Michael Franzese on Gianni Russo, Crazy Joe Gallo, Carmine The Snake, Goodfellas (Full Interview)

all right here we go michael franzis welcome back to vlad tv this is uh your your fourth time third time something like that seems like we can't get enough of each other vlad i don't know we're stuck together we're stuck together as well as millions of people who tune in to watch every single time before you get started um you actually have your own consulting business and your own youtube channel that you want to talk about as well right that's correct yes you know well we started the youtube channel i actually had a youtube channel for several years but i didn't know i had it uh somebody started it for me way back when and i never got involved in it but we started july of this year july 3rd actually posting videos we've got we're doing now three a week and uh it's gotten off the ground pretty well we got over 300 000 subscribers in the past uh five months so not anywhere near you vlad but we're uh i'd love to catch her one day we'll see what happens but people have been great you know they've been tuning in and a lot of great comments and yeah also you know as a result of covid you know that i'm a speaker i've been doing after the last 25 years all over the world but everything was shut down this year so i started doing personal and business coaching life coaching and we actually started a site it's michaelfrancis.com we've got over 9 000 members now on our free site that we're providing a lot of content for i'm getting personally involved in it and then we have our inner circle part of my crew where um they they get a lot more uh involvement with me we'll put a lot of content in there everything is about encouraging people giving them hope giving them some life lessons business lessons and it's working out well we actually started a big promotion today so hopefully we'll get a few more people involved but it's growing quick and i think i got to thank you because you got me out there in front of your 4 million plus subscribers so i appreciate it very cool very cool i love when uh i interview people and they go on and start their own you know youtube type businesses on their own so uh very cool and uh you know how are you holding up to the whole pandemic you know i i mean i'm fine look i spent three years almost in solitary confinement so uh you know i'm i'm you know basically under house arrest in many ways here in california uh because of all the lockdowns and state home orders and so on and so forth but you know we're getting through it you know fortunately haven't gotten sick and uh no one in my family really has gotten sick so we've been doing okay there and uh you know for me uh like i said a lot more involvement with people and uh you know business is growing and we just just keep moving forward i mean yeah we uh everyone around me has been healthy as well but i have personally interviewed two people that have died from covet wow uh one of which was fred the godson he was in his early 30s he was pretty overweight and i think he had some some asthma type conditions before uh the other person was actually frank colada oh you you interviewed frank huh i did i did his last interview before he passed away and you know just to note he was not the healthiest guy when we did our interview he was he was on oxygen you know every so often we'd have to stop he'd have to take the oxygen mask take a few hits you know put it down and then continue the interview i forgot what he told me he had some sort of lung condition i think from from smoking most of his life but he ended up catching uh covid a few months later and he passed away from it wow yeah it was dangerous to older people that had any kind of prior illness or exist you know pre-existing condition it hit them the hardest i didn't know frank personally i think i ran into him once in the in the leaning tower of pisa way back when in in vegas but uh you know like a lot of other people he made some comments about me um i don't remember what they were but uh you know a lot of people seemed to like him they liked coffee with colada and i think he told some good stories and uh did some good things in vegas so you know it's sad to see him go away yeah rest in peace frank i mean i liked him we did you know just one interview but uh it was it was a good interview and i'm glad that he got to tell his life story before he passed away because you know people could reference that interview that we did that really told the whole thing from beginning to to the time that we did it and really kind of encompassed everything else like that you know since our last interview there's been a lot of violence in hip-hop a lot of rappers have gotten killed um fpg duck a chicago rapper got killed in broad daylight uh mo three got killed also in broad daylight a car chased him down in dallas fpg duck uh died in chicago his hometown and we recently interviewed you know one of our regular guests busy and as we were talking about the whole situation because fbg duck he was essentially on the rodeo drive fifth avenue of chicago he was shopping with a female friend of his their you know the louis vuitton store the gucci store and everything else like that a couple of cars pulled up and just opened fire on him and killed him right there in the middle of the street uh and then two other people you know the girl that was with him got shot she tried to return fire a guy that was asking for a selfie he got shot in the process as well but uh duck ended up getting killed and when i talked to busy and we were talking about the situation he said that that sounded like a hit because i always assume that you know if someone's gonna kill somebody they have to feel like there's a reasonable chance that they'll get away with it you don't be thinking about that no no no now when you don't be thinking about oh they all you be thinking about is that bad all you thinking about is that money what do you mean all you thinking about is money well make when [ __ ] slide well money money from who like like there was a there's a money on his head like when [ __ ] put bags on you of course don't be thinking about no consequences you're thinking about that bad [ __ ] gonna spray you any of you on site on site me wherever i get you here when it's on site you know like especially if that bag bigger than 20. you're they're gonna [ __ ] on site you oh okay so you mean to tell me that that's still a very real thing where someone will actually put some money on someone's head and say okay if you kill him you can come collect from me yeah that's how everything yeah uh from your point of view does that sound like a hit as all the markings of it yeah i mean drive by i mean they knew he was there wasn't an accident um you know obviously i'm familiar with that type of uh you know violence so it sounds like it to me without a doubt well boosie said that you know without naming any names or situations where he comes from which is baton rouge a hit cost anywhere between two thousand dollars and a hundred thousand dollars uh in the world that you used to live in how much does a hit cost or were hits just done based on you know your affiliation which you have to do yeah vlad look in our life uh you didn't pay for hits you know uh if they were done within the family you didn't pay i mean you know when you recruited into that life you become a member that's your job if you're given an order to do something you do it you don't get paid for it um you know and i hear things all the time there's a half a million dollar contract on my head and blah blah blah and people have said that in the past well you know i don't know of any mob guys that ever paid anybody to have somebody whacked it's it's something you're supposed to do so um and you know what guy is gonna shell out a half a million dollars to have somebody killed so you know to have a number between two thousand and a hundred thousand that's not realistic to me in my life now i can't comment on something else i can't comment on you know what happened in chicago uh with this particular situation but i know in our life we didn't pay for these things okay so for example you have you have guys like the iceman who ended up passing away some years back and he was responsible for killing dozens and dozens of people he was a contract killer he wasn't actually part of any mafia family right well you know the story is that roy demaio uh he was part of uh dimeo's crew and that uh dimeo had enlisted him to do some killings uh even then i never heard and if you what i can't say whether demayo paid him or not um but i never heard that he did and i think you know the story the movie about kaklinsky was was uh it was exaggerated i don't believe he was that uh close to demayo as that movie claimed that he was um i'm not saying he wasn't a contract killer i just don't know of any particular incidents where he was paid so it's always done within the family you never bring in an outside hitman or pay anyone else outside i'm not saying it's it's listen i know that there uh there might have been an incident or two that i heard of and that i was aware of were the westies you know that was a group of tough irish group out in uh back in new york where they might have been enlisted by you know our crew one of our families to do certain work but even then i never heard that they got paid for it or heard there was some kind of barter that maybe you know as a result of you working for us uh we're gonna help you in this situation i can sit here and tell you that i've never heard of anybody uh in my former life getting paid to do a hit okay so what you're saying is a certain number of people have a sit down it's agreed that this person has to go whether he is about to testify against someone or he did some level of high level infraction and then whoever is in that meeting will assign someone to go do the job that's how it's normally done yes okay but now you're kind of tying in a conspiracy right because if you tell someone else to go do it they could turn around and say well he told me to go do it and now multiple people are now involved in this so why not just go and do it yourself and cut out the middleman in a way well listen if you you know you look at the ricoh act of federal racketeering laws i mean you know that's what happened that's what killed so many guys when i say killed it got