[Music] [Music] you okay thank you very much I'm I'm uh first up so I thought I I talk a little bit about what I did how I got into that and uh then Angelo will talk some personal experiences and hopefully we'll leave some time for some questions so back and forth rather than making this a dialogue we have like a monologue which I think is we should have a dialogue not a monologue um I wanted to talk about a couple different things the most recent book I did is called God's rules and it was the first chance I got to write about New York and I wanted to write about New York because it's a it's a bigger stage a bigger platform but it's basically the same story what is it is the story of the demise of an Infamous institution the American Mafia it's the American Mafia Coen ustra is no longer what it was it's it's kind of a shell of what it used to be but it's still if if you're going to pick the major leagues New York is still the major league so I jumped at the chance to get involved in write a book about John Gotti Jr and John aight who was U an enforcer for the Gottis and who became a government witness like so many of these guys do and Angelo has a different spin on all of that but um a light was interesting on a couple different levels one he grew up in Queens but his parents were Albanian so he could never be a made guy he but he became a major player for Gotti Jr and the stories he he tells um basically put the lie to this whole myth of John Gotti the godfa Gotti senior The Godfather the Dapper Don and the son Gotti Jr I mean it wasn't about honor and loyalty it was about as always about money and treachery and deceit it's just on the New York stage it's played at a much much higher level than the same story that played out in Philadelphia uh so that's the reason that's the latest book and and uh i' be happy to talk about that in that experience the interesting thing about a light he spent some time down here in South Jersey living in Cherry Hill and then in Vorhees um and then he went on the run and he went on the run and he was I guess almost four years and it's been my experience the guys in Philadelphia when they go on the Run they go to the Poconos and Atlantic City this Jersey Shore it's like the edges of the universe you can't go any further because you're going to fall off South Philly is the center and that's where you go when John a went on the Run he he went to Amsterdam he went to France he went to Spain he went to Italy he went in and out of Albania in and out of Cuba and he ended up settling in Brazil in Copa Cabana was kind of uh the girl from EPA be meets Good Fellas and he had a very good life down there for about six seven eight months was finally arrested down there and then spent two years in a Brazilian prison fighting extradition Brazilian prisons are some of the most notorious in the world and the book the first chapter of the book opens with kind of a graphic scene of his struggle his struggle to survive inside the Brazilian prison um the thing about writing about organized crime and I want to talk a little bit about that I mean I got involved because back in 1976 now a lot of you folks weren't even around back in 1976 that's when the casino gambling referendum for New Jersey was first proposed and the pitch back then or the question back then as they debated that was would legalized gaming and they never called it gambling would legalized gaming bring the mob to Atlantic City now the answer was the mob already was in Atlantic City but I was sent down there to cover this whole Grand experiment and I spent about eight years in Atlantic City I saw the openings of the first seven or eight casinos and started to write about the mob in the context of the casinos and then segwayed into more and more mob reporting and I was fortunate to to get involved in writing about organized crime in Philadelphia at probably one of the most interesting periods in the Philadelphia mob's history uh began with the murder of Angelo Bruno in 1980 and that if if you track it back I mean that was kind of the beginning of the end and it's kind of just been swirling downhill ever since and if you think about the Philadelphia mob the Philadelphia mob is in a lot of ways a microcosm of the American Mafia in any city in America what's happened here has happened all over the country in terms of rco prosecutions in terms of very high-tech electronic surveillance and in terms of the death of omerta the Code of Silence if that ever existed and if if Men of Honor ever existed I think it disappeared two generations ago and Philadelphia probably more than any of the crime family had more Cooperators Men of Honor who flipped and became cooperating Witnesses and who lived to tell the tale you know there's a great story about back in the old days uh alberan no relation as as best I can determine was head of murder murder Incorporated in New York and there was a guy named Abe relis who became who flipped and was going to testify against the mob and murder Incorporated which was Anastasia's organization and ab real is his nickname was kid twist he was being held in protective custody in the half moon hotel in Coney Island before he was supposed to testify at this trial and mysteriously the night before the trial a realist took a header out the sixth floor window landed on the pavement and and died and nobody to this day can tell you exactly how that happened the detectives weren't looking or didn't know and the the the the word in the Underworld was abrel as was a canary he could sing but he couldn't fly I mean that's what happened to guys that cooperated back then you had a Target on your back and more likely than not you were going to end up dead today that's not the case today you go into the witness protection program get into a got a new life get a stien from the government and you can turn your life around if you want to a lot of these guys can't turn their lives around look at Sammy the bulano testified against John Gotti Got a sweetheart deal because he gave up what the government wanted they were so it was a crusade to get John Gotti because he had become the face of the American Mafia Grano got the deal five years in prison goes to Phoenix Arizona and what's he doing he's dealing ecstasy he's back in in jail again because Sammy the bull could never stop being Sammy the bull that becomes these guys identity their life it's who they are Angelo who's going to talk to you later is one of the few guys I know who went through a lot of the same things and was able to turn his life around and it takes more guts to do that takes more guts to do what he's done than it does to do what some of these guys have written about these Witnesses and don't get me wrong I I Angelo and I have a different view on the guys that cooperate I think it takes a lot of guts to do what they did and they give up a lot but they also get something in return Angelo's done it all on his own but in any event I mean what's happened to the American Mafia is Rico prosecutions high-tech electronic surveillance the death of omerta and we're seeing the demise of the organization it's no longer monolithic that's why Sammy the bulana could go live in Phoenix Arizona nobody's going to go come and and look for him it doesn't have that that far-reaching grip that it used to have guys can can disappear if they want to disappear I know guys in the witness security program all over the the country and they're living quiet peaceful lives I talked to Nick caramandi not that long ago he's one of the first Cooperators in Philadelphia caramandi is living in Middle America has been for almost 30 years he testified in the 1980s he's in his late 70s now and he's miserable and the last thing he said to me when I talked to him is if I could have it to do over again I wouldn't do it because you lose your identity you forget who you are and Kandi seeing all the guys that he sent to prison coming home now and I think if he could he would love to be back on the streets in South Philadelphia but he can't his world is turned upside down it's funny I mean there's there's you know guys do it for various reasons and and I understand the Dynamics of it and the government takes advantage of it and it's the way the system works you know you got to make a deal with the devil to prosecute and win cases you if you got a conspiracy you got to have a conspirator to get up on a witness stand and tell you what that conspiracy is or the case is not going to work so we've seen it again and again in Philadelphia the last couple cases have not been as strong or as good as the original cases from the 80s and and the 90s but it's the same process it's the same thing over and over again the other thing from from my perspective as a writer and the Philadelphia crime family when I was covering it was probably one of the most dysfunctional mob families in America kind of The Simpsons of the underworld and I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to write about the organization then it also was probably one of the most recorded crime families in America somebody was always wearing a body wire or a room was bugged and case after case after case there were these transcripts of Wise Guys in unguarded moments being themselves and from a writer you know when you write non-fiction you can't make anything up and one of the big problems in writing True Crime non-fiction is dialogue where do you get your dialogue well with me I all had all these tapes case after case tape after tape and so you have these wonderful one of the books I wrote and I think it was a signed reading here was called the good fellow tapes was based on a bug that was placed in the lawyer Salina's office in Camden for two years the FBI bugged aina's office now that's no small thing to get Court permission to place a listening device in a lawyer's office they had to get Court approval to do that and the reason they got the approval was the then mob boss John Stanford of Philadelphia was meeting in aina's office with other Mobsters from New York from Scranton wilksboro from New Jersey they would meet in Stanford's in Salina's law office and Stanford figured lawyer client privilege he would be able to do that and nobody would be the wiser well the feds got behind that they got the bug in the office and so for two years this tape was running a bug in the lawyer's office and that became the audio version of the big racketeering case that brought down the Stanford organization in Philadelphia and I was fortunate enough to get access to all those tapes because once a a case goes to trial all of that becomes evidence becomes public record and you get it but some of the tapes were you know you you can't make them make it up any better than it is when salvina was in