Michael Franzese | Cambridge Union

[Music] [Applause] thank you good evening everyone uh welcome to the cambridge union thank you very much for coming we're very lucky this evening to have michael franzis who is former mob boss turned writer turned businessman turned speaker turned born again christian and many things uh we're very lucky to have him we will he'll give a short speech and then we'll have some time for questions from you guys afterwards but without further ado michael well thank you very much i have to say this is my third visit to the united kingdom i was here about three weeks ago and i was on a speaking tour mainly some churches and a few other things and uh it's been a great time just really love this country the people have always been tremendous to me and uh hopefully i'll be visiting uh quite a bit more uh jonas and his crew have been excellent we got a uh a view of the town today and the university is unbelievable we have nothing like this back in the states regardless what people may tell you the ivy league schools are nice but this is really amazing so i just want to thank you i really when i got the call to come here i thought it was a joke at first i said ah somebody's pulling this joke on me but i really consider it a privilege and an honor to be here and i'm very excited about it looking forward to ask answering your questions and people you can ask me anything that you want i've been asked everything under the sun you're not going to offend me and if i don't want to answer i know how to take the fifth that's the uh right of uh i've done that many times in my life so we're okay but um you know just to give you a big a brief background i'll be very brief because i i enjoy the q and a's more than anything else more than hearing myself speak all the time i'll give you a little brief background on me and then we can fire away from that point i was born in brooklyn new york and uh there are five mafia lakos norster families in that area and actually the mafia doesn't exist in in america and exist in italy in america it's called la cosa nostra means this thing of ours they're similar organizations but if you're a made member of the mafia in italy you're not automatically made in the united states and vice versa when people from the mafia would come over we were respectful for them we were obviously courteous to them but we didn't share our secrets because they're two separate organizations my dad was the underboss of the columbo family one of the five families very powerful position that was back in the 60s in that life you have a boss an underboss a copper regime or captain and a soldier many of you have seen the godfather i'm sure there is a position called conciliary robert duvall played that role played it brilliantly i might add but it was fictional in the godfather because in order to be a sworn made member of that life and take the oath and you do take an oath your father must be italian mom can be of an under descent your dad must be italian and my dad was very high profile always under investigation i'm sure i grew up a lot differently than all of you in here i grew up really hating the police hated the government hated law enforcement um and really not because i was taught that way but was because of what i witnessed in my life i loved my dad idolized him very much and law enforcement was always after him and i saw them as the enemy and so i grew up under that kind of uh atmosphere um i was uh originally going to school to be a doctor my dad didn't want me to be on the street he wanted me to get an education he got in some real trouble back in the 60s he was indicted several times both in the state and in the federal court system eventually was convicted for masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison and he went off to do his time in 1970 and i was a pre-med student at that point i was devastated when my dad went in i figured he was 50 years old when he went in had 50 years on top of that he would never come out of prison alive just as an aside my dad's 100 years old he's done 38 years in prison since 1970 and he's in prison now he'll be out next month actually in the month of june so it's going to be an exciting time for us and i visited him in leavenworth and at that point in time he wanted me to try to help him out to stop going to school and to become a member of his life and so for i was 22 years old for about a year and a half i was in kind of a pledge period where i had to do anything and everything i was told to do to prove myself worthy of becoming a member of that life and in 1975 actually halloween night out in the the states i took an oath and became a sworn made member of the columbo family and you come into the life you come in as a soldier i was motivated to do two things i wanted to get my dad out of prison i did end up getting him out after 10 years i got him out on parole but then he violated and kept going back in and i wanted to make money in that life my uh my dad said you make money it translates to power not unlike the real world i was fortunate i knew how to use that life to benefit me in business and went on to make a very significant amount of money in 1980 i was appointed a copper regime or captain which is a very powerful position and from 1980 until about 95 i operated in that capacity in 1984 i among many things i was doing i was making movies i had a production company out in la and i was filming a movie that smokey robinson had brought me a script for he and i were friends at the time and uh in that movie uh we brought in dancers from la and and the cast from la to uh to work in the film we filmed it in florida and it was during that uh filming that i met a young woman who was a girl of faith and is now my wife of 31 years and she's here someplace i don't know where she is i think she's here anyway um uh it was uh that woman that gave me the motivation to uh really try to make a break from that life and i'm sure you'll ask questions about that so i won't get into it and as part of this i was indicted five times i went to trial five times in the states for various crimes two federal racketeering cases one brought on by rudy giuliani and uh in trying to make my break from that life i actually took a plea to a racketeering case i got a 10-year prison sentence 15 million dollars in restitution 5 million in forfeiture of my assets i married camille and went off to do my time during that time it became public that i was walking away from that life i had a lot of trouble contract on my life my father basically disowned me and we had a lot of trouble i did almost eight years in prison during that time and i came out of prison had no clue what i was going to do and ended up becoming a speaker speaking at various churches i work a lot with colleges i've visited over 300 universities in the past 20 years and speak to student athletes about gambling and relationships that they keep and so on and so forth i've written four books they're doing a movie about my life now they've done many documentaries about me some of them you might have seen i'm all over youtube so you can find out a lot about me and you know became a person of faith and my life has turned around i consider myself probably the most blessed most fortunate person that i'll ever speak to in this room and the reason i say that is god had i been left up to my own to do what i wanted to do in my life and follow the path that i was on originally i'd either be dead or in prison for the rest of my life and quite honestly you spent 20 years on the street and that's what you earned for yourself and i am extremely blessed very very fortunate to be here today so having said that i'm done and you could fire away thank you thank you very much michael that was uh it was really interesting i wanna the first half of my questions are a bit more about your life before prison and then i'll move on to your life after um my first question is if you can tell us how did you make that money what did you do well like i said i was you know it's funny i used to think i spoke english until i came here and realized that i speak a different language but hopefully you all understand me you know i i was fortunate in that i knew how to use that life there's benefits that life that help you succeed in business and um i had a lot of legitimate businesses i had two car dealerships i had a number of restaurants that i was involved in i had a big leasing company and then um you know i guess i i was fortunate is that i just had a head for business i don't know how i developed it or whatever but it's something that came natural to me and um you know i wrote a book after which is called i'll make you an offer you can't refuse not very original