so many guys indicted and put away for a long time because people became informants and they said yeah i did the job but he told me to do it so you know in federal law and racketeering law you're just as guilty if you're involved in that kind of a conspiracy as the person that pulled the trigger and normally it's the person that pulled the trigger that becomes the informant or the snitch so you know they buy themselves out of a problem and they put the people that allegedly ordered it or were part of that conspiracy they're the ones that do all the time so yeah under the racketeering statute uh anybody that's involved in any way um is held responsible yeah i mean that's pretty crazy it is that's pretty crazy and you know you've had figures around you you know like the the grim reaper and and so forth that were known i mean the numbers were probably exaggerated but a lot of bodies under their belt yeah i mean again you know there's always an exaggeration of the bodies the fed's always i mean my father was allegedly killed 30 or 40 people or maybe more than that you know um you know they always inflate the numbers i think or they hear something and they just throw it in the stat you know uh but look the grim reaper i mean uh he has his reputation i think some of it is well deserved uh we all know he was an informant now for many many years and um you know but you know he cooperated and like i said the story is well known so you got involved with the mafia in 1971 right yeah you ended up dropping out of school because your dad went to prison and then you know you weren't made at that point but that's when you first started getting your hands dirty and started rolling around these guys now joe columbo was involved in the godfather movie correct and i had this uh interesting interview with johnny russo how familiar are you with russo i mean look he's all over youtube you know he's out there like i am so i've heard a lot of his stories um what do you want me to tell you about vlad he has a lot to say uh according to him he's lived a life that nobody else has ever lived you know um you know whether it's true or not who am i to question him i don't know okay well he was affiliated with the columbos uh at least uh joe columbo yeah i mean he knew him yeah okay now leading up to the movie uh there was some friction between joe colombo and uh the producers of the film correct uh to the point where at one point the columbo family blew up the front doors of the pair you know of paramount pictures the big huge giant doors they stuck some dynamite there and blew the doors of it did you know about that stanley jaffe who and bobby evans were the presidents they were moved here now because somebody blew the gates of paramount and on california on melrose avenue off the hinges they're 30 feet high and that was a warning no i never heard that ever look i i no never heard anything it was the first time i'm hearing that um you know i know what joe colombo's involvement was um i was at an italian american civil rights league meeting at the at the park shirt park plaza park center hotel i figured out where it was um when um one of the producers was already was there and he started to talk to everybody about the movie and joe columbo kind of put his seal of approval on the godfather because they had negotiated a couple of things the main thing was or one of the main things was that the word mafia would not be used in the film because if you remember joe colombo at that time was fighting against uh the mafia being you know all of us being labeled as mafia he said there was no such thing as the mafia so it was important for him to have that out of the film and that was part of the negotiation and a couple other things happened you know and ruddy went along with them he had to he was filming in new york and they weren't going to film in new york at all if they didn't go along with some of colombo's demands period because we controlled the unions there we weren't going to let it happen there probably would have been some bad things happening on the set had they tried to go forward but i never heard of you know paramount's uh did you did you ever see that documented anywhere or was that just something that was told to you uh well let's take a look uh i mean there's an l.a times article hold on a second uh you know i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm actually having problems finding an actual uh you know legitimate news article about this so maybe you're right maybe this was just like a rumor well let me let me tell you i did a lot i did a couple of interviews i got involved with the there was a godfather uh documentary that was done they interviewed me on throughout that whole documentary i never heard anything like this i've this is the first time i'm ever hearing that so i would take it with a grain of salt unless you can find some evidence i mean look if that happened there's going to be evidence it's going to be documented somewhere you don't blow up the you know the front door paramount studios without uh having some major media about it come on well leading up to that uh joe colombo had uh what was called the italian anti-defamation league italian-american civil rights league that was the word there we go there you go and you were involved in that i was heavily involved in that yes when we were picking the fbi uh on 69th street and third avenue you know i saw it as a way to help my dad they gave me a sign i was i was out there the first day and they gave me a sign to carry and the sign said my father is a victim of fbi gestapo tactics he was framed and sentenced to 50 years those are the exact words on the sign so i'm holding that and that line grew from you know 20 30 40 people to several thousand over the period of several months and i was the first one to get arrested off of that line i had a fight with a cop and uh they arrested me on it and right on the line and it was a whole big to do with you know joe colombo and barry slotnick was the attorney that got me out of the mess but it was uh yeah i was heavily involved in that as a way to help my dad well they had one big rally and that went well then they had a second rally in columbus circle in manhattan and you were actually standing next to joe colombo when everything went left well actually he had given me i was up on the stage and he had given me some brochures to hand out near lincoln center and i remember the last words he said to me uh that day he said michael handy's out uh just everybody that you see get him to come to the circle here the rally and as i was walking away he says and we're gonna use this league to help your father i walked away from him i was getting to the steps that go you know leading off the stage into the columbus circle there and that's when the shots rang out and initially we didn't know what happened but you know it was it was just hysteria at that point a black man named jerome a johnson walked up to colombo and shot him in the back of the head three times the fact that you could let off three shots in the back of someone's head sounds kind of crazy like you're just basically unloading the pistol right then and there and columbo had bodyguards right around him and as soon as that happened they opened fire uh on johnson yes did you see all the shots go off and everything well there was mass hysteria there i heard them obviously actually ducked because they were loud and boom boom boom and then a couple of shots followed that when they got johnson so there were so many people around there even though i was probably like within 50 feet away that i didn't actually see it but i just saw the crowd of people and i know they were wrestling johnson to the ground um so i saw all of that it's kind of pretty vivid in my mind the way it went down well johnson gets killed right in the process but colombo survives but he ends up being paralyzed well he was in a coma i mean he never came out of the coma for seven or eight years okay so he never spoke again he never recognized anyone again he was she was essentially gone you know on that day okay and at that point him and joe gallo were kind of going at it yeah now joe gallo when he went in prison he affiliated himself with a lot of black gangs so when a black guy goes and shoots a mob boss in such a public space and he's having you know issues with joe gallo everyone suddenly started blaming joe gallo for this correct was that the word you know with your crew that joe gallo was the one who did it yes and the reason for that you know there was um if you know the history there the uh the war that that happened several years earlier gallo thought that he should be the one to take over the family from prefracci and joe colombo stepped in and i think gala resented that never got over it so there was friction going way back and you know there was the the gallo preface war that my father was involved in that uh you know i learned about in pretty much detail from my dad but uh you know joe gallo always resented the fact that joe colombo was the boss he thought it should have been him and so you know the word was out that uh this was his way to get even plus you got to understand something you know joe colombo he there was a lot of bad blood going on people were not happy with what he was doing with this league you know other families are the bosses when i walked that picket line there were a lot of made guys that were complaining that the fbi they weren't really on their radar until now and now they were ordered to be on this picket line everybody was taking photographs the fbi knew who everybody was so uh joe joe colombo did not ingratiate himself with a lot of people as a result of the league so if gallo made this move he knew that he'd have support okay well uh columbo gets shot and paralyzed and goes into a coma so then his conseglieri uh joseph jacovelli yeah joe yuck yes joey yacht he becomes the acting boss correct and the first thing he does is say we got to kill joe gallo and his crew that's the word they say so then in 1972 uh joe gallo and his family were having dinner at uh umberto's uh clam house in little italy uh four gunmen walk in and open fire correct this is all a matter of record as we know it so yeah yeah exactly so you were with the columbos when all this was happening yes well remember i was a recruit at that point i was you know just getting my way up so