently on the street we got into a business dispute or a financial dispute with somebody normally we didn't sue them if we were in business and somebody sued us we were allowed to counter sue i never heard that we weren't allowed to sue anybody it wasn't the preferred course of action but it wasn't a hard fast rule it might have been a policy in john's experience but it certainly wasn't a rule might have been frowned upon i agree with that but in certain situations it was absolutely allowed you know it wasn't forbidden number five we weren't allowed to trade in stocks and bonds john says that was a rule i never heard that as a matter of fact my dad owns stocks you know i own stocks i traded in bonds all the time and i knew a lot of other guys that did as a matter of fact we had different schemes on wall street pump and dump schemes not going to get into all of that we can do that in another video but we were allowed to own stocks we were allowed to own bonds whenever we got inside information if we were able to get some you know we bought stocks and we traded we made money that way so i don't know where john got that again it might have been a policy with the lucasies certainly wasn't one with the colombos no killing of family members well i i believe that to be true unless a family member was involved in some criminal activity and they did something to cross the line to cause themselves to be in that kind of trouble you didn't go after somebody's family because someone became an informant or because someone did the wrong thing you did not do that unless that family member was involved it was hands off that's why when i walked away from the light people have asked me weren't you worried about your family the answer is no i don't know if that rule was ever broken but i don't know of any situation where a family member was hurt as a result of a made guy's activities or consequences for a made guy doing the wrong thing so john and i agree on that and then finally john said well not finally but john said that we weren't allowed to use explosives i never heard that we know frankie dico and john mentions this in his video you know was uh who died as a result of a car bombing he was a gambino under boss at the time during gotti's reign at that time you knew that so i never heard that i never heard we weren't allowed to use explosives maybe during john's era and again with the locations that was a rule but i never heard that no drug dealing okay john i'm glad you agree with me on this we disagree a little bit but in principle we agree you were not allowed to use drugs that was a fail that was a family rule all five families had to abide by that i was told the night i got made you don't deal with drugs you deal with drugs you die i said that again were guys doing it yes they were doing it on the side were we major drug dealers no and please don't come back and point to vito genovese that was a different era okay he was doing it i don't know if he was supposed to be doing it he was a boss at the time that he was doing it whatever but we weren't allowed to deal with drugs were guys doing it on the side yes they were in small amounts we were not major drug dealers i knew guys that got killed for dealing with drugs i told you about big tony blew his brains out in a phone booth because he was afraid he would get killed because he was dealing a small amount of drugs nothing major so john and i agree on that are some guys given a pass for dealing with drugs i don't know about that is it possible i guess so depending upon the boss depending upon the situation in which crew i don't know that to be a fact in my family the columbos maybe john had that experience with the locations but i'm glad you mentioned to john it was a steadfast rule at the time all five families in new york we were not allowed to be dealing with drugs and again remember paul castellano allegedly put the hit out on john gotti why because his crew was dealing with drugs weren't supposed to do it remember the movie gotti with uh armand asante when they were in the room and armand gotti was talking to carlo gambino at that time what did carlos say you're abiding by my rules with drugs because if you don't what happens you deal with drugs you die remember okay weren't allowed to do it so john and i agree on that moving on john said that in his era guys would break the mob rules on a daily basis i don't know about that i don't know what he means by that i don't know what you could do to break the rules on a daily basis i mean we just went over eight or nine steadfast rules i don't necessarily agree with that but john wasn't specific so i don't know what he was talking about when he says they're breaking the rules on a daily basis i would find that pretty hard to believe because we just went over a number of rules and how many can you break you know what are you doing to break them i don't know john would have to explain that yeah another thing that john said this is not a rule but something that he talked about and he said before the commission was formed before lucky luciano formed the commission and the five families and by the way john says that it was maya lansky you know that created the five families and the commission it was lucky luciano now maya lansky might have been an advisor to him at that time he was as a matter of fact they were very closely associated but it's lucky luciano that created this and he's the one that should get the credit for it meyerlansky was not a made guy obviously he was jewish and by the way john talks about there being five families according to what i knew most of my time in that life this came originally from my father and then obviously i heard it from my boss persico and other people in that life there weren't only five families on the commission there were five in new york and that's where the major control of kosan nordstrom comes from new york but there were nine families that were part of the commission there was chicago there was kansas city there was cleveland and there was new orleans and all of those bosses were part of the commission originally so there were nine families that were part of the commission that's what i was told was i ever at a commission meeting no so i can't verify that firsthand but my father was a pretty knowledgeable guy in that life and if he tells me that i believe it