but i didn't choose the title the publishers choose the title but um what i was able to do in that book is say that business is business and if you have a sense whether you're doing it legal or illegally if you follow the same principles you'll probably be successful the problem in doing it illegally is that after your success you wind up in prison like i did so you don't want to do that but um you know i i you know if you have a head for business you just develop certain things and you you succeed do you regret anything that you did during that time you know i have regrets i mean you can't spend 20 years on the street and and do the things that i did and get involved and see the things that i saw uh without having regrets and i have a few i wish there was things that i could go back and change but obviously i can't but they get easier as you as you grow and you realize that um we can't change things we can only do better in our life and try to live our lives the right way and and hopefully i've been able to do that yeah can you tell me anything more about the day you became a maid man yeah when you're uh i was in kind of a pledge period for about a year and a half where i had to do anything and everything i was told to do to prove myself worthy and uh could have been something very menial there's a lot of discipline in that life a lot of respect alleged respect a lot of authority if you had a meeting at eight o'clock and you weren't there at 7 30 you were late you could never be late in that life and a lot of things like that and unfortunately you know i'm gonna be real honest with all of you here tonight uh that life at times is very violent and if you're part of the life you're part of the violence and there's no escape and if anybody tells you differently they're either not being honest with you or they weren't a made member that life so for about 18 months i was in kind of like a pledge period where i had to do all of this to prove myself worthy and the night you're going to be made and that's the expression that we use um it's a very secure night you're not giving any advance notice you get a phone call and they tell you wear a suit and be at a certain place so this happened to be uh for me it was halloween night 1975 when i was called in with five other gentlemen and we all took an oath i took that out very seriously back then i take it very serious today even though i don't consider myself a member of the life anymore you come into that life you don't sign a contract there's no retirement age you know they what i know about the life is in my heart my mind not easily forgotten and they say when you leave that life either leaving a coffin or you join the government and then enter a witness protection program cooperate obviously i've done neither so um i i it was very serious it was um something i was very proud of at that point in time i had this very idealistic view of that life and i was young and didn't realize you don't realize until you get into it what it's really all about because it's a secret life and you know so i i i was uh that night i was you know i was very inspired i was very happy i was felt good about it and um that started to change as as time went on right and just how much of the sort of activities that you were involved in still happen today well you know the life has been tremendously weakened i always consider the golden years of the mafia la cosinhostra in the united states to be between the 50s and the 80s in the mid 80s is when uh law enforcement really started to crack down on that life and put a lot of people away and um they did that they devastated that life um but it still exists and uh it won't go away in my lifetime those guys are very resourceful it's changed a bit but i believe it'll it'll continue as long as i can expect it to i don't see it going away and did you have links with the italian mafia russian mafia you know cambridge mafia was there was there was there a sort of link between or was it quite isolated i'm not sure the cambridge mafia i haven't heard that but um yes we had links with the uh italians in italy and certainly with the russian mob i uh i had russian partners for many many years we were in the gasoline business together i had devised the scheme to defraud the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline and the russians were my partners in brooklyn and they were the best partners i ever had by the way those guys were great they were very smart they had no fear of our criminal justice system in america so they were great to work with some of them had done time in a russian prison they said oh michael doing time in your prison is like you know going on vacation i said great so uh yeah we we had a great relationship for a number of years wow and so moving to how you left how were you able to walk away after prison without i suppose a them following you to try and make you rejoin and be without being an informant well um i refused you know government put a lot of pressure on me to become a witness and i had a lot of problems because i resisted that in many ways i tried to make the government believe i was going along with them but then in the end i really wouldn't and that caused me to be put back in prison after i was paroled they were upset with me but um i didn't ask permission to leave because i wouldn't have gotten it i would have probably gotten killed on the spot i just kind of went away you know i took a plea and as part of my plan i would do some years in prison when i got out on parole you're not allowed to associate with felons or anybody in organized crime so i would use that as an excuse i moved out to the west coast away from new york and i thought maybe after several years they would forget about me uh that didn't happen um when i walked away um contract on my life my father basically betrayed me in many ways because he went along with it and we had a lot of trouble for a number of years and unfortunately what i tell people is um i just outlasted everybody everybody i know in that life is either dead or in prison for the rest of their lives everybody that i ran with and i mean everybody so um i've been very fortunate um i think my faith has has a lot to do with that and um you know i always say that um you know i can't be stupid i can't go back to brooklyn say hey guys i want to move back into the neighborhood i wouldn't last very long but you know god doesn't tell you to be stupid you got to use your head so um i just been very fortunate and i don't live in fear and you know as part of that life i saw a lot so the fear has gone out of me and and hopefully it'll continue what's the worst thing you ever saw oh boy [Applause] well listen um it's like i said violence is a part of that life and and unfortunately i've seen my share of it um i've seen people get killed let me be honest with you and um it's hard to take yeah it's never easy wow uh if you i suppose looking back on it now do you ever with faith that you kind of have found since then do you feel more guilty about the things that you did or do you just say you know they're in the past and you know i did them well it's not a it's not a question of feeling more guilty i mean i still have regrets but you know the christian faith um and and i don't wear my faith on my sleeve you know i'm not a holy roller so to speak but my faith is strong because my beliefs are strong and my beliefs are based for me they're based upon evidence and experience and you know the the um the foundation of our christian faith is to believe that we are forgiven and um and that's what we have to believe we can't take a do-over we can't go back and do things over so we have to believe in our faith that we really are forgiven if we're sincere you know like anybody can say hey you know i'm sorry for what i did but not really mean it and i always say this i was pretty good on the street i can probably pull a wool over a lot of your eyes in here and you think i'm a great guy and i can walk out there and be just the opposite but you don't pull a scam on god i mean he knows our hearts so i'm only kidding myself if i do that um and as a result i believe that um that i've been forgiven i see and i suppose has your faith made you see other bosses in a different way are they are they powerless and helpless and pathetic or are they evil and you know horrible men like how do you see them now that you well i've learned not to judge anybody i um i don't pass judgment on people because i was at one time probably could be considered the worst in the room and um god has changed my life in many ways so i don't pass judgment on anyone i might have my own opinions but i don't think anybody is so bad that their life can't be transformed and i use