to speak okay when you heard about the shooting uh of joe gala what did you think you know immediately that this was uh retaliation for the colombo hit so at that point the war is completely on and uh albert gallo wanted revenge so he sent a couple of guys to kill joey yak again that's that's the way it went down that's the way it went down uh but when the assassins go into uh well i guess it was a vegas and well it was a restaurant in las vegas when they went in there they didn't recognize joey act and they ended up killing four innocent uh diners basically well four of them got shot and two of them got killed in the process that's that's what i heard yes okay and at that point that's when uh joey yak basically left new york and carmine the snake persico became the new boss pretty much yeah describe that time i mean because this is just chaos at this point it was chaos but i mean it didn't really result in a war there was no war that went on i mean the wars in our family were pretty distinct and definite and that wasn't one of them uh it ended pretty quick and junior did take control persico and then things you know he kind of stabilized everything at that point um so i don't want you to get the impression that it was an all-out war that occurred as a result of this it wasn't um and then things started to stabilize you know um and things were pretty calm for quite a long time until you know the whole thing with little vic and i think you're familiar with that but things will bring some pretty calm after that okay and what was your relationship like with persico i mean i like junior you know he was my boss and um you know unfortunately it was it was tough to get close to him because he was in and out of jail all the time so the guy never really had a chance to operate the family like he would have liked to uh but i had a good relationship with him you know for uh i mean look there's always something that goes down you know especially when you get high profile like me and you're making money and so there's always little things you got to deal with but basically i had a good relationship with him his son ali boy was michael body he baptized my oldest boy so i mean we were close family-wise okay and why was he called the snake that's a name that gave him because i think um you know again and i'm i'm not a historian on this but i think back in the day you know he kind of went against the gallows he was originally in that gallow faction and then he when it went against the gallows and as a result of that they called him a snake during that gala preface war i think that's when he got the nickname he didn't like it either i know that uh well i guess uh you know at one point the gallow fashion kind of split into two groups and started fighting each other yeah and eventually they finally agreed where uh gallows crew ended up joining the genovese family yeah i mean again this is i'm not really familiar with that vlad i'll be honest with you but uh because i didn't i didn't get into all of that but yeah i i think you're pretty accurate on that okay and then in 1975 you became a maid man correct okay so columbo is still in a coma and then at one point uh thomas de bella took over yeah he was the acting boss for persico okay because periscope went to prison so now dybella is the main guy right what was your your relationship like with debella very good i mean uh you know he's the guy that administered the oath over me i had a good relationship with him you know i was uh i drove him around quite a bit and uh i got along with him he was an old-timer you know old school really a street guy but you know we knew that he was there on junior's behalf but he ran the family well okay and you know persco takes over but he's kind of in and out of prison because in 73 he went to prison for hijacking and loan sharking and he got eight years uh but he's still kind of trying to run the family from you know behind bars yes so how is that working out was there just no boss during that time no i mean dybella you know did a good job and and uh you know the smart thing about junior is he had he had a lot of his family involved you know you got to understand there's a lot of nepotism in in our life and it's basically security reasons i mean you expect that your family is going to be loyal to you through thick and thin so you know he had his cousins he had his brother he had his son he had his nephew so you know uh there was a lot of loyalty to junior um during that time and he was able to you know to maintain control and he ran the family pretty good until you know i mean his downfall was when he got the 100 plus years on the commission case and he left uh little vic arena as uh as acting boss and i think you know what happened then you know then family went to war again which is normal for the colombos every couple of years you know you go to war well um at one point when when persico went to prison he had gennaro langilla yeah uh jerry lange jerry lang he became the acting boss and there was a whole thing about the concrete club where they started taking over all the labor unions like the cement union the concrete you know union and everything else like that well that was the basis for the whole commission case the giuliani you know his office put that whole case together but jerry lang was the underboss you know he was he was my underboss so um you know and but again he got in trouble too so he was part of that commission case or case i was either yeah i think it was part of commission case it was a case just before that um that he was convicted on also when he got a 20 years also so you know when these guys go away it's very difficult unless you have somebody that's close to you it's difficult to maintain control because there's so much going on all the time and when you're facing that kind of time it's just hard you know well 79 persco gets out of prison uh but then in 81 he got convicted for conspiracy and racketeering and he got sentenced to five years prison again so he's just like getting out a couple years then going right back in yes so it was pretty much a mess yeah i mean couldn't she couldn't stay out of like my dad they couldn't stay out of prison you know my dad would come home get violated go back you know another case and junior had the same same deal going on with him so you know how do you maintain control of 115 guys uh effectively from behind bars it's difficult if you got somebody out there you can really trust well then you know it helps but it's still very difficult well at one point uh periscope put a hit on you was that around this time or way later on no this look this was after i walked away from the life also in my case junior took it very personal when i walked away because we had some things going on and i think he was very upset about it and he thought that you know he and i had some things going on maybe i could hurt him too could have but i did okay so during this time the commission was a big deal now the commission was well the five families in new york but also was jersey as well yeah i mean you know when you say the commission is a big deal are you referring to the the commission trial by giuliani yeah right well in 1985 there was the mafia commission trial right so what commission was that based on exactly well it's the head of the families you know if you're a boss and uh you you get a seat on the commission that's it you know i don't know if that was really the commissioned case that i mean i guess you can label it that you know um they did and obviously they it was effective they convicted everybody but uh yeah i mean the commission is always alive and well if uh if the bosses are there okay so 1985 they try to take everyone down in this mafia commission trial right uh were you involved in this at all or no not at all okay because you weren't high enough enough you weren't high enough in the no and i wasn't involved well no i wasn't i wasn't a boss and i wasn't involved in that whole concrete union deal that they were involved in got it okay and giuliani was the head of all this well it was it came out of the southern district the indictment so it was his office and i believe again you know that it was his idea uh to to create this indictment of the commission under the rico statute okay so by 86 seven of the defendants were convicted of racketeering yeah you know persico and angela um you know each getting like 100 years or something how do you really get that you know your head around it that here's this guy that i'm working for and he just got a hundred years well listen you know it was everyday business for guys to get convicted and go to prison the thing is that when they started using the racketeering laws the racketeering statute effectively they were able to give so much time under that statute so that's what you know that's what was blowing people away look when they indicted me you know giuliani indicted me under the rico statute it was a big racketeering case and this big shylocking case and i was a lead defendant myself and jimmy rotunda we had 15 co-defendants and you know i was told in the courtroom if i got convicted they were going to give me a hundred years double what my father got and they could have given it to me under the statute that's how crazy it is unfortunately i was acquitted in that case then i get indicted in another racketeering case that involved around the gas business but i'll tell you what convinced me vlad i'm in jail with everybody all the commission guys you know the pizza connection case was going on at that point we're all in mdc the federal jail in manhattan and guys are going to trial getting convicted and they're getting 100 years 200 years 70 years 300 years i said man i'm the youngest at all of these guys if i get convicted i'm going away forever you know so that's what kind of opened my eyes that the government wasn't playing games anymore and then you're hearing what are you hearing who turned informant who turned snitch willie boyd johnson you know greg scarpa you say man what's going on guys were you know flipping left and right because you know it's one thing again before the rico statute and all of that you know you get convicted you get 10 years 15 years back then they were giving people parole anybody can do 10 years in that life it's not going to turn people but when you start you know throwing the key away and say this is