his office when afternoon talking to Anthony Tony Buck Piccolo the consiliary and they're talking about got to be careful you never know who's cooperating got to be careful when you talk on the phone you never know who's listening you got to be cautious because it's just it with this technology today the FBI's always got eyes and ears on you and Piccolo says yeah I know Aus says I know what you're telling me Tony in fact I spent $500 I had an electronic expert come into the office over the weekend and he swept this entire complex and meanwhile the FBI tape is just rolling and recording it all I mean that those are the kind of moments where you say as a writer you say you know you can work with this Aina was a lawyer connected to the Mob he also was in the trash business and not for nothing was Tony Soprano a Solid Waste Management Consultant the mob has always been in the trash business and there's tapes where in the midst of this big investigation into the Stanford mob salvina is on tape complaining about his partner a guy named Carmine Franco partner in the trash business who's robbing him blind and Aina is beside himself I've lost $2 million this guy's stolen this money from me and he files a lawsuit a civil lawsuit against his partner Carmine Franco now Carmine Franco is a player with the genevas crime family in New York not a ma guy but in a lot of ways better than a m guy he's what they called an earner makes big money and he was bringing big money for the genovesi organization through his tentacles in a trash business now the geneves don't want this lawsuit to go forward it's bad for business they don't want their guy exposed so they got to send somebody down to Camden to talk to salvina and tell him drop the lawsuit and the guy they pick this is this is kind of indicative of the way mob families interact they go to a guy named Salvatore prachi who's a capital in the Columbo crime family in New York and they say to sou prachi can you go down the cden and talk to salvina tell them to drop this lawsuit and the reason that picked Sal prachi to do this is s prachi's son is married to Salina's daughter so there's a family connection and a family connection so in the midst of all these tapes of the staa investigation periodically the tape segue into discussions of the trash business and Aina bitching and moaning about how he's being robbed and and here comes s Pachi down from New York telling him s you got to drop this lawsuit you don't understand who you're dealing with these are serious people going to hurt you going to hurt me going to hurt our families Let It Go and Aus is persisting you know he's robbing me how can he get away with this and prachi says you don't understand Carmine Franco is a good fellow and Aina says so he's a good fellow he can just do this and prachi with this grally New York accent in a line that dairo could not have delivered any better Mario Pua couldn't have written it any better Pachi says s you don't understand Good Fellas don't Sue Good Fellas Good Fellas kill Good Fellas that's just the way it is you know again when you're a writer and you see that kind of stuff you say thank you thank you God so those kind of things happened again and again for me and and I want to end my presentation with just just one more quote that came from a different different tape to give you an idea of how these guys are who they are and what they're like there was um subsequent to the whole Stanford situation a guy named Raph Natali took over the Philadelphia mob along with Joey Marino and and the guys that Angelo was associated with and um Raph Natali thought he was Don corleon but RAF natal really was Uncle Jr he was kind of a a my boss in name only but he had grandiose plans all kind of plans to make money and one of the ways he was going to make money was they were going to corrupt the mayor of Camden New Jersey a guy named Milton Milan was running for mayor and the idea was they'd help Milan get elected and then after he got elected the mayor would divert contracts construction contracts to companies that Ralph Natali and his top associate Danny D would set up and they would get these government contracts and then rip everybody off and daone was the point man and daone helped Milton Milan get elected he donated 25 $35,000 to his campaign he went with him and give out turkeys to the poor and at Thanksgiving um he financed a lot of different projects to to fund the campaign and Milan got elected and after Milan got elected the mob didn't get any contracts it was kind of one was indicative of these these guys thought they were smarter than they were and and the others that people weren't as afraid of them as they thought they were but there was a tape in which daon complains about this and I used I refer to this tap a lot people used to ask me when The Sopranos were and The Sopranos I thought was a great show well acted well written and kind of right on the money because that whole idea with Tony Soprano in the middle of two generations the old days of his dad and uncle junr when things were really good and then today with Christopher and his son and they don't know what they're doing where's this institution going it's coming apart and Tony's grappling with all of that and talking to his psychiatrist and trying to keep it all together but one of the things people would ask me people of a certain age um you know I like the show but but that language is that really necessary all that cursing do they do they really talk like that and I would pull out my my notes from that that case they Danny daone was picked up on the phone a wir tap complaining about not getting the government contracts he thought the mob was entitled to and he's talking to an associate and the FBI has his phone bugged and this is Danny daone I haven't been given one contract in that City not one I'm freaking livid and hand i'm handing out freaking money like it's going out of freaking style for every freaking thing they ask me to to do in that City every freaking thing I didn't have to give him no campaign money I didn't have to buy freaking turkeys I didn't have to go out in the cold freaking weather like I did and hand out freaking turkeys to freaking people which not hanging out of their freaking noses but I freaking did it and then to be treated in this freaking way now Danny didn't say freaking and in The Sopranos they didn't say freaking but the answer is yeah they do talk that way and that's that's one of the things I think I've benefited from in writing about this is these kind of tapes these kind of transcripts which give you a look into these Wise Guys in their own words expressing just how they feel and I think that to the degree that I that I was able to develop dialogue in stories and as I said it's it's difficult to do that when you're writing True Crime the dialogue was rich dialogue was loaded and again and again I would come away and say you know what you can't make it up any better than it is so that that's kind of an overview of what I've done and where I'm coming from Angela is going to talk to you about his situation then we'll take some questions and have a a discussion hopefully all right thank you very [Music] much Philadelphia is the birthplace of our nation we got the Liberty Bell we got Betsy Ross's house we got everything we got William Penn and then we got South Philadelphia where I was born and raised so you can take all that good government [ __ ] and throw it out the window now you're dealing with the streets of South Philadelphia [Music] it was probably the baest mop town in the country during the 80s people were getting killed day after day they were finding bodies everywhere Jimmy brooms the adoro got whacked right up here on the corner right over there on the left he was coming out of the club and he got whacked my name is Angelo Lutz I'm a chef or better yet I'm a cook I was born and raised in South Philadelphia I grew up in the streets you know I went out I I worked legitimately and I worked illegitimately I hustled whatever I had to do to put a dollar in my pocket Angelo was charged with racketeering along with Joey Marino and five other codefendants racketeering involved bookmaking lone shocking extortion Angelo got a harsher sentence then probably was warranted because he was always in the news during the trial and I think it pissed the feds off and it pissed the judge off I cook for everybody from John Fran he known as Sunny Fran to lowliest guys you ever met in your life when I got out of prison no one wanted to help me so I decided to open my own restaurant and here I am today the kitchen Cil yie Cafe in colins New Jersey I'm still gambling only this time I'm gambling on myself I got a great St for people but everyone has their own agenda let's get him out of here first and then we'll work on this other ticket I got Joe squirrel he's my host you doing let me let me do the first you want to be the manager be the manager I got car and she's my manager just upsell upsell upsell upsell I'll take it to court his assets will be your assets and then I got Marty he's my business manager he's also known as the complaint department and he handles all the [ __ ] I don't want to handle another Jam I've met people from New York New Jersey I've met people from all over the place those people who have come in they treat me well when I say those people I mean bobsters we're here at culinary school South Philadelphia I also have an internet cooking show which could be seen via philly.com which I do with Marty Hall that's called cooking with the kitchen conso area wow I don't want to go back to jail I don't want to go back to the old ways I just feel that I can make it I I need my money I got Wolves at the door every day here because of what happened in the past every day is a struggle I don't know how I'm going to pay the bills in here but I just do this is this is the lock this is what we're looking at be it baby we going to have the French doors over here we're going to have seating on this side I'm trying to get this done that done go get pasta you want saus it's all about deadline you got to focus a little bit business was bad [ __ ] you pay me St away from the casinos are a bad I'm going through the door and I'm not going to leave until you WR in my check I can't deal with the personality today okay that's it you're an ass [ __ ] you know that if he goes back to his old way of life I will personally kick his ass take the [ __ ] milk and put the chocolate syrup in it that we use for the desserts I mean what's the [ __ ] difference I mean it's a there so [ __ ] stupid in that restaurant how you doing my name's Angelo Lutz as you could tell from the video that was uh produced about uh about 3 years ago George yeah I think three