if persico tells me that i believe it so there were nine families that were originally involved in the commission and this is what luciano divided up when he first formed cause an ostrich commission and when he first delegated all of the families at that time john says that before they were the families and the commission they were the bosses were known as fathers i never heard that maybe uh that could be true i don't know john stated that maybe you heard that someplace i never heard that throughout my time in that life or any time afterwards he also said that during his time or what he knew about that life that the families were given territories geographically i don't know that to be true there were things that i did in brooklyn there were things that i did in long island there were things that i did in florida i was never told hey you can't go here you can't go there that's their territory whatever the only thing i was ever told is that if i went to another city where there was a mob family like if i would go to chicago before i would do anything there i'd have to check in with the boss or with somebody from that family rather so but i wasn't told i couldn't do anything there when i went out to la they told me do whatever you want there you know there's nobody really in control you do whatever you want you set up shop do whatever you want nobody's going to stop you just let us know when i went to florida nobody told me that there was a territory that i couldn't cross in new york the same thing i could have done things anywhere in new york and i was able to do things i don't think there was a geographic division among the families i've never heard of that now we had our own territory in brooklyn you know we had carroll street in the surrounding areas was kind of the colombo headquarters when persico was in charge and obviously you know somebody didn't go into part of our territory and just set up shop without asking us but we weren't set up geographically you know not during my time again you know i think i have to disagree with john on this because he said that's how it was the way he explained it from the beginning of time and i don't agree with that certainly wasn't my experience he then started to kind of get into the hierarchy of the mob and he said that you know the lowest people on totem pole were associates and he called the associates civilians we never called them civilians for us anybody that wasn't a made member of that life was called a sucker you could have been the president of the united states you weren't made you were a sucker you were the pope you weren't made you were a sucker that's just the expression that we use now obviously when you became associated with us you didn't have any real juice in that life you were with us so we protected you we took care of you we earned money with you we didn't always propose you didn't mean because you're an associate that the next step you were going to become a made guy there were a lot of associates that never became made guys and you know in my crew i'm going to be honest with you i told all my associates that weren't made i said here's the deal if you want to become a made member of this life this is not the crew to be with don't be with me because i'm not going to make you i'm not going to propose you i'm not going to make it with me you're going to make money you want to make money you stay here you want to get made you go elsewhere what was my reasoning very simple when you propose a guy and he gets made you lose him he becomes his own man at that point in time so whatever you had with him you lose him he can go on his own at that point in time so why would you cultivate somebody make him wealthy or make him earn money with you and then give it up so i would tell him straight out you want to get made you go with another crew you want to make a lot of money you stay with me and most everybody stayed with me i can't remember anybody that didn't stay with me but if you were an associate it doesn't mean you automatically go to the next step and become made you're an associate that's what you are you may stay that way forever or you can be proposed if somebody saw it in you and said hey you know what you want to be proposed you got what it takes i'm going to propose you i'm going to sponsor you then he said you know the next guys up the ladder were made guys and he called him friends no if you were a made guy you know you just got your stripes you became a soldier that was the bottom level of the totem pole you know you were a soldier we didn't call you friends everybody was a friend of ours amigo nostra a friend of ours every made guy whether you were the boss the consueri the underboss or kappa regime or a soldier we were all friends of ours not friends of mine but friends of ours you know the expression so we kind of disagree on that at least that's nothing that i ever heard next up he talked about the boss and the underboss you know the interesting thing he said that the boss and the underboss had the same power that's not true certainly not my experience the boss is the boss is the boss he chooses his underboss remember that he appoints us under boss now there are some politics involved meaning that my father became joe columbo's on the boss joe columba kind of had to pick my father because my father had a lot of stature on the street and he really was the guy next in line even if joe columbo didn't want him in order to satisfy the men beneath him my father was the guy that he should have picked so politically there are reasons why you you know the boss picks the underboss but the boss is the boss and that's it and and the underboss does not have the same authority or same power as the boss the boss is the kind of supreme leader in that life that's how it was in my experience again you know i don't want to you know say that john and i disagree too much we're telling about our individual experiences you know maybe in the lucasia family was a little bit different he experienced something different but as far as my time in that life and everything that i knew the boss was the boss he was the guy and you know this is another thing nobody can tell a boss to do with his own family the commission i've said this before my dad and i discussed it you know many times was kind of like the united nations they were a body of people