going to be here for the rest of your life unless you cooperate and if you do cooperate what will we do we'll put your new witness protection program we'll pay you some money we'll preserve your life you don't have to worry because you convict the guys they're going away anyway so they're not going to hurt you well that's when people started to flip left and right and that's when i said you know what we got a lot of problems here this life is in real trouble well there's the mafia commission trial but then there was a separate columbo trial and that was just a train wreck it was a train wreck i mean you know junior got junior got a hundred years on the commission case you got 39 years on the other one so he's got 139 years running wild back to back so his life is over that's it right because a lot of the 39 years that persco got after getting a hundred so now he's got 139 years right i mean even concurrently he's still a hundred years but uh langella langella got 65 years uh alphonse uh periscope got 12 years right so they're now basically starting to dismantle the columbo family along with everything else they're doing right um you know there was a an article in the new york times where they said that colombo suffered more long-term damage than any other family as a result of the commission trial could be possible i mean you know i didn't monitor that i mean look every family was in trouble but uh yeah we took a big hit no doubt about it big hit well the thing with persico at the time he was 53 years old and he had already headed up the family like 14 years and he was like kind of a unicorn in the way that he was relatively young most of the mob bosses were like 70 80 years old how did this guy end up becoming a mob boss in his 40s and 50s instead of his 70s well he look he did a lot of work he had a good reputation he was well respected on the street for you know for his body of work i would say and uh again you know he was smart you know he had a lot of relatives he had a lot of loyalty look i i firmly believe that if my father didn't go away for 50 years that he could have very well been the boss of the family no doubt about it my dad had a lot of respect he had a lot of loyalty around him but didn't work out if he was home you know and junior was able to maintain control my dad definitely would have been the underboss no doubt about that yeah they had to my father was that prominent figure but you know things work out the way they work out in that life and junior did the right things made the right moves and he ended up having control well persico ends up getting um you know sentenced to forever essentially and uh i guess he named his brother alfonse as the acting boss yes okay but then at one point victor arena became the boss yeah and by the way i loved i loved alley boy his brother was a was a really good guy i mean in my opinion uh i mean i liked all of them you know i might have anything but ali boy was really a good guy but he had done 18 years in prison you know so he's home and then another indictment came down on him so he went on the lamb for a while i mean it was always just one thing after another we could never just establish okay this is the leader and this is the guy and he's going to be around and he's going to really get the family going could never happen what was interesting about the whole arena thing was that when persico made a reign of the boss arena was able to bring in new members and order murders on his own authority which was never really allowed as an acting boss i think persigo gave him full authority as the boss yeah until the deal was until young ali came home because ali originally had 12 years and then he had another case and then he got life but i'm saying that was the deal well around that time in 1989 there was the murder of yusuf hawkins in brooklyn do you remember that time um not really you know i mean i remember it but i was in jail at the time in prison i should say yeah i mean they just did a documentary about that um that was pretty big but essentially uh you know a group of young black kids go to this area in brooklyn was it was it bensonhurst i think so yeah yeah to go look at a used car um a bunch of italian kids kind of surround them and one of them ends up pulling out a gun and killing him and uh from what what was said in the documentary was there was so much chaos in that neighborhood afterwards because remember like alex sharpton came in and started doing marches and everything else like that uh they said that sammy the bull was the one that got involved and actually got the shooter and brought him to authorities i don't that i don't know no don't know anything about no i don't okay well in 1991 there was another family war that happened right and i guess uh arena felt that persico was out of touch um and there was also a problem because uh persico was working on a on a may for television biography and they're worried that this is going to be used against them you know in in future cases because i guess that's what happened with uh joe bonanno where he had a tell-all book and it was used in the commission trial right uh so then arena decided to take over the family himself correct were you locked up during this time or you're out uh in 91 i was out briefly so i know when this thing was brewing because um i was on parole i had walked away and you know it was public that i walked away and but my father at the time he sent me a message and he said okay you need to stop the baloney with walking away family's going to war and we need you so um so i knew what was going on at that point in time and um i'll be honest with you vlad i was very i was uh it was a very tough decision for me because i felt wow you know this is my family and uh you know i already walked away but you know i and my father had this pull on me and i was thinking of going back and getting involved quite honestly um and i may have done that but i got violated on my parole and they put me back in okay well during this time i guess arena went to the commission and asked to become the boss but the commission didn't want didn't want to actually approve that yeah i don't think they took a position on it they told him you know what you normally do at that point you take a poll of the men and you find out you know you're going to go along with me or not and you try to do it discreetly because obviously if word gets out well you're already in trouble because you're trying to make a move so i think he felt he had enough support and he went to war and i think he underestimated the loyalty to junior i really do right because persico found out about that and he felt that it was a coup and at that point he actually ordered a hit on arena exactly and that's what you do i mean uh you don't try to negotiate you know at that point in time that's what you do right so in 1991 arena has you know is coming home he has a house in long island and there are a couple of gunmen waiting there and they they try to kill him correct but they ended up not killing him yes they missed he he i think he saw something i mean look you know if you you know that you're alert to these type of things and arena was and he was able to avoid it yeah right and then this is the start of the third colombo war correct okay now are you locked up during this time again i am yes okay and i remember uh you had mentioned this uh i think on your youtube channel where in 1992 you were in lompoc uh federal prison and you ended up getting the same room as the menendez brothers well that was in uh ellie well they they had moved me from they tried to indict me in the state of california in los angeles so they moved me out of lompoc to l.a county jail and i was there for 11 months and i was on they called it murderers row because everybody on that tier was the same tier that oj simpson uh was eventually came in on but everybody on the tier was either facing uh life without parole or the death penalty and then they had me there on a parole violation and some silly little case basically because the feds told them that he's an important federal prisoner and we don't want him we want him back here exactly the way we're giving him to you that's how they told the uh um sheriffs when they picked me up they took pictures of me and everything else because l.a county jail is a wild place so you know in order to do that they put me in a hole okay and while you're locked up all hell is breaking loose uh with your lumbos so i guess arena sent his younger brother uh mickey brown and uh his two sons uh michael and willie boy on a murder mission and uh essentially what they said was overall this you know during this whole war 15 associates and business partners of the arena clan just disappeared or got murdered flat out i think i think it was like 13 guys that got killed i'm pretty sure both sides i mean i knew guys that i was friendly with close with that were killed also and a bunch of guys went to jail so i mean it was uh it was a devastating war like they all are yeah i mean i'm looking i mean with one of these situations i said 12 people including three innocent bystanders died in this gang war and 18 associates were never seen from again so people just i guess were buried somewhere or cremated or whatever chopped up fed to pigs like in general how are people getting rid of bodies during that time but i mean you know come on um i wasn't there let's put it that way so i don't know what they were doing okay i'm sure the cement business was pretty useful during this time who knows who knows okay well in 1991 uh gregory scarpa aka the grim reaper uh and he was loyal to persico he was driving with his daughter and granddaughter and he ended up getting ambushed do you remember the situation heard about it again i was in prison at the time so you know i only know what i heard and i know he had a uh he had another situation i think he got involved in some kind of drug deal with his kid and somebody shot him i know he lost an eye you know so that i know um but you know again i was in prison so i didn't hear too much about this it was only the scuttlebutt that you know i heard during and after well i did an interview with larry mazza uh did you know larry at all uh we met yeah okay and he worked under uh greg's carpet do you know the whole story how larry was sleeping with uh scarpa's girlfriend and they kind of became okay with it and and so forth