years ago um got produced um in Collingswood a gentleman walked into my restaurant with a doctor friend of mine Nick toachi and at the time he had a show on uh Discovery called All-Star Brokers and basically what he did was he went around and got sports memorabilia from all over the country like Magic Johnson wore this and Larry Bird wore that and people would auction it off and that was what his show was so uh this gentleman happened to be a reformed bookmaker Jewish individual from um New York and what he decided to do was like anybody else he's going to go into the production business so he came in we start talking and uh he popped up about $25,000 to produce that and uh we we pitched it out there to the reality shows and everything like that but um nobody was biting um post Mickey blue eyes and everything else with shows and um cooking wasn't what it was but we gave it a shot and um you know that's just it as far as that goes that was another dream of mine um you know we're going to have a reality show and you know just didn't work out so first I'm going to sit down a little bit so I want to apologize to everybody I'm not going to be walking around as much cuz getting ready to get a left knee replacement so I can't stand that much so I first I want to apologize up front Okay so I was born and raised in South Philadelphia I'm 52 years old God willing I will be in November um I grew up at 15th in Shunk in South Philadelphia I um played baseball and hung out at the boys club and went to some grade school and some high school with um some guys um downtown we were all friends um actually I went to high school with Joey Marino I played baseball with a few other guys and um you know it is what it is in South Philadelphia you grow up you hang out together um I think one of the most important things you need to realize about me is I love the gamble gambling was everything to me I didn't care about anything it was all about gambling I mean I was in sixth grade at St Monica selling football pools I mean and taking $3 bets from guys you know on games and and hosting a poker game I mean gambling was everything to me I loved gambling and um you know they have a saying in Gamblers Anonymous that um it leads you to either prison insanity or death so I got two of those conquered already third one I'm just not dead yet but that's where you caught in the addiction and the grips of the addiction with gambling are the things that happen to you so um went to school at St Monica parochial school I was an only child um you know I I G I always joke around and say I gave my mother and father enough grief as if they had 20 but uh I was an only child who went to St Monica from St Monica I went to Bishop Newman which became St John Newman um back in like 82 we were the first class actually in 81 to graduate St John Newman they just switched it over he had gotten canonized so um when I got out of high school um I got a job worker for reli iance insurance company at like 15th in JFK making I don't know what was minimum wage then $6 an hour or something like that and um you know I was working there and you know my father always wanted me to go to college and um just didn't want to go to college I didn't think it was just not you know wasn't what I wanted to do but um back then when you took the SATs I don't know how it is now back then you used to get a perfect score was 1,600 used to get 800 for the math and I guess 800 for the verbal whatever it was so uh I got 1510 so um I got accepted to the Wharton School of Business chose not to go want to go work for the insurance company after I was at the insurance company and it was really like on a bet like you couldn't get into war you couldn't get into pen and I got into pen it was just to prove it to someone body um so I went to Temple did two semesters at Temple and I'm still paying off my student loans from 1981 CU I just keep getting deferment and can't pay and limited income I actually still paying off those those loans considering that I even spent eight years in jail um I withdrew from both sets of classes you know both semesters and got all incompletes and everything else it just wasn't for me so um I decided you know what I'm going to go down to sure and be a g a casino dealer in Atlantic City so there was a place called Casino schools Incorporated so I went down there I fed you know pied to the school and you paid and they taught you had a deal Blackjack and craps and everything else so I became a blackjack dealer and while I was waiting for my license to get approved to work down there I took crap so I had two games so it makes it a little bit easier for you to get a job if if you can do two games because you're a little bit more valuable to the casino so I went down there and uh I start dealing at the time it was at the Playboy that it had just switched over to the Atlantis so one of the things I realized and I have always had this Keen ability to find ways to make money was that most of the dealers in the casino were either alcoholics drug addicts or total degenerate gamblers like myself what's the obvious thing to do I never dealt drugs I never did drugs probably looking at you know maybe one of very few people that could tell you I never even smoked a joint it just wasn't for me but um I decided to open up a book sports book so one of my friends who ultimately became one of my codefendants gave me what they called the 50% book which basically meant that um you turned in bets to me I wrote your bets and at the end of the week if uh you guys cumulatively lost $1,000 I kept 500 and I turned $500 into the house but if you cumulatively won $1,000 they would hand me the $1,000 to pay you guys but before I could earn any money back you guys would have to lose a total of $1,000 so just say the next week you guys cumulatively I pay just a th000 the next week you just lose 2,000 well the house gets their money back then we split the extra thousand so I had gotten a 50% book and we were betting you know we were betting other guys down there and guys were betting with us so ultimately what happened was a kid his name was Kenny cafero I'll never forget his name he got jammed up with me and my friends and he also got jammed up with some guys from New York because there was a lot of New York guys down there also in Atlantic City it was kind of like a central point so of course we were the nice guys but the guys from New York threatened him when he could they couldn't pay him and and he really didn't ow him much more money than us and at the time I mean we're talking 5 $6,000 maybe owed them 10 or 12,000 so they really were threatening them pretty bad so what does he do he Rats on the nice guys me so he did these consensual phone taps and everything and the division of gaming enforcement is New Jersey State Police busted us me and my friend Stevie who was my partner at the time for for promoting gambling conspiracy to promote gambling and everything so at the time like you didn't catch me taking any bets but you know you find out about Discovery and all and they had tapes of him calling me up saying you know like he would do a consensual so where they would he would give them permission to tape his end of the phone call so he'd call me it's like usually like 7 in the morning like we just got done dealing at 4 o' 4:00 you come home you wind down a little bit next thing you're know bed you're answer the phone he's going I don't have yeah yeah you know you're like at on the phone and everything and um so you know going to fight the case I went out and got a lawyer you know my parents were all devastated because they were taxpaying law-abiding citizens they were you know my mother was a little 4 foot n woman from South Philadelphia my father was from an area in Philadelphia outside the suburbs Philadelphia now it's up there called Manny youngk but at the time it was West Manny youngk and you know my father was a civil servant he served in the Navy Merchant Marine he worked for the Navy as a civilian uh employee and he was basically self-taught no no education higher than high school and he achieved a lot of things in Civil Service in government service so it was like a big thing embarrassment and everything I got in trouble but I was in trouble my whole life so um you know so we had gotten a lawyer and everything and we were going to fight the charges so you know how it is when you have codefendants you know you don't know whether your codefendants are going to rat on you or they're not going to rat on you so all of a sudden this lawyer his name was David Lieberman that I had said to me your codefendants coping a deal I says nah never he'd never rat n he's never going to rat so here what had happened was he had a pretty he had a little sharper lawyer than I had I had one of these um $500 an hour Law Firm lawyers um that you know it's a big General firm and they they take all kinds of law personal injury you know they have a department for everything so you know like one of those things with 27 partners and all so um here what happened was Stevie's lawyer in talking with the New Jersey State Police they said listen we don't care whether your client wins or loses here he can win in this courtroom we're still going to pull his ticket his ticket means your 21 license it was your ticket to work in Atlantic City at the time you had to go through what was called a 21 license it was $375 to apply for it and um and I said to my lawyer well how can they do that they said because it's a civil litigation so like they only need 51% of the evidence against you it's not like Beyond a reasonable debt out it's like OJ Simpson with the wrongful death suit you know what I mean you may have got found not guilty beyond the Reasonable Doubt in the court of law but they still took their pound of flesh out of that guy and then 21 years later if you understand what I'm saying to you so I was really really F going to fight the case because I had this kid I had so much dirty stuff on this kid that he owed everybody and everything and I had a lot of guys that worked at the casino that liked me and were going to come and testify for me and um so they said look here's the deal you surrender your license and we'll drop the charges against you never charge you again and then you can go ahead and get an expungement and that's what I did so I surrendered my Casino license and they dropped the charges against me and moved back to Philadelphia had my li My record and everything expunged so like no it never happened it was like a doover so there goes my Life as a casino dealer so um I picked up work doing like these little Charities and things like that um down in a town called p in state of Maryland back in like 86 87 when all this had went down they had passed