myself as an example so um but again that transformation is from the inside out you know it's not change change can be temporary transformation is normally permanent and can happen to anybody have people from that past life tried to get back in touch with you you know are they all genuinely gone oh yeah no no people have tried to reach me a lot of them said you know we're not making any money we need you back and uh you know um but it's not at all it's not even an option or a thought or i i find no attraction in that whatsoever right and one last thing before we open it up you did did you know john gotti the crime i suppose i knew john very well what was he like socially he was great we had a lot of fun you know um business he was an absolute nightmare i mean you couldn't do business with him he had a tremendous ego he didn't really understand business and i had a few confrontations with him in that regard because i was very active and so was he but he was very difficult to deal with i'm still close with his family i associate i uh you know we speak to mostly his wife and daughters i wasn't close with his younger son john jr but john was uh he was okay he i respected him because he wanted to be nothing but a gangster he didn't make any bones about it he didn't they put on any errors he was who he was and and that was it wow and were there many connections between the families then did they yeah there was a lot of connection between the five families i mean in new york you got to understand you know we we came over each other all the time and we constantly bumped into each other so we had we had a lot of business dealings a lot of relationships i got along very well with the bosses of the other families um so we're constantly in contact wow thank you very much i'm gonna open up to you guys so if you've got a question put your hand up and i'll i will choose you uh anybody yeah at the back over there and thank you for your talk um it's been great to hear um everything you've had to say you spoke um earlier about how um when you sort of turned your back on that life um your relationship with uh your father turned his back on you um how has your relationship with him developed sins i mean obviously said he's coming out of prison next month and are you sort of back to how things were has he forgiven you have you forgiven him what's how has that changed over the years um we patched it up i hadn't seen my dad for about 10 years and you got to understand the government um didn't play fair with me and that during the time that i walked away that put my name on the witness list of many trials that were going on in new york and so people thought that i was going to become a witness and testify and start putting my friends away that wasn't true and when it became evident that that wasn't going to happen and that took a lot of time my dad and i hadn't spoken for 10 years and then he was out on parole and he sent for me and he said i want to see you and i said okay and he wanted to meet me in a certain place and i refused i said i'll meet you at your house because honestly i didn't trust my dad because if my dad is anything he is a soldier all the way i mean this is his life and so i met him at his house in the morning at 5 30 in the morning and we had a good discussion and we kind of patched it up at that point he denied the fact that he betrayed me but i know it was true i had an incident um where i found out what he did and um it was very disturbing to me i still love my dad because i know i understand his mentality i know he loves me it's not the same but my wife will tell you i've worked hard to try to get him out of prison i've always supported him because he was a very good father when i was growing up unfortunately my younger brother who um uh had a drug problem his whole life ended up becoming an informant he's now in the witness protection program and he testified against my dad in a case that put my dad back in prison so um you know what i try to tell people is this life is an evil life and i consider it evil i won't call the guys evil because i was one of them but the life is evil because i don't know any family of any member of that life including my own not my wife and children praise god but my mother father brothers sisters that hasn't been totally destroyed and that's true of every member of every family of every member that i know and any life that does that is evil and um you know our whole family was really destroyed basically because of the involvement of us in that life and when my father comes home i'll be happy i mean i hope he gets to enjoy himself a little bit he's had a very difficult time over the past 50 years but it'll never be exactly the same at the top yeah absolutely not no they're uh one thing that got me in godfather 3 if any of you saw that is that talia shire played an active role in making decisions that does not happen there are no women in that life we've always tried to keep the women out of that life my wife will tell you that until this very moment and we know each other now 32 years i believe we're married 31 i've never had a discussion with my wife about my former life ever and it's just it's not in me to have that conversation so uh women do not play a role in that and that's really for their benefit they shouldn't yes at the top well you know i'll be honest with you people of you know i i made a very significant amount of money and i had a lot of success in business and people always consider me this business whiz and i i i don't consider myself that i mean there are a lot of people that are a lot smarter than me in business but i think i had two talents that worked very well for me number one i was able to recognize a good deal and um i was able to recognize that was good and those that i shouldn't be bothered with and and that at that point i was able to get the right people to do the right job and i was able to motivate them in a way that they did the work that they were supposed to work and a lot of times they thought i was smarter than but i really wasn't i just made them believe that i was smarter than them you know it's there's an old saying sometimes you could be the smartest person in the room you don't want anybody know it and sometimes you're the dumbest person in the room and you don't want to let anybody know it um but that was really my talent i was able to get people to work for me work hard and and just you know figure out what a good deal was my kind of motto was do what you do best and delegate the rest and that's always worked for me the other thing i will tell you is very very important when you go into business you got to have a plan you have to have a plan you have to know what your beginning middle and end is what you want to try to establish that could change along the way because circumstances change and economics change but you have to have a plan in business and you got to try to stick to it as best you can yes sir when you could have maybe stopped crimes in the future why do they choose not to cooperate well you know i it's a couple of things number one i don't consider myself a person in law enforcement that's not my job to fight crime um number one number two i i don't think it a noble thing to be involved in crime and to save yourself uh betray the people that you were involved with and i i have been through five criminal trials of my own and four of my dads and countless of others i've never seen an informant ever including my own brother get on the witness stand put their hand on the bible swear to tell the truth and then lie through their teeth because they're saving themselves and if you really feel a moral responsibility to fight crime then become law enforcement or really fight crime if you're doing it to save your own skin i don't see anything noble in that and i refuse to do it and that's my position now and i have many many friends in law enforcement now you know i've really i've really finally figured out that they were the good guys when we were the bad guys i have many friends in law enforcement all across america and i do a lot last june i i spoke at the southern california gang conference where there were 1700 law enforcement agents from all over the country because i do a lot with these gang bangers to try to help them and um you know they're all friends so i support law enforcement in that way i'll give them knowledge i'll impart knowledge but i don't i don't think it's my responsibility to put people in jail and betray people that i was once friendly with thank you yes do you have any opinions about your current president oh i promised i wouldn't get political um you know i um i was a supporter of donald trump still am i uh i tend to be rather conservative