it was sort of this really weird situation again i only heard about it you know things like that you hear about snow but i wasn't obviously intimately involved in any way and so i don't have any i don't have any more knowledge probably than you have about this okay well and gregory scarpa by this time was hiv positive yes was that common knowledge or no um well i knew about it so i mean i think most people knew about it yeah yeah you know back then when you heard that it was like wow you know that's that was a serious thing did you hear how he how he got hiv well i heard he got it from a transfusion you know from a trusted friend of his you know that was infected yeah i mean that was basically it i mean larry told the story he basically said that that greg would just pop tylenol every day to avoid getting a hangover and he just did this for years and years until his stomach was just completely messed up so he needed a blood transfusion he was too worried that they would randomly give him a blood transfusion from someone who who might have aids so he picked his own guy because he trusted him i guess he was a bodybuilder who was taking steroids who ended up being hiv positive himself after two or three operations his whole inside stop bleeding again wind up is the surgeon had left one of the arteries hanging so he's close to death he needs blood so they call in all his friends and family the hospital wanted to give him their blood because it was screened already and this is early on in age this whole hiv thing was new pretty much like today with the corona virus is still you don't know so he insists laying there half dead that one of his men give him the blood and his thinking was he knew none of his men were gay uh not that there's anything wrong with that but he preferred knowing that was at that time the possibility of where it was coming from uh and he knew that it would be in his head his best shot being fearful of the disease so about 30 30 of us show up everybody gives blood there's one match and it's one of his guys paulie paulie was a handsome guy he had more girls uh uh but he was a weightlifter and we found out later on he used steroids back in the day and they shared needles so the one out of 30 was paulie and he matched so he gave his hiv tainted blood to greg and greg became hiv positive i know i i i was the i got to tell you i do remember because a couple of times i asked greg once in particular i was what are you always popping his tylenol for and you know and he said i want i want to be able to function the next day he would tell me like that you know greg was a gruff kind of guy uh but yeah he did that i know for a fact he used to pop tylenol all the time and we all knew that i've seen him many many times yeah i mean very weird situation well you know he was a strange guy yeah yeah i mean look it was okay it was uh when we found out that he was an informant i mean that was not good news you know because we were all around greg a lot well the war kept going until 92 and then arena was convicted of racketeering and then also for the 1989 osero murder and other other charges as well so arena got three life sentences plus 85 years yes uh 92 were you out or in i was in okay when you heard in the through the grapevine that oreno who was essentially the boss at this time uh got three life sentences plus 85 years how did you feel listen you know i knew i knew arena for most of my life because he was around my father you know when i was younger um he's about 10 10 15 years older than me but um you know look i mean that's when you hear that you say damn i mean you know the government they got our number you know same one i heard about queso you know who got 455 years and i don't know how many more years they tacked on to that i mean crazy numbers you know all it did was reinforce to me that the life was in a lot of trouble and especially if you were a high profile guy you had to you had to do something because if you stayed in a life you were going to go down there was no doubt about it so there was just reinforcement well i mean along with arena uh getting three life sentences uh 58 soldiers and associates uh were sent to prison 42 from the persico faction 16 from the arena faction uh 70 of the family members were convicted as a result of the war and essentially it cut the crew in half from about 150 people to 75 people uh outside of the ones we mentioned were the people that ended up going to prison were those friends of yours yeah i knew all those guys i mean just about all of them yeah you know and and again um the safest place for me at that point was to be in solitary confinement that's where i was i didn't want to be there and i didn't know it was going to work out that way but as it turned out you know even my dad because my dad was away during that time too and it uh saved us because we would have been involved in some way no doubt well they were saying that this whole war was really triggered because persico kept trying to you know keep control the family in prison well he was never going to give it up i mean he felt it was his you know he had worked it he had his people installed in it he trusted arena and the deal we all knew that i mean junior told me we were in a bullpen i was with jerry lang and junior and he told me that vic's going to be our acting boss until my son ally comes home i said great you know but you know i always had my my doubts about vic and they were personal i mean i didn't really you know you don't talk a lot in that life you've you keep it in but uh persico is never going to give it up there's no way it's not in his nature it would have been like you know gotti given it up he wouldn't give it up it's in that nature to keep it so he went to war well by the mid 90s uh there was this interesting kind of situation that that popped up with the columbos being involved in it as well uh they recently did a documentary about this on hbo called mcmillions i heard about it and this was this was the whole you know mcdonald's had this you know million-dollar monopoly game where you would go in and whenever you bought food you'd have these little monopoly cards you just do a little scratch-off thing i remember as a kid i used to you know i used to go to mcdonald's and get these cars i never won anything and i found out why i didn't win anything because jerry colombo was involved in this massive fraud where 24 million dollars was stolen from mcdonald's by obtaining the winning pieces and then getting various people to to claim you know these these fake winnings and then they would kick back the money to the columbos uh did you hear about this when you were locked up i i did hear about it i didn't get into obviously i didn't hear all the details but i heard that there was some kind of scam going on with mcdonald's yes okay did you know jerry columbo i met him didn't know him well but yeah i met him i mean it's a crazy story uh i mean it's a completely crazy story but this almost seems regular for for what you guys were doing i mean you had your gas cam and jerry had his mcdonald's cam yeah well they actually mentioned me i understood in that uh documentary towards the end they mentioned me as the you know these were the two biggest scams ever and it was me and him that's what i mean i got so many texts and emails about it and you know people on social media hey can you explain it further i don't even know what they were talking about until i saw the little end of clip of it but yeah so they mentioned me involved with that yeah i mean it was it was crazy it was absolutely crazy and you know the people who ended up you know winning they ended up kind of losing anyways because they had to pay all the taxes on it and kick back a lot of the money to jerry and and and so forth so it was it was pretty insane hey listen you know uh guys on the street could be pretty pretty innovative pretty creative with their schemes i can tell you that well then in 1995 you quit the mob yeah uh was there a final straw no vlad you know i'm glad you gave me the opportunity to explain this the final straw for me happened earlier i mean it was it was a bunch of things you know it wasn't any one incident but i want to make it clear i wasn't mad at anybody i you know i had my little thing with junior and i had but i wasn't mad at anybody didn't want revenge on anybody i just saw that the life was in a lot of trouble a lot of trouble and basically i didn't want to to deal with uh with my family what i had to do with with my my my own family brother sisters mother and father we were devastated family was destroyed and i said you know what i don't have longevity in this life because i'm too high profile at that point in time i had 17 or 18 arrests i had seven indictments two federal racketeering indictments you know so i was on the radar in a big way no doubt guys were gonna you know it start flipping on me you know you know i was a ticket for people to get out of life so i said you know what i'm going to try to make my exit so i when i took the plea to the racketeering case it was part of my exit strategy back then that was in 1985. 