a law in Annapolis in the the the state house there that you could run these Casino nights as long as you team up with a charity and you give 51% of the profit to the charity so what you had to do was get the Pikesville volunteer fire department set up casino games in their fire in the fire hall the end of the night if you made $220,000 as long as you gave 51% of that 20,000 to the charity you could do it needless to say within seven months the the State House in Annapolis and Maryland shut that right down so we were picking up work down there in in Annapolis we were getting like 250 a night to deal plus all you could Rob was basically how we did it cuz you know they were was like forget about it you know they didn't know what they were doing we were just robbing them blind down there we were getting a pay and then we were going to all the other games like on the nights that we weren't dealing and we were just robbing and we were we were making good money and one night couple some nights we were making four five 6 thousand you know each you know between what we were doing and the next day at Laurel racetrack I was if I made 5,000 I'd lose 5,000 and won it Laurel racetrack the next day so that's just just the way we lived for months so then I got involved in um couple different businesses in South Philly flooring business you know I want to work selling carpets and then I realized and I'm always and I'm still gambling all the time bookmakers you know wherever I can gamble like Atlantic City I was allowed to go down and gamble I wasn't barred or anything so um I started to work for a carpet company at the time it was called Spectrum carpet so I'm selling these carpet you know like you learn the whole Spiel and takeaways and this and that and how you're put the P the husband against the woman and you know all good all the proper things to being a great salesman from initiating the deal to closing it and um so I realized like you know I'm selling these three $4,000 carpet deals I'm getting like $280 commission $300 commission so I started to become friendly with the installers that were coming in to pick up the rugs to do the job you know and that's how my mind works so I said to them do you just do like jobs on the side and all so then I found out where to go buy the carpets myself I started buying and selling my own carpet so instead of making a $280 commission I'd pay the installer and I'd make $1,000 Dollar on the job myself you know and that started to do that got involved in the carpet business at the same time always booking and you know still friends with all the guys I grow up with from South Philadelphia so um you know and I got in trouble a lot owed a lot of money barred from this one barred from that one and basically you know what happens is you know Kai's come and Billy at a couple times and you ow him and you just that point you're pretty much just drawn in like a tornado and it just sucks everything in so um all the guys that I grew up with their fathers or uncles went off the jail one like Nikki Crow who George talk talked about became a cooperating witness so my friends started to yield the power in South Philadelphia I mean it was just like a family business you know you go to The Butcher Shop Luigi's been a butcher his son Luigi junr is a butcher well so and so was a gangster and his son became a gangster so um at that time all my friends um started to assume where their fathers were and their uncles were but there was one problem there was this gree ball in South Philadelphia by the name of John stanfa who 15 20 years prior George has better timelines than I do was involved in the setting up of Angelo Bruno which marked like the first mob murder in South Philadelphia happened in like 79 or 80 like in many many years so I mean like I was born in 63 that happened in 8A I was like 16 17 years old when Angelo Bruno got whacked outside his house so all of a sudden after this guy John Stanford Goes On The Run and all this other BS happens Nikki staro goes to jail so um we called them Zips this Greaser with a little bit of backing from New York assumed the title and was like anointed the boss of Philadelphia South Jersey area so the only problem was like I said my friends felt that their uncles and fathers were paying the ultimate price either in death or imprisonment for this and who's this guy so here's this guy coming along saying that he's the boss needless to say mob Mo ensued I was caught in the middle of it and um the uh John Stanford um was ultimately taken down and deluded in his conversation about um this guy Elite and how he could never become a made man because he was Albanian and it didn't matter like John Stanford made anybody so he wound up making a couple guys he made his half Irish guy named John John vzy and um he wound up being the demise of the Stanford organization they tried to double cross the guy they killed tried to kill him he survived you you know and um he ultimately took them down so you know when the government took down the Stanford organization you know vacuum andus and what's left Joey Marino my friend and um all the guys I grew up with and they became like the leaders of organized crime so um but I always gambled I was always involved in bookmaking and things like that and um you know when it came their time to fall um I fell with them um John Stanford had a guy around them by the name of Ron previty now Ron was an ex- Philadelphia police officer G bad um and um he was around Stanford and when Stanford organization went down Ron previty never went down with them so there's the first red light that goes off but you had to understand the mentality of my friends and me it was just like Rob people like you know like there's a there's a line in the movie Casino when dairo is doing an naration and he says about Nikki Santoro um his Wise Guy buddy um in the um in the movie um and who's really the name of the guy is Anthony spalatro they called him Nikki Santoro in cassino but in real life his name is Anthony spalatro and he says Nikki found a sure way to win when he won he collected and when he lost he didn't pay well that was the motto down there you know um this gentleman here was a bookmaker okay and um using an example and he was taking bets so we found out about him and he's not with anybody means he's not friends with any of the gangsters downtown and he's got no connection to any of them he's just a guy that's enterprising like I tried to find the carpet guy he starts taking bets so they set him up somebody goes into him and they start betting 50 a game and they pay and 100 a game and they pay and then you know maybe they'll lose and now he gets greedy like most people get greedy so now they're betting two three four 500 a game the first week they win 2,000 he pays them the third week second week he he wins 3,000 they they win 3,000 he pays them the next week we lose 1,500 we pay him the week after that we win a th000 he pays us the week after that we use like 15,000 well we don't pay him so when he goes to get the money they tell him well we'll give you the money but you know um but now you're going to pay us 500 a week to run your sports book you know and you know right away you know what are we going to do what's this poor guy going to do who's he going to run to so it winds up to where they just now have him working for them so you went around and you found people that weren't connecting anybody and you bet into them or you barred money from them and you rob them it's where they say it's like a license to steal so if I robbed them for 5,000 as long as I turned in 2500 to my guy we're good to go but that's how it did didn't always work that way it was like well I can rob this guy for 5,000 and certain people would say well you keep 500 for yourself it's just a greed level it's just a greed level so that's why you went out and you robbed this guy and you didn't tell anybody you robbed them and you hoped nobody found out you robbed them because why you going to rob them for 5,000 when you're going to get 500 you're going to get all the grief and then when he runs to the FBI you're going to jail for $500 meanwhile somebody else has got 4500 because you can't be a you can't be a rat and rat on the guy gave the 4500 to just just the way it works so going back to Ron previty so Ron previty doesn't get snitched they get pinched rather so he also alluded to this guy ralh Natali who um I allude to is calling him Mr meoo because that's basically what he looked like Mr Mr Mago and he was the real life he was Uncle Jr in The Sopranos before there was an uncle Jr because Joey made him think he was the boss but he wasn't the boss trust me when I tell you he wasn't the boss he had the ability after you just marched the batan death march to talk to you and next thing you know you're going out there and you're marching it again the men and he had all the had all he had all the asterisms and everything that he that you know you would want this older Statesman and everything but he was a professional B [ __ ] artist is what he was and a drug dealer and uh an embarrassment uh running around with met met his daughter's girlfriend at the Thanksgiving table and the next thing you know he's running around with her and he made her a lieutenant in the mob I mean it was just ridiculous so um so Ralph brings Ron previty around so you got to remember something with most of the guys the thing that motivates everybody is money money you know what Tony Montana say you got to get the money then if you get the money you get the power then you get the women you understand so Ron starts bringing Ralph money I made this score I robbed this I did that so next thing you know Ron comes down now he's starting to hang around my friends I don't know the guy say hello to him so all they're going to do is Rob him cuz my friends didn't trust him they felt he was a rat all along but they didn't care because we were going to rob him and the funny story about it is if you read the last gangster when we were robbing Ron previty we were just robbing the FBI because they were just feeding them the money they were giving them Rox watches to give us and you know they were manufacturing truckloads of bicyles and and and and baby formula and shrimp and they tell tell him we have nickels we got a a truckload of nickels we robbed from the mint I mean and then in the midst of all that Ron previty is trying to get Joey Marino to go for a drug deal and a nobody ever trusted him so the story goes in our trial whether Joey okayed this deal or not every time if he okayed it he okayed it when Ron didn't have a wire on so they kept going back to Joey to trying to get him to talk about the deal and so it must have went down where the drugs were trans you