in my views and i want to give him a chance i mean he said all the right things i think he's gotten a bad rap on a lot of things i happen to know people that know donald very well uh part of his campaign uh some of the people that were on his campaign were friends of mine i really believe he wants to do something and and really help out america and i i just hope he gets the chance to do that um i cringed at some of the things he said his tweets bother me like no end and some of the things that he says you would say donald keep quiet but i think we needed a change in america i really did and i'm rooting for him because i think what he does in america not only impacts my children and grandchildren but the entire world and so i'm going to be supportive of him until unless he does something that i just can't anymore hopefully that won't happen uh yes how did you come to know god to be real i'm sorry how do you come how did you come to know god to be real to you how did i know um that god be how did god become real to me you know i um i accepted christ really as a result of my wife's faith in my mother-in-law's faith who was my mother-in-law was the most godly woman i ever met in my life i mean my mother-in-law had a prayer book you meet her for two minutes your name goes into her prayer book and she'd even have to know your name i mean if she saw you and you needed prayer the boy on the street corner with one shoe it would go into a prayer book and her faith was very real to her my wife's faith was very real when i first met them i thought it was silly i wasn't buying into it at all but really what happened to me i i spent five years in prison came out and i was violated and went back for three years and um the night that i went back was probably not probably definitely the worst night of my life it was the only night that i experienced hopelessness and i can tell you this i've experienced every emotion in life from ecstasy right down to grief and everything in between i've lived a full life by far the worst emotion you could ever experience is hopelessness and i felt that my world was done i was 39 years old i thought i was going to lose my wife my children i thought i would never get out of prison again and that night you can call me a coward or weak or whatever because it really applied i i wanted to close my eyes and not wake up it was just too painful to think of my future and i was in the hole six by eight cell and a prison guard walked by my cell and uh he said to me francis you're okay you don't look good and i said get away from me i chased him i didn't want to see him he came back about a minute later and pushed the bible through the slot in the door and honestly i picked up the bible and i just slammed it against the wall i was so upset and i didn't want to hear about god and about a minute later i picked it up because i said hey there's only me and god in this cell i believed in god but i had no relationship with him and i spent three years in the hole six by eight cell 24 7 just me and god and that's very difficult you know i realized during that time that we weren't meant to be solo creatures we were meant to be social and i saw a lot of people in that situation that didn't do well and it was during that time that i i mean if you see my prison bible there's more of my notes on there than there is scripture i absorbed i had my wife send me in books on every faith and i studied i had nothing but time on my hands and i just came out of there believing for me that the bible was god's word and that jesus was my savior and um when i got out of prison um i can honestly say over the past 20 years that he's become so much more real to me not only in my own experiences but in what i've seen in others and as a result of that my faith is very strong and i try to say this you know i don't walk around toting the bible i'm pretty normal guy in many well i guess no in many respects what i did before wasn't normal but um you know it's just my faith is very solid and it's built on evidence you know i'm a guy that uh i don't take things at face value i'm a very cynical guy you grow up on the street you question everything and for me my faith is is based upon evidence and experience and i believe it with all my heart so um if i'm wrong what do i have to lose i mean when you're dead you're dead anyway so you didn't lose anything i live my life i think the way i'm supposed to now i've been extremely blessed with a with a great family and and and things that i never thought i'd be doing in my life ever and for some reason um what i have to say has an impact on people and i think we've we've motivated a lot of people i'm i'm really there my mission in life now is to encourage people that if my life could be transformed and turned around then it could certainly happen to anyone and i devote a lot of time to our young people because in america i don't know how it is here actually i'm meeting with parliament members tomorrow because they heard me speak here a few weeks ago and they want to know if i can help them with the gang situation and the youth problem that you have in some of your cities much of what i do in the united states we're losing a lot of young people there and for me i believe the root problem in that is the breakup of the family these young people just don't have the proper influence in their life and it's very difficult in a world where we have so many distractions at our fingertips i mean you people have more distractions at your fingertips more negative influences that i ever had growing up and i think that as adults we created the environment that you're living in today and and we owe we have a responsibility to help our young people and so uh i try to encourage them and get them on the right track and i feel that that that's my purpose in life now thank you yes [Music] hello um hi uh i was wondering how you um maintain your empathy when i mean how did you maintain your empathy when you were sort of privy to you know quite ghastly things as you suggested or did you do you feel like you lost it and then had to get it back how do you how do you like morally reason to yourself what you're seeing and emotionally survive it well empathy towards to the victim the person who might be losing their life or well you know i can honestly say that i did things in that life that i wasn't comfortable with but i did them anyway so there's no excuse and i take full responsibility for it um but you you have to understand something when we come into that life and we take that oath we're told that if we violate the oath we can pay for it with our lives and it's your best friend that might be called upon to uh carry that out because um that's just the way the life is it comes before anything and everything and so when we do that we figure hey you know what the playing field is level we have to play by the rules if we don't we understand the consequences and that's just the way it is and it's it's not a good mentality because whenever you justify evil uh for any reason it's obviously wrong but that's i had a very idealistic view of that life so um i i was telling some someone earlier today one of the regrets that i have is that a very dear friend of mine uh very very close he was like a brother to me he was he was murdered and i couldn't save him and it's something that i have deep regrets for so i guess when you go through that you do have an empathy for it you know even though you you you violate your conscience you still have an empathy for it and i think of it a lot my wife will tell you you know she says i have nightmares at night sometimes i'm fighting in my sleep now i don't realize it but i think it's it's those times that things come out in you and will it ever go away i don't know it's just there yes at the back over there um given that so much has happened um how did the faith help you to find forgiveness both for yourself and also for others thank you well my faith has played a like i said a major role in my life um you know it's it's been life-changing for me it's been transforming because look when you when you spend 20 years on the street and encounter some of the things that i encountered you just can't go on in life like everything is great and it's your faith that allows you to believe that you can be forgiven for those things and you can go on and lead a productive life and look as they say the proof is in the pudding i've been out of that life for 20 years and i consider myself extremely fortunate very blessed i don't deserve it i didn't earn it at that point in time i earned just the opposite but for some reason things are going pretty well for me now that could change i know that we look we live in the real world you become a christian