that would get together and they had policies but they couldn't tell you know nobody in the united nations can tell any particular president of a country what they have to do they could suggest it strongly they can try urge that person to do what they want but the president of the country does what he wants according to his constitution his congress his rules nobody can tell him what to do same with the mob family nobody can tell the boss what to do the commission couldn't say hey you have to do this they can suggest it they could urge it it could be wise for a boss to listen to them but the boss is the boss of the boss and his family that's the way it's supposed to be and that's the way it was during my time and john talked about the console area which is an official position many of you have seen the godfather robert duvall played that role brilliantly i might add but it was fictional in the godfather because robert duvall wasn't italian so he couldn't have been made he couldn't have that official position but it is an official position and the consulary is the hand-picked advisor to the boss the boss chooses him one of the real roles of the consuyeri is he's supposed to be a liaison between the men the soldiers and the kappa regimes and the boss in other words if you have a an issue with the boss you have a complaint about the family something's not going right you're supposed to be able to voice your grievance with the consulary and he's supposed to go to the boss and straighten it out kind of mediate it for you but here's the problem since the console year is hand-picked by the boss if you're a soldier or a couple and you go to the concierge with a complaint about the boss you're probably going to be in a lot of trouble for it so you don't do that you know obviously that life again you know you got to be able to know what to do and now you don't voice complaints against anybody it's not a wise thing to do especially within your own family but anyway conciliary an official position it is a a higher up in the organization and then we have the kappa regimes the kappa regime you know is again appointed by the boss not by the entire administration again the boss can consult with the underboss he can consult with other kappa regimes he can consult with the concierge but he hand picks his capos and obviously he's going to try to pick people that are loyal to him i mean that's that's just smart you know it's the same like the president he picks qualified people but he picks people that he believes are going to be loyal to him that are going to agree with him in many many cases even though he's not supposed to do that that's what he's going to do it's supposed to be the most qualified people doesn't always work that way let's be honest but accomplishme is also known as a street boss now some people have come to me and michael they always say you're a boss i'm not saying i was a boss i was a kappa regime a cop regime is known as a street boss why because the boss assigned soldiers to him that are under his control under his authority in other words if you're a soldier you're not allowed to go directly to the boss you've got to go to your kappa regime first you know that's who you report to he's your immediate supervisor so you are kind of a street boss the associates that are under the soldiers you know if they have something they want to talk to they go to first to their soldier and then the soldier could bring him to his cop regime at some point in time that's how it goes so again official positions boss under boss conciliary kappa regime soldier those are all the official made positions and the associates are the associates of the capo the the soldiers the boss whatever an associate doesn't always get proposed remember that you know i was never an associate before i was proposed you know i was a college student okay i was my father's son and i kind of grew up in that environment in that life but he never made me an associate i was never associated with any other person other than my dad but remember i didn't work for my dad or to get involved with my dad prior to his going to prison you know i became a recruit immediately because my dad proposed me right away so i was never an associate so you don't have to be an associate in order to be proposed and you don't automatically get proposed because you're an associate hope that clarifies that i hope you understand it okay so moving on john talked about corruption in that life you know and he talked about political corruption did we have a lot of politicians that work with us that we i don't want to say had under our control but that would do our bidding yes to a degree not as much as it was back in the 30s and the 40s certainly in al capone's days and luciano's days it was different you know frank costello he was deeply involved politically he had a lot of politicians working with him they called him the prime minister because of his political connections we saw in the godfather alvito corleone i think they tried to illustrate the fact that at one point in time we did have a lot of political connections and yes during my time we did also you know i had certain politicians that that you know i supported we did fundraisers for them we gave them money and as in return we got favors law enforcement you know we paid a lot of people in law enforcement and got certain favors from them you got to remember this in new york we had 750 during my time we had about 750 made guys guys that actually took the oath that comprised all five families it's a lot of guys many of us had relatives that might have been in law enforcement that might have been a politician we might have had a neighbor you know a friend somebody like that so we're pretty well connected during that time but certainly not as well connected as it was in the 20s 30s 40s even into the 50s why because the government started to get more wise to it there were more laws in place people got a little bit more scared of being involved with guys on the street it was different they didn't take bribes as easy they didn't take money as easy so i think john is right about that the political corruption that we were able to make happen didn't happen as much in later days as it did in earlier days of that life you know and i will tell you this you know when my dad was in prison and again i've said this 