know given to each other and it was bad quality stuff and they like step on it or whatever you know take an an ounce of something and put 10 pounds of cornstarch on it so there was like no quality to it so every time Ron would talk to Joey about it listen them guys are stepping on it Joey go get me some more baby formula H I got them watches give me them Rolex watches I'm going to put put these guys on the streets said I got four guys going to go to Corner saw the Rox watches Joey listen to me that's the you know the cocaine they stepped on it what do you got Nicholls give me baby formula like Joey was just too smart for this guy so they didn't convict Joey that in our trial which was one of the underlying things and I'll get to that but so Ron came around and we were robbing him so he comes around and he gives us these cell phones goes I got these hot cell phones so this goes how far back they were they were they were through Comcast and they were like motorolas and they were the flips so it was these flip phones and you pulled the antenna out so and then we were turn so we made a deal where we're going to turn all the work into Ron previty so Ron previty was going to be the house and we were turning them in all our work we were just robbing them they were our own pets we'd call up and call the work in we' make names up Phil 300 Joe this that you know and I'm I'm engineering I I'm one of the guys orchestrate this because he's settling the money with me with the bookmaking so here all we're doing is we're calling FBI agents there's FBI agents that are maning the phones they were government phones so we're calling in bets to the FBI and they was I should have known something was wrong because their math was never right they couldn't figure anything out I mean I was a good bookmaker I really was and I have a good way with numbers and um you know I used to reconcile books and say couple times they were overpaying me so I didn't know whether it was a I didn't know whether it was a a setup or a trap and I'd say oh no your money's over here take this you're over 2,000 and things like that so here Ron previty is all along working with the FBI and you know we're gambling and we're betting with him so sure enough we get C I get caught up in a RICO conspiracy and I'm charged with Rico um promoting gambl Ling uh collection of an unlawful debt bookmaking and along the way a few envelopes were trans you know given to me to give to other people and that constituted Aiden the betting in hobz act extortion so in other words if they said to a guy every Christmas because you're a bookmaker you got to give us $5,000 so some guy would say to me here when you saw soand so give him this envelope and I would give the envelope that constituted me being part and parcel to the extortion so I was charged with all these crimes so I'm going to get to that so windup is March 30th of 2000 we get indicted they round us all up one morning we get indicted get charged with all these different things so I'll never forget we knew we were under investigation and on numerous occasions my lawyer at the time was calling them up and said look his my client will come in if you want them to come in but they never want you to come in you know they want to make a big Roundup you know they want to go have it go on the street and have the cars and we had the Roundup and they want Dave shrat Weiser at the time from Fox 29 there rolling the camera that were rounding up all these bad guys and were fighting crime and everything and my lawyer told him at the time my father got rest his soul was dying of prostate cancer and he was in a hospital bed on the first floor I live with my parents so I was in the back room and uh they said look cuz they having a habit of just busting the door down they said look client's my client's father's dying he's willing to come in would you you know oh well we don't we don't know about any investigation which was all a lie so um he turns around and uh they called on the phone they said there was no answer then they knocked on the door so I never forget we had thought that we beat it cuz usually they'll they'll they'll arrest you like 5:15 5:30 5:45 in the morning so here they came a little bit later like 6:15 and I was talking to one of my codefendants because I usually arrested you on Thursday or Friday the reason being they'd asked for a three-day detention hearing to give you Bond so they were assured that they were going to lock you up for the weekend so they'll say to the government this is a very complex complex case your honor and we need more time to prepare for a bail hearing so you're locked up for the whole weekend and they send you to like Hudson County Jail Paya County Jail I mean like real bad places and the the hope is that they're going to flip you so um I just got off the phone with my codefendant I said I guess we made it and he says yeah yeah yeah yeah and all of a sudden my mother's hoing the FBI is here said we didn't make it B the FBI is here he goes guess what they're knocking on my door right now too so um so they came my mother says Angelo the FBI is here I said okay who is it and I looked who was a guy named John mean and that's going to be a funny name so remember that name John Manan so it's it comes up comes up 15 years later in my life so John man and this Joe who was a state police guy and all so they said Angelo they came upstairs and they said Angelo we got a uh a rest warrant for you I said uh okay excuse me gang I said what am I charged with they said well why does it matter I says yeah I said because people make up stories about you I want to know whether I'm coming back to my house or not like if I was charged with murder or anything like that you know there's an old you know what you did and you know what you didn't do you know and I knew that when I left that I knew based upon what I knew I did when I left I would be coming back but I wanted to know what I got charged with so they said the Hobs actic store I said no bodies they says no no bodies I said okay so I said to them guys I didn't even take a shower you mind if I take a shower now I was always cool with with the police like I wouldn't hey you know go after yourself this I was always nice to them how you doing would stop and talk to him I mean they were just doing their job just like George is doing his job when he's the mob beat reporter covering us so uh they said I tell you why they and he said we're going to have to stand in the room with you and in the bathroom he said but we'll let you take a shower I guarantee you you're going to be the only guy that's showered in there I said well I appreciate it in the meantime they asked me he got any guns in the house and I did have a gun in the house um I said no no no no let thank God they didn't find it that day cuz I would have never got bonded because they would have said we found the gun in the house so I said no not that I and I forgot I had this there I was holding I was holding it for somebody so um so I went out you know and I said to them guys do you mind when they taking me down I said you mind if you just handcuff me outside the house I says you know I want to walk out say goodbye to my father and all yeah no problem they were they were cool with me so um you know soon as we got outside they cuffed me they got me in the car and they start Ed well you better help yourself it's a pretty bad case and everything and I already know I'm not charged with no bodies and they said you know and they tell you like if so and so is convicted he's facing 297 years in jail yeah that's if you add all the charges up but it don't work that way you know they have they add everything up they stack them and then they run them H concurrently you never hear of anything that's ran consecutively like in other words you get five to 10 on on just say you armed assault somebody you know you'll get five to 10 for the armed assault and if you did it with a weapon you'll get 10 more years most of the time they run it unless you're a real [ __ ] or a prick and you really hurt somebody or hurt a little kid or something then they'll stack your sentences so you wind up having to do 20 so um so you know I went with it all and um I got ba I got con I got picked up on the 30th got bail on the the 5th of April excuse me I'm the only one that got bonded out of all my codefendants CU my other codefendants were charged with murders there was a few of us that weren't but and then one one guy he couldn't get Bond because he's talking about fleeing the country but um so I wound up getting Bond so I was out for about 18 months while the trial was going on and my trial started then was it 18 months no my trial started about a year later 13 months so I had the door collar around my my uh the ankle bracelet I was Bond I had to be in at a certain time I was allowed to work a little bit um and uh they uh they gave me Bond sorry $250,000 my mother put up the house for me I'm telling you I didn't have five cents I was dead broke whatever I had in my pocket today was what we spent you know you know I'm not you know the hierarchy is the one that made the money but even this hierarchy was friends with they were dead broke too so uh because they spent whatever was in you live for my friend Joey had this great motto let's spend what's in our left pocket today because we may B may not be here tomorrow to have it in our right pocket so let's just spend it so um so I went to trial and they wanted me to plead out I had an opportunity to plead and uh they wanted me to I said I'll plead the gambling which was what I knew I did I really knew that I didn't extort anybody oh no no no you got to plead the extortion I said I'm not going to plead they said well you're going to have to plead to it so basically what they wanted me to do was go on a court of law before a judge put my hand on the Bible and admit to doing something I didn't do in my heart I knew I didn't do it you know they say just take the deal but you know how many people take those deals and really don't do it because they don't want to face the consequences I said I'm not pleading to something I didn't do you want me to plead the gambling I'll plead the RICO Gamblin would have been like 2 three years in jail maybe nope I said well I'm not going to plead or you can give up your codefendant and I wasn't giving nobody up I didn't roll like that you know what I mean I feel you make your bed you sleep in it and that's what I tried to do you know what I mean I I made my bed I was going to sleep in it Whatever happened happened so we went the trial it was like a f Monon trial George covered it I was on the news every night cuz you got remember I'm the only codefendant that the media has access to and like I never