it doesn't mean that life becomes the garden of eden um you know things can still happen and you know that age-old question what a good thing why do bad things happen to good people well that's just life you know i always say this you know god never promised us heaven on earth he promised us heaven in heaven but he did promise that he'll have our backs all the way through and i've experienced that in a big way i mean we've had a tremendous amount of struggles and for some reason we just keep getting through them and we'd get through them by trying to do the right thing not the wrong thing so my faith has played a tremendous role in my life and like i said i have nothing to lose because if for any reason i'm wrong and i don't believe i am but if i am well when i die i'm dead anyway so at least i made the best of my life because i had a a view of an amazing um merciful loving god and that's been it's been worked for me and it works for a lot of others thank you yeah over there michael thank you for your talk um you mentioned your brother became a government informant um and informed on your father how do you view your brother um as more moral or less moral than you who didn't inform and how does your father now view him that's a great question my father's obviously was crushed by it my dad he really loves his children even though he misdirected us in many ways i believe he really loved his children so he was crushed by the fact that his son his younger son would do something because my dad i believe anyway my dad was very good to my brother i will say this i love my brother i i don't agree with what he did because he did it to save himself and i always say this my brother one of the one of the worst qualities you can have in life or characteristics is to be selfish my brother from the time he was a kid never went out of his way for anyone he was always very very selfish always and as a result when push came to shove and he had to save himself he chose to save himself rather than and hurt my dad um i still love him um i don't know if i'll ever see him again because he's in the program maybe we'll we'll come up you know we'll we'll have a relationship again at some point i certainly do forgive him but i don't agree with him you know um and uh like i said i don't consider what he did to be noble in any way i don't consider it moral in any way i was sat in court when he took an oath to tell the truth and lied i've seen it so often and it was very very disturbing to me so um yeah i feel feel terrible about what he's done thank you uh yes um how hard is it to trust people how hard was it then and how easy is that now you know i uh i seem to be fairly trusting i mean i think my wife is a lot more perceptive than i am you know i i i kind of give people their space to me you start out the right way and you got to go down from there and i've been hurt by that um it's just my nature you know i like to give people uh a certain amount of leeway and leverage and let them prove themselves right or wrong so but i'm always cautious you know it's always like a cautious trusting um and i think that life you know had a lot to do with that now when i was in that life i it was different you know i was always very wary of anybody around me and because you have to be because like i said you know one of the horrors about that life is that you might have done something wrong you don't really know it uh your best friend walks you in the room and you don't walk out again and that's that's nightmarish to say the least and unfortunately i've seen that in my life and and so as a result of that you become kind of leery but i don't have to face that in this life it's not a question of life and death when i trust somebody it's you know for whatever other reason yep well i was uh we are quite different yes but i my wife and i proved that opposites do attract because we've been together for a long time we don't agree on almost anything am i right babe um but somehow it's worked um i was filming a movie in south florida and she was one of the dancers that were brought in and to dance and i was sitting by the pool one day i threw a party for everybody we had just finished pre-production and we were going into principal photography on a monday it was a sunday afternoon beautiful day in florida so i threw a party for all the crew and all the actors and actresses and i was sitting by the pool and all of a sudden she came out of the water and i saw her and it was it was like a pepsi commercial everything went in slow motion right and i asked that the choreographer was sitting next to me i said jeff is that one of your dancers and he said yeah i said bring her over i want to meet her so she comes over i introduce myself to her i said listen i'm your producer i want to get to know you better let me take you to lunch so she says great so i set a time in a place and i go and i'm there for 45 minutes she stood me up she never showed up so i saw her on the set and she was 20 years old at the time and i said hey we had a date you know what happened you didn't show up and you know what got me is she didn't make an excuse she just looked at me like you really expected me to come right and uh so i said well were you dancing rehearsing she was rehearsing i said can we try it again she said sure no problem we said another time in a place she stood me up again now we have a big disagreement here because she did this to me five times and she normally rolls her eyes so don't exaggerate it wasn't five times hey guys we know when we stood up trust me it was five times right and um then one night uh she uh we had a cast meeting and she came out of the meeting and she was upset she was with her friends something was wrong i said hey this is great i said i got to fire somebody get rid of somebody i'm going to be her hero right and we we started talking from that point and we started to hang out a little bit on the set and then she took me home to meet her mother which was another experience but uh 31 years later um here we are so somehow it worked out but again we don't we don't agree on almost anything and every time i asked her so i was really surprised every time i ask her something her first reaction is no i don't want you to do that i want you to do that well i said i'm coming to cambridge she says hey that's great yeah it's okay well we're going to do that but yeah somehow i always say this honestly people the uh i'm not really the story here and she's my wife's very humble she she doesn't like the press or anything like that and uh she always said my job is to take care of the kids and to support you in prayer um but really i'm not the story here i mean she's the story i mean i brought so much baggage into her life that she had no clue she she saw the godfather once she didn't know anything about the mafia she didn't even know what it was really and um you know she's gone through so much um and she'll tell you as much as she loves me i believe if god wasn't in the foundation of our marriage we probably wouldn't be together so it's it's certainly worked for us am i right dear thank you for watching right yes yes thank you thank you for the talk um i was just wondering so you talk about sort of transformation how it comes from the inside do you think the prison system as it is today and as you've experienced it um helps with that and if not how it could be improved i am i am not a fan of our prison system in america i they do not believe in rehabilitation they believe in throwing you in prison and locking you up and and that's it and it makes no sense and i've had a lot of conversation with government officials and i tell them you put people in prison they're around other inmates you know i used to laugh inmates used to come to me and they say michael that committed crimes and they say when i was in there um you know i know how to not get caught next time i said really how did you learn that everybody else in here got caught how did you figure out not to get caught right um but you put a person in prison you give them an excessive amount of time i mean they give out time in the united states it's it's ridiculous and then they expect you to go through that and come out and be a productive member of society and it just doesn't work and i tell them if you're going to do that just lock people up and don't ever let them out because what you're doing you're creating another problem for society because they come out they can't get a job they have no skills nobody will hire them because of their background and you expect them to assimilate back into society and not be a problem i said it doesn't make sense you have to rehabilitate people yes they should be punished okay you you commit a crime there's