80 i was indicted in 85 i took the plein 86 but it was part of my exit strategy to walk away from the life there was no cooperation involved in that whatsoever the government i had leverage over the government because i beat him on the giuliani case they thought they were going to convict me it was a huge case i beat him and the major witness in the gas case was also the major witness in the in the giuliani case and we destroyed him on the stand so now the government is nervous so it gave me the leverage to negotiate a good plea so my deal i'll give him some time i'll pay him some money i'll move away out to the west coast and when i get out of jail i have parole probation and maybe after 12 years the guys will forget about me that was the plan so i instituted that early on okay and because of you leaving personal put a hit on you yeah because look the government comes to me when i'm in prison it became public life magazine writes this huge story on me quitting the mafia and um everybody thought i was going to become a big witness testified that's what everybody does right you know okay he's quitting he's not quitting he's going to he made a deal with the government so person goes upset with me obviously contract on my life the government comes in francis you're a dead man anyway they come to prison it's all over the street your father went along with the contract here's what they tell me okay i'm in trouble like i didn't know that right when i'm walking away it wasn't part of the plan i thought i'd be able to do it quietly but it blew up so um that's when all of this started happening and that's when i sent word back to my father at the time i said look dad i'm not going to hurt anybody i'm walking away you know me i'm going to maneuver this in some way but tell everybody relax i'm not hurting anybody not going to do it and that's how this whole thing but personal i mean he didn't get look i heard one story you know he was in louisburg in the penitentiary they have three uh facilities there penitentiary medium and a camp i was in the medium facility he was in the penitentiary one of the correctional officers told me that he got a copy of my book at the time quitting him up and when he was reading it in his cell he went crazy started ripping the pages out throw it against the wall that's how angry he was with me so uh you know um but there again that that's how this whole thing started i said look if i'm gonna preserve my life this is over especially for somebody like me as high profile as i was well you said there are some new developments around this the situation recently you want to talk about yeah i want to talk about it because you know look now that i get this high look i've had a high profile for a lot of years but now it's higher because i'm on youtube i'm doing a podcast i got a lot of stuff going on so for some reason there's people out there vlad that i don't even know never met them in my life never heard of them but you know they like to talk about me and they always want to say that i was an informant yeah i want to make this clear i never had an intention to hurt anybody in my former life did i speak to the government yes look you got to understand the kind of guy i am i'm saying hey i want to kind of make my peace with the government so they leave me the hell alone when i get out that's what i wanted with them so yeah i'll talk to them and i want to say this anything i told the government had been told on thousands of hours of tape anyway you know gotti's 2 000 hours of tapes he did more damage on those tapes than i could have ever done anywhere you know so yes i agreed there is a mob and yes you know persico is the boss all stuff that people knew no doubt about it so i never intended to go to trial or hurt anybody i didn't make that kind of deal but i did do two things number one i got subpoenaed to testify in a senate investigation committee on organized crimes infiltration into boxing that was in the 90s i was subpoenaed it was a a lot of guys were subpoenaed at that time but the reason they subpoenaed me is because a few years earlier than that i was the subject of a big undercover operation called shadow boxing so all of a sudden this this tape in the last week is coming out and people saying oh you said you never testified against anybody but you did so i'm just clarifying they can call it anything they want but that's it and i'll say it again nobody ever went to jail because of anything i said the norby walters case i think we talked about it norbie walters i'm going to briefly i saved noby walter's life three times persico wanted to kill him my father wanted to kill him and corki vestola wanted to kill him each time i saved his life because norby used our name and never paid up that was the bottom line he was always using us never paying up but i liked norby so i saved so when he gets in trouble i had given him 250 000 to go into this sports agency business right i go to jail i never saw a quarterback from the money but when i'm in jail he's threatening athletes using my name and my father's name that's how we got involved in the case so i told norbi norbi take a plea i heard they're offering you 15 or 16 months i sent them a word through the prison he refused they subpoenaed me again to come and testify i came and i testified yeah i don't know did he threaten people in your name i have no idea i was in jail i don't know what he did but yeah i did say that he was my partner i know norfolk 30 something years this tape recorder there's no way that i could deny it i'm not taking a perjury wrap because of him but at the end of the day i knew what i was doing nobody did not do five minutes in jail forget anything else so that's it so the only reason i'm bringing it up is because i get asked you know there's some i i can't explain there's some people it's like misery likes company people i never knew have nothing to do with whatsoever all of a sudden my name is being mentioned and a lot of there's informants out there talking about me like these are guys that testified against people had cooperation with government put people in jail forever and i want to make this clear not sami gravano sammy hasn't said one word about me so this is not about him not not him whatsoever but there are other people out there doing it i don't even respond to it i'm not mentioning names but you give me an opportunity to clarify i'm clarifying it so that that's it i mean i don't know how much of this is going to get into the interview but i'm telling you so that you know and uh whatever you want to put out there it's up to you this is your show all of us going out we don't really cut out anything when we do our our interviews so everyone will get to see this all right well you quit the mob in 95 but you know the columbo family is still a thing yes um now there's a luchazi underboss anthony caso right you knew him i knew castro yes okay and i guess around 2000 they they talked about merging the families to try to end the war yeah it was conversation it would have never happened nobody nobody would ever agree to that okay because then by 2002 i guess with the help of the bonanno family boss uh joseph masino they finally allowed the columbus to go back into the commission pretty that's that's what i heard again i don't have firsthand knowledge of that but my father did talk to me about that he was he was around at that time yes okay is the commission still around today i don't think it would go away i i doubt that it's active in any way um listen i i can only tell you this there was a time i read the new york post every day every day it's for one of the first things i do in the morning i'm always in touch with what's going on in new york years ago there wasn't a day that passed there certainly wasn't a week that passed when you didn't read about organized crime mafia any one of the five families all of us whatever now it's every four five six months maybe i'll see a story meaning that whatever's going on it's going on very low key guys went undercover they finally got smart if it's still going on and people are not taking the chances that they did before because you can't beat this government anymore you just can't and i think they know that so i would not see the commission meeting i think they'd have to be out of their mind and i think they know that there's so many informants out there vlad who knows who's wired up now i mean really i mean when you hit look i'll never forget uh way back when when i was in mcc and gotti was in there all the guys were in there willie boyd johnson i had a i had a uh relationship with willie i always shy locking money with him i had probably a hundred grand that i gave him and vito guzzo on the street got along good with him but he was a gaudy guy and god he knew i was shy locking with him he said okay when we find out he was an informant for 25 30 years i was on the seventh i think it's the seventh floor in mdc willie boy was behind the glass that's a bad sign when they got somebody behind the glass that's where a lot of the informants were and john had sent word to me try to talk to willie see if he's really an informant well he's behind a glass i couldn't really talk to him but i used to hold up a piece of paper willy is it true but as a guy 30 years how do you know who today who who's talking to the government you don't know you know so i mean people got to be out of their mind if they're not very very careful and go undercover if they're doing anything they're crazy because they're going to get caught okay so then at one point uh andy russo aka andy mush ends up taking over the family that's the that's the current talk uh now i wanna i wanna make this clear andrew russo uh i love andrew till today he he was my first captain always treated me well um i have nothing but good things to say about andrew i don't know what's going on with him currently i know he did a lot of time i know he's home i heard he's he's just living his life um and he was junior's first cousin okay because they're saying that i guess he was the acting boss from 94-96 but then i guess in in the 2000s he took over again again i think it gets kind of dicey and then and then from 96 i guess ali boy became the head of the family i know ali was running things for a while yes when he was home yes okay and then in 2011 uh uh andy russo uh benjamin castellaso uh richard fusco they were charged with murder narcotics trafficking and labor racketeering so you have this whole other big set of arrests that's happening with the colombos well you see you're proving my point it's just i mean this life is in a lot of trouble you know people got to be and this is this was the reason for me walking away because look you got to make a decision i'm going to go to jail for the rest of my life because that's what's going to happen or for a good part of it my family's going to be destroyed and for what look now i want to tell you this the one disagreement i love my father you know he passed away in february 103 years old i love my dad but we had we had a an ideological problem and i said to him dad what you don't understand is your involvement in this life has destroyed our family my dad would never admit to that he blamed it wasn't my fault because i was framed i said but dad you weren't framed because you were a doctor a lawyer or a priest you were framed because you're a street guy and your profile became very high and as a result the family was destroyed i mean look sister dies of an overdose of drug my brother drug addict for what 25 years becomes a federal informant against my father and other guys my younger sister dies a cancer my mother's a basket case when