met a camera that I didn't like like that one right there tonight that's my best friend I never met a camera I didn't like and um I didn't run from the media embraced it my whole life I was like the class clown always talking and everything and you know talking to people and being social and all and um what happened was during the trial I would come up with these qu whips and uh like for instance ralh Natali was testifying one day so when he was talking about one thing it was when he was talking about murders it was code but when he was talking about something else it wasn't code and all this stuff so they one night we one day we walked outside the the courtroom for lunch and the news says Angelo what did you think of Raph natal's testimony today I said I couldn't make head or Tales of it I said I didn't have my secret Mafia decot in on and there was the types of things that the media liked the quips he was always talking about when he would say about how he changed his life well that's when he was living in the dark now he's in the light he's seeing the light before he was on the dark side so my one day and he was testifying about this so on the way to court though there I would get dropped off every day because it was like rob you for $20 to park in sou in Center City at the time so a friend of mine would take me up to court so I looked my father got rested so he had just had like the you know you have the cataracts you have those big black glasses so I saw these glasses they said what are you going to do I said I don't worry about it so I put him in my jacket pocket so we're walking out the whole morning's testimony was about the light and I saw the light because I was in the dark so I walked out and I had put the cardiac big cardiac the Cataract glasses on everybody says Angela what's wrong with your eyes I says nothing I said I'm blinded by all the light of Raph natal talking in the courtroom so it that was the type of stuff I did they interviewed me that you know I loved it I loved the Limelight I'm not going to kid you but what I did do was I kind of humanized my codefendants a little bit and I took the stand in my own defense during that trial I'm probably the only guy who wrote his own direct testimony and screwed it up but on Cross forget about it I buried that prosecutor he was from South Philadelphia his name was Steve duano so um and the guy who's now the US attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania Zay meminger was on my trial he was one of my prosecutors and um like you know I had given out a I had given a um a quip one time and said that uh they said is there a mafia and I said on an interview I says if there is it's just a an am a a thought of an ambitious doctor named Bobby Kennedy or something that's kind of goofy stuff I would say so we're on a test going on the witness stand and if you know like I said I kind of screwed I came off very cocky and Brash on my direct testimony but on Cross but I said what I had to say I joked about things and all the women on the jury didn't like it especially after they heard that I buried my parents with thousand hundreds thousands of dollars in mortgage there was always Mortgage in the house to bail me out even though I would pay the mortgages they always were having to bail bail me out you know that's was really a prick you know what I mean spoiled brat I mean I'm I tell it just the way it is I don't sugarcoat it I got whatever I wanted and many of times I'll tell you today my parents should have let me get my head cracked a couple times maybe after the second time I would have realized this wasn't for me and and I probably wouldn't be here talking to you today cuz maybe when I got it cracked I might have died been in a coma or I just went and of kept going on the train the way I did so um I um the first question they opened up with h do you know who Robert Kennedy is this is the first question I said yeah they said who is he I said the son of a bootlegger and that's what he was if you know anything about history his father was a bootlegger became an ambassador there ain't a bottle of Canadian club today that you don't buy that the Kennedy family don't get a royalty on I mean that's the B the bottom line with this family and that's the kind of answers I gave at one point I kept saying well you know Steve and you know Steve I would call him Steve so finally after about 15 20 minutes of he goes Mr Lut you keep calling me Steve he says I want a clarification for ladies and members of the jury here we're not friends I said well you know how it is Steve you grew up in South Philly I grew up in South Philly your brother was a junkie you know what I mean like you know and that's what I knew what she was and that's how it just went and I said well it's just like then all the prosecutors are sitting here I says I'm been casual with you calling you Steve you're my age I says uh Barry gross is over there I call him Barry I says uh Dave fr's here I call him Mr frie because he's a little bit older hey uh Zayn Zayn's my age how old are you Zayn these are the prosecutors answer my questions from the witness stand it was just the way I rolled and it was just the way I operated so I did really really good on my cross uh my cross and I helped my codefendants out a lot and I said the truth what I and I admitted to all the gambling on the stand and I said to them what I did I did for me the Enterprise was Angelo Lutz Incorporated I wouldn't have shared a dime with them guys at that table CU they sure as hell weren't going to share a dime with me wound up going to court you know going to trial full wing two weeks later the jury comes back my codefendants get acquitted on all the crimes of violence they get found guilty of B gambling along with me I was the only guy at the table that wasn't charged with a murder so basically I humanized them it was a compromised verdict so for them it was a victory for me it was a loss so um the day after my trial there was a witness uh by the name of uh John John vzy in the Stanford trial that I testified but his her brother his brother Billy had gotten shot and that was one of the crimes that my codefendants got found not guilty of so one of the news stations comes down the next day they interviewing me at my house and uh she lived down the street from me and she comes and she starts a fight with me they catch it on television an argument news cameras are going it's on channel 10 like on a Saturday afternoon so 2 weeks later my bill got revoked I had to go back I I think I surrendered August uh the 3D of uh 2001 I had to surrender so the night before I'm going to go to jail I'm dead broke going to jail with no money so I said let's have a party you know you're going to have a party and everybody comes and gives you an envelope give you some money so why you go to jail so I said hey let's have a party so a friend of mine bought all the food and all and uh we had a party in my house and if you've ever seen the movie Easy Money with Rodney Dangerfield they show that overhead scene at a wedding like that's what it looked like in my South Philadelphia yard jet Chopper 10 was flying there H all the new St tell you he still remember all the new stations were there and uh we had a big party I I got maybe got like $6,000 from everybody giving me presents to go away with so when I went away be honest with you I never thought I was going to get the sentence I was going to get figured I was going to get three four years so they get me locked up they put me in the Detention Center at uh I had a surrender the day I surrendered you might have thought John Gotti was surrendering at 7th and Arch the way um they had the cordoned off and everything that the the federal police were there was like crazy and uh they surrendered me I had to go to the time the Detention Center was built at seventh in Arch and that's where they housed you so I didn't care as soon as I got phone privileges I'm calling George from jail I'm talking to Dave shrap Weiser from 29 next thing you know they found ways to get me to shut me up they took my phone they locked me up in the hole they took my commissary they did everything they could to shut me up so when you go in the federal system you're going to have something called a PSI which is a pre-sentence interview pre sentence report and then they determine it's Pro done by probation were you abused as a child were you beat up did your mother put cigarettes out on your skin that all that type of [ __ ] so my PSI comes back about three weeks before before I'm about to get sentenced 120 months 10 years they're going to give me for gambling 10 years for gambling I'm going nuts now but they did everything that they could do to try and get me to cooperate they wanted me to give up my friends so I wound up fighting and getting something adjusted so I went before this judge Herbert Hutton was his name he absolutely hated me hated me and um I wound up getting sentenced to 108 months in jail tell you when that judge laid out he started sentencing me and you know you have this guideline it was like 97 to 108 so he can give you 97 or he can give you 108 or in between so at the time with the federal guidelines your the judges hands were tied whatever it was it was unless that you had a a rule 35 or whatever it was some type of motion from the government which was a f 51a or something which was a departure because now the Govern the judge then can give you less a sentence because you became a rat and you cooperated so uh so I got sentenced to 108 months we fought that I was a minor player and everything so the judge turned to my lawyer and said did you listen to those tapes I did minor player he says this man is the Chief Financial Officer of the lososa ostra because I was the only guy this Ron prevy George's dear friend it says that and I say that factiously because we joke about it says that I was the only guy that could do the math that's what he testified never met a bookmaker like me in my life never saw anybody it was just like a computer Lutz was the only one that could do the math so we're standing there and he's hammering me with the sentence he says and I sentenced you to 108 months in federal prison my I tell you ain't going to lie legs buckled my poor mother Widow crying back here by the way my father died I I got Bail April the 5th 200 in 2000 April the 5th my father died April the 10th 2000 and and in 2000 so 5 days after I got bonded my father died and uh so my mother's crying back here he goes I sentenced you to buba and I A special assessment fee of $900 due immediately a fine of $15,000 do immediately and he keeps hitting the gavel so in right away in my mind cuz I'm an novice to this I'm saying do immediately does that mean I'm never going