consequences but rehabilitation has got to be part of it and it's not in the mind frame of our political system you know i heard once when i was in prison some politician out of nowhere created this idea that uh prison systems were creating super criminals why because of the weight rooms because they would go in there and they would lift waste and they'd come out and become super criminals they had zero evidence of that you know it's like they were almost going to put on a cape and become superman they had no evidence of that they had no prior crimes that any super criminal had conv committed but it sounded real good and it got the guy reelected so what happens he passes a bill that all the weight rooms had to be taken out of the prison well the warden and all the guards went crazy because it's one place that inmates go and they they relieve some pressure they you know and they get tired and they go to prison guards and and the warden all they want is peace in the prison they don't care what you bring in as long as it doesn't cause any problems um but until today in a federal system when a uh um a piece of equipment breaks they're not allowed to replace it the wardens fought back and so they didn't they didn't um take all the weight uh rooms out but they're not allowed to put him in the new prisons and it's terrible so and it's all part of this rehabilitation idea so i tell you know i i don't think it'll change but i hear in some states it is starting to change that they do believe that rehabilitation has to be part of the prison experience and hopefully that'll that'll happen i happen to speak in uh what what prison was that here in london pennington or i forget the name penville or something like that pentonville yeah i spoke there three weeks ago and i was here to about 150 inmates it really taught me something that you know prison is prison and people are going through the same experience whether here in the states or anywhere else and it was a tremendous experience i mean the guys i believe were really encouraged and i've been invited back and probably do a few more prisons here it's it's part of what i do i like to do that but hopefully rehabilitation is in the mindset of our government and our political figures because it's important for all of us you know people say to me well mike you may not be uh because of your experience you're not hard on crime and they say well excuse me i have five daughters and i have a wife and when they walk down the streets i want to make sure they're safe so i'm just as tough on crime and criminals as anybody else i was one so i know what they what they're supposed to have um but there's also another side to that and you got to be practical about it you got to use your head to protect society for the future uh yeah my host for lunch this gentleman very nice young man by the way thank you so when you were mafia boss what did you pursue in life what was it that you were living for and how does that how are those pursuits and goals different now i wanted to be the best possible mob guy that i could be i was very motivated to do that i wanted to make a lot of money i was very motivated to do that i was um very aggressive on the street i worked 24 7. and that was my goal to be the best possible mob guy i could be and i was um after i was appointed a kappa regime or captain they were grooming me to be either the boss or the underboss the boss uh had a son and he and i came in at the same time we were the same age and our fathers were grooming us to take over the family so that's where i was headed and that's what i wanted to be so um i tend to want to do you know be the best at what i do when i do something and it was no different when i was in that life i had a very idealistic view of that life at that time right now um you know i've tempered that a bit i uh you know i take every speaking engagement i speak a lot probably 70 80 times a year a very prolific speaking career i guess you would say i give it my all every time out i want to be there and make sure that people are impacted by what i say i'll spend as much time as necessary signing books and spending time with people afterwards because i learned especially if you're in ministry um when you walk off that stage if you're not the same person when you walk off as you were when you're on there then everything you said on the stage means nothing and i i agree with that i've seen that in others so i take it very seriously and i've been extremely blessed to do what i do and and so it's important to me and you know i've written a couple of books and i'm writing another one now it's called a mafia democracy it's going to be real popular among our politicians when that book comes out and we may i may have to come to england for a while um and you know they're doing a movie about my life now i've done a number of documentaries and uh we're actually producing a show in las vegas so if you ever come to las vegas it's called the mob musical and it's gonna coincidentally and it'll be uh it'll be premiering in uh in september of this year so uh we just try to do things the right way now um please can you walk us through your program to defraud the american government of that tax revenue well um did you hear that question yeah i was um you know i was kind of the go-to guy in long island after living in brooklyn i moved out to the island and i was kind of the main mob guy out there and so people would come to me all the time with different business propositions and um so this fellow ran a i had a couple of gas stations and he had a wholesale gasoline company and he came to me because three other mob guys from another family were trying to extort him so he came to me for health and initially i wasn't impressed by him and i didn't help him but he was very persistent he kept coming back and he told me he said michael i think i have something a little scheme that might interest you and maybe we can defraud the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline now got to understand that was music to my ears i didn't like the government so i said okay let's talk about it so he gave me a little insight and i said okay so i got rid of the mob guys who got rid i mean made them go away i didn't get rid of them you know i mean they're still alive as far as i know but um and we went into business together and we created this company and um i assigned somebody to watch over him i had a guy around me who was uh it was a butcher his name was vinnie the butcher we weren't very original in our nicknames he was a butcher we called him vinnie the butcher and uh he had a big scar across his head so he was kind of a foreboding guy was a big guy and i assigned vinnie to stay with this fellow larry and see what the business was all about so vinnie used to bring me meat on a saturday he would come to my house with meat so this saturday morning he comes to my house and he's got a box on his shoulders and i looked at him and i said what are we having a party why'd my wife order all this meat so he said no boss come in the kitchen and we go in the kitchen and he puts it down on the table and he says it's not meat it's the first week's take in the gas business and he opened it up and it was 320 000 in there so he really got my attention at that point and um we we grew that operation over seven years into um bringing in just about 10 million a week and i devised the scheme to defraud the government i had 18 companies that were all panamanian companies and the reason we used panamanian companies because in panama the corporations were consisted of bearer stock so whoever owned the stock or whoever held the stock was the owner of the company so if i held the stock i owned it if i gave it to you you owned it and and i created a daisy chain and figured out a way to defraud the government we were licensed i had 18 licenses and i was paying people in government to get the license and i had 18 licenses and i figured a way that we could steal the tax on every gallon of gasoline which at that time was about 40 cents a gallon and get away with it for about 10 months and i had an intricate scheme on how to do that and after 10 months when our government finally came down we would just close shop and move on to the next license and they called it a daisy chain so i ran this operation with the russians i brought them into the fold about two years after i started and we ran this for seven years and like i said we were bringing in about 50 million dollars a month at that point in time and the government had no clue what we were doing they could not figure it out and the way they did figure it out is my uh partner this fellow larry eventually got himself in trouble and he became an informant and he um