100 times you know and i'll take it to my death my dad was framed on that bank robbery case my dad was not a bank robber i'll take that to my grave but you know i was doing well at the time people know that i would have paid anything to get my dad's conviction overturned and believe me i tried there was a time i offered two million dollars to someone to get my dad's conviction overturned and we couldn't do it i couldn't buy my dad out of prison it just wouldn't happen and in earlier days you hand somebody two million dollars believe me a lot of things would have happened so in more modern times no you know it didn't happen like it did earlier on there wasn't that kind of corruption and it isn't the same today you know john also stated that he believed 20 years from now the mob will not exist won't exist anymore again i tend to agree with john with that if the government continues to put the pressure on that they have you know since the mid 80s this life is going to be in a lot of trouble will it go away in my lifetime i don't think so you know guys on the street are pretty resourceful but the problem now is i want to explain this also john didn't really get into this but you know they say that the modern guys are not like the old-timers you know that we didn't stand up as well as the old-timers did and i'm going to tell you i don't believe that to be true the old-timers didn't have the government pressure that we had during our time you didn't see as many informants why because they didn't have the surveillance techniques they didn't they didn't have the racketeering laws they wouldn't put guys away for a hundred years they weren't locking them up without bail you know they had parole at that time it was a different different time and a lot of the guys that flipped later they weren't youngsters they were guys that were in that life for quite some time greg scarpa he wasn't a kid he was a 20 25 year veteran of that life you know and he was an informant for quite some time willie boyd johnson he was an associate but he wasn't a kid and you can go on and on and on and on a lot of the guys that flipped they flipped under the pressure that the government put on them and if they had exerted that pressure from day one that probably wouldn't have been the success in this life that they had you know another thing that john talked about he talked about to be the origin of course and austria in this country he talked about the sicilians coming over that's true how they started to extort people in their own neighborhoods that's true but remember this remember i said this the reason cause an austria became strong in this country was due to prohibition the government gave us the pathway to become multi-millionaires and no organization exists properly and grows without money and the money that was made during prohibition was obscene money obscene money al capone was today would have been worth billions of dollars you know luciano all of these guys they would have been worth billions of dollars from the money they made during prohibition so remember that it was the government that opened the door they didn't do it knowingly obviously we know why prohibition came in not going to get into that but that's what created this organization it was the money that allowed people to do it you know i think that's it i think we covered just about everything that john went over and again you know we disagree on some things because our experiences were different we were from different eras you know i was part of that life for over 20 years i got straightened out in 75 i entered that life under joe columbo you know in the early 70s and i walked away in 95 but i grew up with my dad it was a totally different experience john came in in in 2013 he was proposed i think in 2012 he had a five-year run so things were different the racketeering laws were firmly in place a lot of informants on the street you know the government surveillance techniques were there a lot of stuff was different during his era but again i think we agree on most uh some things we disagree on and sometimes our experiences were different but hey i suggest that you go and watch it you know he's on insider john penici i think he followed up with another video that was interesting maybe i'll comment on that maybe not i think it was about different ways the mob is earning money i think he said 19 ways in which the mob burns money so go watch it look you know i'm all for supporting guys that are real on this life you know everybody's trying to you know come on youtube and uh and share their experiences i see nothing wrong with that and i support the guys that go out and do it and do it the right way uh so that's it for today hope you enjoyed it and uh what do i always say same way i leave you the same way all the time because that's the way i leave you be safe and i always implore the ladies ladies want the things that are going on in la today are crazy now they have identified 17 gangs that are going after tourists that are scouting people following to them to their homes following them to restaurants and robbing them at gunpoint 17 gangs this is going on in la ladies be careful when you're in a parking lot look around you make sure you know your surroundings before you get in the car especially at night you got to be aware you know this is very important so be safe be healthy i don't think we have to worry about covert as much it looks like you know it's going to be something that we're going to live with but praise god these strains are a lot easier but you don't want to take care of yourself anyway be healthy do the right thing get into the gym workout it's good for you god bless and i really do mean that god bless all of you we need god more than ever in this country we need the lord so please god bless all of you and yes i will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Michael Franzese

Views: 508,843

Keywords: franzese, michael franzese, sitdown with michael franzese, mob stories, how crime works, how crime works insider, how the mafia actually works, how the 5 families really work, is the mafia still around, does the mafia still exist, how the mafia works, how the mafia started, is the mob still around, is the mob still active in new york

Id: mxt3nvqhkTk

Length: 30min 51sec (1851 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022