to get out of jail unless I pay the 15,000 I'm dead broke I got a cour appointed lawyer I don't have no money so he go Mr loot looks like you want to say something I says your honor I says I says you want this money now how I I'm going to go to jail how do you expect me to pay you all this money I says I'm dead broke he banged the gavl and said do the best you can and that's a whole another story for a whole another class or whatever the penal system and paying fines so anyway I'm sorry Al okay give me five minutes just to wrap this up then I'll go with them so anyway gang um I uh so the wind up is I go to jail I Surrender I I mean I'm already there they ship me to the middle of the country because I'm an organized crime case um so my 108 month sentence I win my appeal gets turned to 97 on appeal and um I served 84 of the 97 months I earned good time so I spent seven years in jail I was sentenced to more time than um I was sentenced to more time than some of the so-called made members of the mafia and um subsequently uh my mother died of lung cancer Friday October the 13 2006 while I was in mil Michigan uh no I'm sorry Petersburg Virginia I was never close to home I had one visit when I was away in jail from a friend and that was an ulterior motive visit my mother could never come and see me she couldn't travel so um Mr Hart wants to do a Q&A so we'll do the Q&A right now up till March the 8th 2008 March 13 2008 that's when I get released from prison then I got another half hour story it won't even take that long that'll really spin your head so um open it up to you guys what's it like for you guys now like George was covering you you went to jail and now you guys see each other on this side of everything like what's that Dynamic like just from how you both look at each other now and thinking back to that crazy of Time how does that kind of dynamic I'll start off by saying that I was friends with George before he covered me you know I was like one of those guys that would talk to him because George did a good job I mean he used to try to go to as many sources as he could and I wasn't really a source another one of my codefendants um was friendly with George also so George um George would um talk to him talk to me so I was friendly with him before but the whole time that I was during my trial and while I was in jail I stayed in communication with your yeah I mean Angelo is one of the few guys I think that's legitimately tried to turn things around and I admire him for that um you know I I've heard him give this talk before and one of the things he wants to get into and we should talk a little bit about that is Second Chances and when when do you finally pay your debt and is enough enough I mean he's still having trouble with the government in terms of getting his business going and things he wants to do but that being said I mean Angelo could have beaten his case and he didn't tell you that but I'll tell you that and and just as an aside after this is over there's the last Gangster and a couple other books are out there for sale you want to get the the whole full story uh can talk about that but Angelo testified in his own defense but what he didn't tell you is there was a tap play during the trial where one of his codefendants was cackling and laughing and boasting to other guys how he beat the hell out of Angelo and knocked them out now Angelo could have got up on a stand and said yeah I did all this stuff but I did it CU I was in fear for my life and you heard why he didn't do that and his codefendant owes him a debt that he'll never be able to repay because of that so I mean I have my Angelo on a lot a lot of different levels but what he's done since he's come out I've never I haven't seen anybody else even attempt to do he runs a restaurant restaurant business is tough you got to be there every day it's a grind and he's turned he started out he saw this the kitchen consiliary that was the small version he since opened the bigger version of it in Collegewood food is great and it it's it's one of the hot spots in Collegewood nobody else is doing that kind of stuff guys know what they know and do what they do most of his codefendants back out on the streets are back doing what they did Angelo's the only one that's going a different direction with that being said are you nervous when them guys come the restaurant still friends they get check everybody else I mean as far as like the government they just took $109,000 tax lean out against me I I know exactly why they came after me I mean you know I wasn't I mean I was in a situation where uh I was embezzled from when I first started business and we never could get out of a hole so things weren't right but we did the best we could you know and they're going to get you anyway so he's never going to get the benefit of the that if they see something fun funny with the money they're going to think he's cooking the books it's just the nature of what it is so fortunate what was it like in jail no it is what it you know I just laughed um not this Sunday night but next Sunday night whoever watches the real housewives in New Jersey I'm going to be on that because Teresa's gichi is in jail right now so they came up with this three-hour [ __ ] special to pay her family some money and it's called Teresa checks in and um they couldn't get anybody to sit there and talk to the husband about jail I didn't get paid no money but it's worth the publicity to do it and I get a chance to get my point across and get some more camera time for Mark Summers my producer from Food Network so um it it was what it was like they made a comment in in the other night on there she's it's like a spa times it is what it is jail tell them the numbers when when you got out and you how to borrow money to open your restant yeah I mean well I'm going to get to that when we do the thing but um it is it's it's not that bad Jail's what you make of it basically this is the way it breaks down and it's it's cut and dry black and white blacks hang with blacks white hang with white Mexican hang with Mexican [ __ ] hang with [ __ ] you know what I'm saying um and um mostly the Italian guys just stay together irish guys will stay together it's just the way it is and every and then you have self-respect for everybody in jail and that's just just the way it is otherwise you're not going to survive I mean don't you know like it's even when you live I mean it's a throwback to the 50s down south the lunch room is segregated the black guys sit on one side the Mexicans have their tables the the Italians have a table they sit at it's like all segregated like that and that's how it is and everybody respects everybody and you just treat each other if you carry yourself like a decent person in jail you'll never have a problem but if you want to go around and Rob people and beat people and carry yourself like a punk you're going to get treated like a punk so that's what it was like in jail I had no problem in jail and if I did have a problem I knew how to get out of it how how thin of a line when you walk in during your trial the sense that your codefendants were facing murder you're out you're becoming this celebrties you know oh it drove one or two of them really really wild but did you feel the pressure of like in no I really thought I was going to win I really did I actually thought I was going to win I really thought I had a shot when I went up there to at least Pro just get them to convict me of just the gambling or see my lawyer didn't try to get or to get them to convict me of a lesser charge like a non Rico gambling so that's the dream I I that's why the feds have the conviction rate they have so well Angelo became the talking face of the month during that trial is one of the reasons that judge hammer because Angelo was always on TV Dave Tris I had M talk started I started talk I started with the trial and Angelo would be the talking because there was nobody else to go to they Tri Angelo was never they tried to silence me and they keep me so am Philadelphia there was a guy Wally Kennedy he's on KYW now he does the news he had the show called am Philadelphia so they tried to silence me they wanted me to come to the studio to talk to them so they said no they won't you're not letting you out you got to race wish place so I said to the producer I say can you send the satellite truck to my house every Sunday morning during a trial the satellite truck was at my house they'd be in the studio with like a prosecutor another defense lawyer and at his home in South Philadelphia his Cod defended Angelo Lutz they couldn't silence me and that's why the judge hammered me oh I paid it now that you see like you've done all these books do you feel that the family was better off being in as good as they were or however you want to say that compared to what's at place now with all the other crime crime Industries or whatever you want to call them today well the the mafia of the 1950s is never going to exist again so if if if that was an organization that had some kind of structure and controlled things it's probably better than disorganized crime that we have today but you're never going to have that today I mean and and one of the reasons is the best and the brightest in Italian-American Community are now doctors lawyers and Educators and the mob scraped in the bottom of the gene pool these guys the Raph natalies and those guys they weren't as smart as the oldtime guys so I understand your question but the answer is it you could never go back to that that's past and so now what we got instead of organized crime is disorganized crime you got drug gangs with big guns shooting one another you got the Russians you got the Asians you got with the remnant of Co AER everybody's out there and like Angel said it's always about chasing the buck it's always about that what side do you sit on Pardon what side do you sit on you've been both involved in both sides and you talk to these guys one onone where do you find yourself with Clean Hands you know I've come The more I've done this the the less the less glamour do I attach to this in the beginning I was kind of caught up in that whole Godfather speak most of these guys are not like Angelo they're not decent people they're thugs uh one guy who we both know came out of jail um and I talked to a member of his family I said how's he doing and he said to me a thug is a thug is a thug these guys and there's there's nothing honorable honorable about that there's nothing you're not really a tough guy when you get a gun and shoot somebody you know it's it's despicable so that that's where I see it yeah so what are you doing with yourself nowadays since the mob's not prevalent in the news or is this what you do from the most