he blew the whistle on the entire operation otherwise we'd still be doing it i think but not me but others have tried but then they were able to succeed in that because we really had the scheme down pat i'm not going to give you too much more detail because i don't want you to get you know people have come to me mike you know i'll do this and you won't have to be involved at all and you know i said yeah until you're getting in trouble and then and then i'll be the major one involved but um it was uh i had 300 and some odd gas stations at that time and i had a big wholesale operation we were actually selling gas from new york all the way down to florida up and down the east coast and it was an extensive operation i've got time for two more so yeah at the front here thank you um did you have a nickname in the mafia in the family a nickname you know i really didn't during my time but the media dubbed me the yuppie don uh which i hate by the way i hated it um but that that stuck so now they call me the yuppie don and i guess yuppy because i was kind of a new wave of mobster i i didn't look the part all the time and i did things kind of differently and and so it's it stuck and that's what they call me uppy now i hate it but uh a little less she calls me that when she wants to get mad at me or get me mad at her rather yuppy uh yeah the front i'm i'm okay on time if you yeah yeah yeah i'm under no i'm here for you people tonight so whenever jonas thinks we should break that's fine with me in your own experience um how much of the business activity was legally illegal was the legal activity did you do the business always with people who were part of this you know underground life or was actual activity with people who had no clue that you were a mafia member um and how much did the mafia interfere with things like elections and you know policy you know one of the things i tell people about the mafia in general in the united states is that we survived and prospered for well over a hundred years and under some very difficult conditions but the reason that happened is because we infiltrated every fabric of society from the white house all the way down to the person on the street in the numbers business and we were involved in the unions you know the teamster union was controlled by us at one point in time you gotta understand this two and a half million members uh teamsters that drove all the trucks that carried all the products throughout the country if we were to call a strike we basically closed the country down same with the docks we controlled all the docks all uh products coming in and out of america were controlled by us we call a strike it's over and politically we had a lot of power because of that and uh corporate america uh same thing i i can't begin to tell you you know people think that we used to sit in our social clubs and we would devise schemes to defraud uh corporate corporations it wasn't like that in every situation that i got involved in some corporate executive came to me and they had a scheme to defraud their company and they figured i could help them i could either finance them i wasn't going to tell them on them and that's how it happened you know somebody from the inside would come to us so my point being that we infiltrated every fabric of society we just had a way about us that we knew how to get around people um i i i can't explain it it's just the way it was you know we rubbed shoulders politically with many people we were you know at the highest levels of corporate america with celebrities we always dealt with you know i had many legitimate companies um so it wasn't always other members of my life that were involved with me and um you know you take some of the other the other organized crime groups if you take drugs away from them they collapse they're all built around drugs now we weren't allowed to get involved in drugs we were told straight out we deal with drugs we die pay for it with your life so i honestly as my wife will tell you i hate anything to do with drugs i had a sister that died in overdose of drugs my brother was a drug addict 25 years and i feel that caused so many problems my wife will tell you what that kid put us through was just unbelievable and um so we didn't get involved in drugs in any way and i wouldn't till today i mean wouldn't get involved in any way but um i think that's that's why we were so successful and you know government feared us absolutely did and those that didn't fear us usually went along with us and we we made them earn i can't tell you how many political functions i went to and we were always donating to them for one reason the other we were buying them but um just the way it was yep at the back what's it like um just being in the mob day to day what do you do how do you feel are you constantly scared are you always planning what what is that actually like is it like what it's in the movies where everybody turns up laughs and eats spaghetti or is it actually a lot well what is that actually like to be in there well you know when i became a a carpenter's gym or captain i spent so much of my day i had a lot of men around me had a big crew i had 300 guys under me and they were always getting in trouble one way or the other and and i had to resolve disputes for them all the time i had many sit downs we called it with uh with gotti and other people because my guys would get in trouble you know whatever it might be it could have been a business dispute it could have been something and so that's a big part of your life dealing with other family members over disputes and um then i had my businesses to run you know i had two car dealerships new car dealerships i had a leasing company so i was a business person in that regard so i would say you know 50 of my life went to my organized crime life and the other 50 went to my business life and like i said i was i was aggressive so i got involved in a lot of different things and and i was busy from morning till night i mean i was a workaholic and there's no way to live i mean i'm not i'm not saying that's a great thing to do but i was just very motivated at that time um so again a lot and then uh every weekend without a doubt every weekend i had to attend weddings and funerals you unbelievable half the time i didn't know who was getting married or who was dead we just had to go you know out of respect because again we had five families and somebody was either dying or getting married and we had to go and sit at a table and give an envelope or pay our respects so that's a major part of that life also and you know we we kind of partied a lot too i mean i was in a nightclub six nights a week before i met my wife that was my life and you know till three four five in the morning every night so we did a lot of that and um it's a very active life if you're an active guy like me you know i'll tell you another thing you know there's a big fallacy in that life that you come into that life and all of a sudden you become a millionaire well it's just the opposite you come into that life you're paying up all the time and we had 115 made guys in our family guys that actually took the oath out of 115 20 of us were earners the other 95 we had a support in some way and get them a job and they did a lot of the grunt work um you know it's not a life where everybody earns a lot of money contrary to what people believe uh yes over there um do you think that that life has been and is and continues to be overly romanticized in the public mind and um you said you're there's a movie being made about your life and you're producing this musical and and you've written books so uh do you what do you do or do you do anything to dispel these romantic uh perceptions that people have yes i never glorify the life because you know i said this earlier i'll say it again it's an evil life because families are destroyed as a result of it so it should not be glorified it has been glorified i mean the godfather did more for the glamour and prestige of my former life than any other movie and i remember that i mean even guys on the streets started walking around differently after that movie came out it created an aura that that in many ways exists today and it shouldn't be that life should not be glorified and um you know it just happens to be the platform that i was given and i never realized i was telling jonah earlier i had a speaking event in singapore singapore it was a ticketed event a secular event and my host came in afterwards and said michael we we uh we're going to have a q a afterwards we promised ticket buyers that they can have that i said great it was called a night with the godfather and um but he said but don't worry um singaporeans are very reserved they're very