she when she finally passes away in 2012 33 years without a husband what that woman went through forget it she wasn't all there so i said dad i don't want to do that to my family because i just don't now he we had a real disagreement did my father go along with the contract on my life he probably did because you know if i was going to be an informant then that's the rules you don't do that i mean i heard he put a he put a hit out on my brother and i know that you know when my brother went against him do i believe it yeah i do do i think my dad would have pulled the trigger i don't think so but i don't know that he would have stood in the way because he was too much a product of that life it meant my dad's legacy in that life meant everything and you know people have criticized me well you didn't do nothing enough for your father towards the end well listen you know i mean we had a real ideological difference for 25 years i fought for my father's release i'm the one that got him out on parole i did so much but you know people don't know you know there's so much this this life is so destructive to family and to relationships and unfortunately it came between me and my father in a way but i would ne i never did any hurt to my father never spoke about him never said anything bad and i i won't till today just telling the truth we had a difference in our our family situation i'm not saying he didn't love his family but he put his life before his family 100 percent well i knew the story about your dad putting a hit out on you but i didn't know the one about uh your brother uh but your brother actually took the stand against him and put him back in prison yes my brother my brother actually put him back into prison twice he was the basis of one of his uh parole violations we didn't know it at the time but then it came out afterwards and then yes he he wore a wire against my father and put it and testified in trial and put him back in prison people sometimes people think it was me that did that wasn't it was my brother you know but my brother you know he had a drug problem all his life i mean he was he was just a mess and and he'll tell you mike our family was such a mess we were all so screwed up i didn't know you know my left hand from my right hand and it's true in a way well did you know uh reynolds maragni no okay so i guess in 2011 i guess this was the capo one of the capos yeah reynold moragi ended up wearing a wire uh for the fbi uh to gain information about uh thomas uh gioli's role in the murder of tommy joey you do know yeah we met i i don't know him well because again you know tommy kind of came into power after i was gone i mean he was he was running the family for a while but you know you mentioned something else you mentioned his name he just glossed over joey messina boss of the bonannos i knew him very well became an informant while he was in prison with a huge sentence so i mean who do you trust anymore you know i mean and he's an old-timer a lot of guys are saying oh it's all the young guys can't handle it no it's a lot of the old guys that flipped a lot of the old guys and uh i was shocked when i heard that joey messina i was shocked i'll be honest with you he was already doing a lot of time the case i'm talking about was thomas jolie's role in the murder of william catolo aka wild bill yeah uh did you know bill very well yeah we were we were in the same era he was during my time yes okay and uh this guy was known for committing a bunch of murders allegedly again i i didn't have much to do with him so i don't know okay wild bill or billy fingers uh was he considered one of the crazy ones in the crew or just a regular guy yeah you know i didn't see him that way no he wasn't considered that way i mean at least during my time i mean i knew him well we were in each other's presence quite a bit um i didn't see him that way i liked him you know he was a nice guy well uh in march 7 2019 uh carmine persico finally died in prison yes this is a guy that put a hit out on you when you find out that he died was it like a sigh of relief or sadness or or nothing or what happened you know vlad let me let me let me put it this way i knew i liked junior i really did i liked him i knew when i walked away that i was going to have trouble because i took an oath and i violated my oath just by walking away and by talking about the life not necessarily putting people in trouble but by talking about the life even though the there was nothing more to learn because we got so caught up between surveillance and informants and wiretaps everything you needed to know look i'm going to answer this so just bear with me when john gotti's case came down we had the same lawyer he had bruce cutler i had john jacobs angelo ruggierio was in the lawyer's office listening to the 000 hours of tapes that were as a result of the of the bug in rogerio's house and and the uh the apartment that john used to sit over the ravenite right there was so much information on those tapes about the life about the structure about people names being mentioned there's nothing more the government knows everything they know everything so you know the life was falling apart so i knew when i walked away that junior was going to be very upset with me no doubt and i knew that the right thing to do with somebody who walks away has put a contract on his life according to our life the oath that we took so it wasn't a surprise to me wasn't how could how dare junior do that i knew that i was going to face that that was with the consequences but i also had a plan on how to defeat that i'm moving out to california you're not going to call me into a room and blow my brains out that's not going to happen you're gonna have to come and chase me and find me and i'm aware of this i'm alert i know so i knew i was gonna face that so no i can't say i was mad at junior the same way i wasn't i was i was hurt by my father going along with it it was you know in a way that was devastating but i also understood it and i forgave him for it i know that sounds crazy my wife thinks i'm nuts when i say that but but i was so much a product of the life that i got it i understood it well persico died mm-hmm uh i felt bad when he died honestly i mean he did 30 some odd years he did most of his life in prison let's face it yeah but you know yeah i felt bad honestly well persico died uh the acting boss alfons persico is doing life in prison yes and the last known street boss uh andy russo is in his 80s correct so they don't really know who's running colombo these days no they don't i don't think they really do i don't know look andrew is a very smart guy can tell you that very smart very capable and like i said i loved andrew and until today and um obviously we don't talk but i love them i mean i i left on good terms with andrew yeah i mean uh it seems you know i mean there was recently even you know last year in october of last year uh capo joseph amato along with daniel capaldo and thomas uh scorcia were indicted uh over you know extortion and loan sharking so you still see colombo guys in the news sometimes and getting getting caught up so they're still around but it seems like they've just gone a lot more quiet than they used to be well listen if they didn't then nobody would be around they'd wiped everybody out but uh i don't know look you know if the government continues to put as much pressure on that life as they did in the mid 80s it'll really be in trouble it'll go away i don't think that's the case because now what's the government you know terrorism and cyber crimes and things like that but um they haven't totally walked away from that you know investigating that life but it's just different it's different it's not the same let me tell you the golden era of my former life was from the 50s to the mid 80s that's where the that's when we had it going on no doubt about it and even sami the bullet tell you that that's when we had it going on and then mid 80s it started falling apart it it i don't think it'll ever come back well you're a trump supporter i i am a trump policy supporter absolutely i think his agenda for america was the right one no doubt okay and i remember you made a video on the eve of the election uh ultimately he ended up losing uh he lost the popular vote he lost the electoral college uh the final electoral electoral college votes have been tallied and he lost but not according to him he still feels like he won you know there was uh you know when i interviewed johnny russo he brought up this uh this conspiracy that the philly mob had like 30 000 fake votes or something like that we actually looked up the story it's based on on a fake news site essentially uh pretending to be a real news site but it was a fake news site you know skinny nikki the guy runs philadelphia mob no i'm not familiar okay they paid him three million he's flipping on them he delivered the they delivered him 30 000 blanks and they paid guys thousand dollars an hour overnight to fill them out how stupid they were that morning they delivered thirty thousand dollars on thirty thousand ballots not one of them was for trump how do you have thirty thousand millions idiot at least give them a thousand two thousand got two other cities all this evidence is at the supreme court nobody else because they know the media ain't going to help them johnny russo decided to jump on that i knew i knew it was a fake story and he jumped on it you know what what does that say we we left it a little we left it in the footage but we didn't title it around that because i didn't want you to youtube to take our our channel down right and so forth exactly um you know do you feel that uh that trump got robbed or do you think that he lost fair and square you know you know i'm so cynical about government operation to begin with that let's put it this way so i do believe i mean i think it's evident that there's been some irregularities and i think a lot of it is caused by covet and the write-in votes and things that happened i can't say that that caused trump to lose the election i i mean i can't say that um you know look as far as i'm concerned he lost he's not the president anymore and joe biden will be uh taking the oath on the 20th of january so that's the way it is i mean i'm accepting it and i think trump is probably accepted at this point but look here's what i say about trump for four years this guy