um they don't ask a lot of questions so we may put a shill in there to ask a question or two i said great we'll go home early no problem uh we were there for two and a half hours the questions they were asking i was shocked about john gotti where was jimmy hoffa buried paul castellano they were asking about murders about my life about sopranos i could not believe it and the same thing happened in australia and the same thing happens everywhere and the movies have created a a an aura for that life that's known all over the world i'll tell you this i was here three weeks ago and i spoke at 14 churches and one secular event on the isle of man in case none of you have been there i wouldn't suggest that you go anytime soon not a lot happening there a lot of rain but uh but the people were wonderful and just so you know they call it they describe themselves as 70 000 drunken people hanging to a rock that's right and we met a bunch of them that night but it was fun um what was i saying oh god what was i saying babe yeah oh yeah the the same in australia i mean i could not believe you know this is the platform that was given to me and and we were here oh we were here three weeks ago we were treated like rock stars and i we walked out of there i mean with standing room only crowds and i just could not believe it and to me it's you know i always say god is brilliant to get people in the room because people are intrigued with my former life and it gives me an opportunity to to share some things that that hopefully are encouraging to people but i never realized when you're part of that life it's just your life i never realized how intriguing and interesting it is to people until i got out of it and started experiencing it myself yes uh you said you were in the uh hulf like three years and you had books of different faiths brought to you what was it about the bible that made you see that as the truth um well historically i was able to verify a lot of things i'm very into apologetics um and i i read a lot on apologetics uh lee strobel is a friend and somebody i consider to be a brilliant biblical scholar um and i was able to verify a lot of things that i read in the bible both historically and then practically in my own life and in the life of others and you know and i'm answering the question i'm not believing when i tell you i don't impose my faith or anybody on anybody and i never try to turn anybody into a christian you know as christians we're we're in some ways obligated to share what the lord has done in our lives and and that's what i do and if you ask the question i'll answer um you know people nobody really has a problem with christ's life they believe he existed um nobody really has a problem with his crucifixion they believe that he was crucified and there's a lot of outside verification of that from the writings of others at the time people have a problem with the resurrection and i can understand that in some ways but to me it's the same group of writers that wrote about his life that wrote about his death and wrote about his resurrection and the transformation that i saw in the lives of people who witnessed the resurrection really convinced me in a big way you don't do what they did if you don't do what they did if jesus was a myth to them that rang very very powerfully to me because i understand that in a big way my life experience tells me you don't risk your life for something that's a myth if you re and it might be a myth but if you really believe it then it's it's really believable to you and so um and and i i can get into this in in great depth because i i've read so much later on that made me believe that historically the bible was accurate and then the work that's been done in my life and the life of others leads me to believe and i'll tell you this i have to say this my mother-in-law died of cancer and she died in 2001 i believe and she was living with us and i was taking her for her chemo treatments and i was had her on probably 30 different pills and things because i was looking at all homeopathic ways to try to help her with her diet medication so on and so forth she started to reject all of that and um my wife was very upset she was very close to her mom and so were her six brothers and sisters and so i got her in the car one morning and i was actually rebuking her i was taking her to ucla where she was getting her treatments and i said ma what are you doing i said we're trying to help you you're rejecting all this medication you're you're you know you're getting your children so upset cami's crying every night and you know when i say this i get the chill she was sitting in the passenger seat and she turned around to me and i kid you not she had this kind of angelic look on her face and she just said to me michael i'm going home i'm ready to go and knowing how that woman lived her life and understanding how real the lord was to her it was kind of a real it was the the final proof that i needed she died two weeks later and to me though god was a horrible being if he really existed at that point or he was real and understanding how she lived it just kind of cemented things for me and it's it's only gotten stronger since that time you know i say this to to people and again i'm saying it because you asked you know one of the one of the things i'm sure you've heard this that the sins of the father fall on the children fall on the sons and that's in the old testament bible that's true at times and my prayer every night is lord don't let that happen to my children whatever i did in my life keep it confined with me and it's a prayer that i pray faithfully and i always say this even if that were to happen god has honored that in my life i have seven great kids and you know they've been great but even if that were to happen i might be angry with god i might turn away for a certain time i don't know what i would do because i'd be that hurt but i can never disbelieve because for me the evidence is too strong and and for me everything is about evidence and it to me it's just too powerful so that's how i live and like i always say what do i have to lose if god doesn't exist and when you're dead you're dead well you're dead anyway so you have nothing to lose if you try to live your life according to um you know a truth that you believe is good and if jesus was anything he was good nobody can deny that i mean his teachings were all solid and they were all good so abiding by that it's a win-win situation for me there's nothing to lose you treat people the right way um and things just seem to work out in your life so i kind of live by that and i believe it strongly thank you very much i think we have to finish there okay but thank you so much michael for coming to what i think's been probably one of the most interesting and insightful uh speaker events i've seen here well thank you and i i uh you know to me i i really enjoy being around you young people i mean you really are the future i know that's a kind of a cliche but um you know the fact that you fill the room and you've asked so many great questions i really do appreciate it i i've asked uh i understand bernie sanders is coming i wish i could be here to debate him um or bill maher if bill maher ever comes as a guest please do call me i would love to debate him also but really this has been a privilege and an honor and i appreciate very much and i wish you all the absolute best keep up the work if i could just add to that i got to tell you i am i am so impressed with your country people are so really so respectful and um courteous i mean that's what we've experienced i mean am i right babe i mean it's it's it's not always that way in the united states but of course we you know we can deal with that there but you've been just so hospitable and and uh this is a great place it's become right at the top of my list so i thank you all for that london is amazing i i see where new york came from came from london it's great thank you um just a quick reminder that this week uh it's a quite a busy week here we've got uh tomorrow we have katie hopkins he'll be here uh which will be very interesting coming please come and challenge her uh because i can't do that on my own so i need numbers strength and numbers uh wednesday we've got sigma the dj duo which will be very different but really good as well and then on thursday we've got a debate about immortality and then on friday evening we have piers morgan uh who will be here another interesting one so come to all or any of those if you can but otherwise thanks for coming you

Channel: Cambridge Union

Views: 1,712,342

Keywords: The, Cambridge, Union

Id: _K_DrgU089c

Length: 76min 10sec (4570 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2017