is under under severe attack every single day like nothing i've ever seen before you know and you we all have to admit that you know so he's in a and he's a new yorker he's fighting back all the time he's always on the defense always on the defense always on the defense so i think now he feels okay no matter what this was stolen from me at three o'clock in the morning i was ahead and we wake up and i'm behind and i think he's going to stay on that forever and maybe he's i don't know vlad i don't know i mean i you know people send me information say all of these things that happened and but nothing's been proven yet so if nothing has been proven we have to accept the fact that trump lost and biden is the new president and believe me i'll take hits from this from the trump side and if i would have said something else the blind side will come out you can't win with this thing i know but look i feel i feel bad for trump in a way because the guy the guy took such a pummeling for years i will say this i i do think it was i think the media is terrible the way they're acting in this country i mean i really do i mean you know if a story is a story just let the story come out let people deal with it and think about it what they do but don't hide it you know don't create stuff that's not what the media is supposed to do they're supposed to report the news period good better and different that's what irks me well you're someone who's been prosecuted by giuliani who you know for many years now when you see giuliani being trump's main lawyer and and bring up all these cases all of which were struck down you know just lose case after case after case after case does that kind of amuse you a little bit or or what well you know it it is it is kind of amusing you know i mean i guess they got to really believe it though i mean giuliani was a good prosecutor let's face it um you know would he be doing this if he didn't believe it was true you know i don't know but he also is a smart prosecutor well uh you were known as the yuppie don yeah i hated it but yes when i read that recently i said okay you clearly did not pick his own name for yourself heck no i don't i don't know how i got that name but it stuck and i didn't like it uh sammy the bull has a new podcast yeah checked it out i did i haven't actually well me and sammy have been talking uh-huh um you know we may or may not do something in the future but i've talked to him i've also talked to his son i think he's a great storyteller i think he tells it the way it is and look there's no denying who sammy was and um you know i as far as i know story is accurate i think he's doing a good job yeah yeah i got to check it out i've heard good things about it yeah i know it's good and uh listen sammy's 75 years old and uh you know he's a grandfather and a father and you know he's calmed down in his life and he's trying to do the right thing i think he is yeah i agree interesting guy like i said we've had uh we had a couple of conversations we've had at least one conversation that i can remember yeah very interesting guy yes uh you know i ended up doing an interview uh with someone that you know uh mike tyson yes uh i don't know if you've seen it out there we actually had the boxer zab judah uh do the interview no i didn't see the interview but uh yeah i'll check it out yeah mike's a very interesting guy i like my really interesting guy i like mike a lot also you know the uh the level of honesty where he's basically able to you know because although i didn't do most of the interview myself we laid out all the questions and he admitted to everything he didn't try to duck any questions he didn't try to say that's not what happened from the drug use to the throwing away the hundreds of millions of dollars to um just the mistakes that he's made himself along the way was was extremely interesting you don't see too many people that would really admit to their faults to the level of mike tyson yeah i don't know if there's any more honest guy around than mike i mean he is you know he's got no filter he just says it the way it is but he is he's really as honest as as they come and i really respect him for that you know i really do um and you know i'll be i'll be getting together with him pretty soon i did the hot boxing thing with him too it was a great interview we had a good time and he lives here in newport beach one of his places so um you know i got friendly with a couple of people around him also but he's a great guy well at one point mike got a little annoyed with me because i hopped in and asked a couple questions at the end and um you know off camera he was asking me about a lot of the street guys that i interviewed like the the key feedi you know who's involved in tupac's murder or this guy brian glaze gibbs he was this kind of gangster slash hitman uh from brooklyn that i guess mike knew uh growing up so one of the questions i asked was hey you know it seems like you know you're cool with a lot of street guys and uh mike was like what do you mean by that oh and it was sort of this moment like i'm like well it seems like you you know these guys what are you trying to say here you are this multi-millionaire and you know it seems like you've always been attracted to the the guys that are still on the streets to a certain degree do you think that's a fair statement you're never attracted to them well not attracted to them but i mean you like having them around you you're friends with them and you mean they're like handing them around i'm just asking dang i like you think i'm friends what do you think you think i like having them around well you just spoke nicely about zip so i just yeah you know who don't know these guys are when you talk what do you say about me i'm gonna speak whatever i am right but no those guys are those are the guys that when i'm whoever i am is a nobody i mean those are the guys that live in the same building with me they give my mother salt or sugar if they need a milk and what was actually funny was um i was interviewing uh a comedian who's a regular on the show of faison love and he compared it to the goodfellas scene the the joe fisher funny how oh what do you mean what do you mean funny like what a clown for your amusement like it was like one of those kind of moments where you're like it was it was just like that you know i felt like you know being in that joe pesci scene like okay i'm trying to explain my way out of this without things going completely left but uh mike is still mike yeah fortunately uh you were on zoom with him right or he wasn't no no we were no we're right there he's in the room okay yeah mike is uh he's great you don't want to get on his bad side and by the way those scenes from uh goodfellas like the the whole you know funny how or the you know the whole shine box situation was that totally made up or those based on actual situations no i was ad-libbed uh peshe was great at that he uh yeah i mean look pressure was around guys so he knew but he's great yeah he had lived that that wasn't in the original script no way really no way oh wow okay yeah i mean not like okay i'm not saying the scene wasn't there that scene was there but the dialogue they improvised that no doubt okay right because you had your character played in goodfellas yeah there there was a michael franzis you know in one of the bar scenes right uh i mean when you look at all the guys out there that have played mobsters from de niro pesci uh pacino and so forth who do you think really has played it the best i think pacino is to well you know i i actually did a uh a youtube segment on this you know i think let me go in order i think armando asante um was brilliant in hbo's gotti movie i thought he was brilliant played the role tremendously i think anthony quinn brilliant played neil de la croach brilliantly um joe pesci i mean he captures that kind of guy like nobody else can capture he's brilliant pacino in uh donnie brasco with lefty guns lefty ruggiero brilliant i mean these are my favorite you know and i gotta tell you you know i am i'm doing a segment on the sopranos i never really watched that show when it came out sporadically i would watch it but i i watched the first season and i'm into the second season and uh tony soprano i mean gandolfini just killed he played brilliant role in that but he really did and i'm seeing it now he was brilliant so i mean those are those are my guys oh yeah i mean sopranos was was one of the great uh tv series of all time period period period so so well done and uh you know when you watch that show and you watch the first season pretty accurate yeah you know a lot of the yeah the dynamics was pretty accurate i told you you know what i what i believe is that the dysfunction of the family to me was the highlight of that show you know to show how families are impacted by members of that life and um you know i mean i related it to my own family without a doubt so and i think most you know families that have somebody that's involved in that life you know turn out the same way so um but yeah it was it was pretty accurate i mean the way he conducted himself and his crew and the family dynamic and yeah it was pretty accurate yeah still love it one of the great series man i love it absolutely and you're right they show like a human side of it because you know you have a tv series as opposed to just a movie you could actually show a lot more relationships and a lot more interactions than you can in you know an hour and a half exactly on the screen well michael franzis uh always a pleasure uh seems like you're doing great uh you know as i was going through my notes and i looked up your age and i said 69 i'm like okay maybe this is just a typo and he's going to tell me that it's off by 10 years or something but i worry at 69 you look great you sound great uh you know you have a stable life you have a big family um you know unfortunately you lost your dad but he didn't live too 103 years old 103 that's right he outlived everybody no doubt outlived everybody uh i wish you all the best man happy holidays i appreciate that same to you and i'm sure we'll get together again yes sir until next time all right thank you bye

Channel: djvlad

Views: 294,830

Rating: 4.826993 out of 5

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Id: X4MZtbdZzOE

Length: 92min 38sec (5558 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021