part go around and promote your books that you've written and do talks or do you have other you I retired from the inquire three years ago so I'm doing mostly freelance work and I I write for a website called bigtrial.net me and another reporter we cover the big trials in in federal court we covered a big police corruption case I covered a cabani that's interesting I mean we're sitting here talk about Marino Natali jatti if I say cabani Savage does anybody know who cabani Savage is drug dealer in Philadelphia was convicted of racketeering and murder 12 murders had six people killed from prison had a house fire bomb where two women and four kids were killed cabani Savage was a much more dangerous gangster than any of these guys that we're talking about here today nobody knows he's in jail not for life but I mean those are the kind of things I'm writing about and looking at it's it's kind of the other side of the a darker um more violent less organized Angela you said that um like the other guys really owed you for um how you handled the court case um did they watch out for your mom afterwards well I wouldn't say that they owed me I mean they they benefited from me humanizing them I don't consider anyone owes me a debt and I don't consider that I owe anyone a debt H it's like the line in the jail when Henry Hill tells Karen Hill and Good Fellas we're in here they're not going to be bothered with us we're on our own that's how it is you're on your own I had a couple of friends um that looked out for my mother a little bit and hung with her and stuff like that but my mother had a way of pissing everybody off and after two and a half years um this one fell Carl she pissed him totally off and uh it was what it was but no um n nobody and and I and proof in the pudding is uh my mother's viewing my cousin kept the book so I looked at the names the some of the names I expected to be there then they sign at the funeral you know were there but there were a lot that weren't so and that's how I judge like so and so's mother died okay I kept the book I didn't come from my mother I'm not going and that's how I do it it's got to have some yep I think a lot of kids looked uh look on this type of thing as a family they didn't have a lot of broken homes and things like that and they look at as a copal family and is joining up into this glamorous lifestyle that gets permeated through movies and stuff like that and um there's a lot more rules to follow in these kinds of families what would you have to say to them as they look to you now as what you've lived I mean you had a family and now you have a new family and you have a different Outlook well the difference is with this family family if you're that well entrenched into it you have no other family this family comes first and that's that's that's part of the rules but um you couldn't even get close to this family unless they trust unless there was some level of trust you know I mean it's just not like you know you take a straight cat in off the off the street you know nine out of 10 times when you're taking off a when you're taking a straight cat in off the street that straight cat was put there by the FBI and it's got more wires than space lab on it you know what I mean so that's basically what it comes down to but I mean it is what it is you it comes down to choices and you live to live your life based upon the choices you make just like they tell you like you know I battle with my weight you can make healthy choices you could sit there and eat the bread and butter or you could eat a salad you know comes down it's all about the choices you make all right so you're a child of the 80s right and your friends with the marinos and all that are you looking at that like as as you know Marino was his uncle was kind of running things his father his father so then as you said as you got older they kind of assumed that power position of power can you explain like how crazy that was at that time to have friends that became what you used to idolize now they were I never idolized anybody like you know it's like that movie like when Henry and I always go back to movies because I think that art um often IM life imitates art and art imitates life and uh when Henry Hill says ever since I was a kid I always wanted to be a gangster yeah you're enamored by it and you always like I mean if you know there's a picture floating out in 1983 of me dressed up as a gangster at a Halloween party and I know who's got this picture and I got the hair all done with the gray suit and the hat and everything he's waiting for me to get a television show so he could sell it to somebody I know who's got it he won't give me the picture but um it's that type of thing and you just grow up with it and it's part of like you you know your life and you know um you know you know it wasn't pretty when it happened because like I was on the Stanford I was on the other side's hit list because they couldn't find the main guys so they were going to kill anybody close to them man you know we got this guy we call him head Frankie baldino got got killed outside the Melrose Restaurant during the Stanford Marino war and he basically got killed because he was around that night you know they were going to if they couldn't get Joey they were going to kill anybody with him two times they tried to blow Joey up with a bomb and I'm going in I'm there that night I get blown up with him so that's how it was CU was he was like a rock star at that time I remember he was from the med he was to Philadelphia where John Gotti was to New York he was the quintessential gangster his picture is hanging up in my restaurant now all my friends that come in and eat there Cod defendants they just laugh because I said to one of them they were in my restaurant last night or the night before they says I said well if I would have called you up and ask you if I could put your picture on the wall because if you understand my restaurant it's all mobbed out there's murals John Gotti lucky Lucian it's all gangster theme when giving lemons make lemonade so this one F said to me no I would never let you put my picture on my wall I said I knew who to ask gold dub Joe I said can I put your picture yeah put it up he said so his pictures on the wall now painting of them where dides the food thing come from I obviously always like but um so basically what happened was I was a caterer my whole life and um you know I would do some catering jobs for the guys and at the Hangouts and all we would cook and everything and really panned out when um ralh Natali hated one of my codefendants who I'll leave nameless today and um he hated him so much that the ultimate way to get back at this guy would have been from him to get convicted and me go home that from The Trial so when he testified he really lied he lied and he didn't lie but what he said was while Angelo was nobody he was just a cook he brought food to the meetings hence I'm a cook Not a Crook that's what Ralph said and I flew with it so that's my motto I'm a cook Not a Crook so that's how all the de thing and you know stick with what you know and it was something I knew and you know it's a niche and you know found the way yeah my restaurant's real simple my restaurant is um chicken parm eggplant Palm spaghetti dishes spaghetti and seafood Linguini and seafood uh couple steaks pork tenderloins P it's it's Italian rice bowls clams and macaroni muscles red appetizer fried galamad my restaurant is Italian comfort food sole food for Italians and it's the stuff that we grew up on I grew up on as a kid my mother grew up on it her mother before her it's just the you know what we take for granted you know I'm not in I'm in Collingswood which is a big restaurant Mecca and there's a lot of restaurants on that hadn't Avenue that serve cuisine cuisine I don't serve Cuisine I serve food lots of it fair prices that's what I do it just seems to me that any you know most people who get involved in organized crime soon or later somebody's telling on somebody somebody's calling somebody I mean why are you that's going to be the outcome I mean you had a score of 1510 what happened to that 15 1510 yeah one of the big gangster that's that's just what it was I mean yeah I was intelligent right back to Bronx tail wasted Talent wasted talent I was wasted Talent that's what I was wasted Talent how big was Atlantic City's emergence with getting the gambling that's George's coing with what you got know with with the Philadelphia M I think the coming of Atlantic City changed all the Dynamics because now Philadelphia had control of something that everybody wanted and and one of the reasons Bruno got killed was Bruno was pretty Laz fair and was letting the New York families come in and get a piece of whatever and some of his guys didn't like that and the other reason Bruno got killed was you know there's this whole myth that Angelo Bruno didn't want anybody to deal drugs and stay away from drugs and and his his consiliary Tony bananis campgro was a big hernd dealer up in nework and he had to were on a sneak but what people don't realize is right right around this time what we're talking about 1978 1980 1979 uh a supper club opened in Cherry Hill called Valentinos on brace Road over there Valentino Supper Club real Swanky kind of place it was owned by roserio and jeppe Gambino they were eventually part of what was known as the the Pizza Connection they were heroin dealers cecilian Mafia guys they set up shop in in Cherry Hill Angelo Bruno was fine with them setting up sh go ahead come come on in that the first Easter they were there they went and had dinner at Angelo Bruno's house which is kind of a sign of respect you're to boss but and Angelo Bruno's guys said you know what they went and had dinner at Angelo Bruno's house you could be sure they brought him an envelope they brought him an envelope with drug money he took the drug money He's a hypocrite so that's one of the reasons that capgro decided to take Bruno out that in Atlantic City and that when Bruno got taken out then everything just started out of control so Atlantic City had a lot to do with that it was but it it keeps coming back to what angel said in the beginning it's always about money it's always greed it's always greed Angelo Bruno had more money than God and he didn't need any of the the new stuff he didn't want to get involved with drugs not because he was oh my God drugs are bad you didn't want to get involved in drugs because you're dealing with guys you can't trust and you also got the law all over you you book maker nobody nobody cares so Bruno was L fair I don't need it but the guys around them wanted it and that's one of the reasons he got killed probably the reason he got killed and then 20 years later we're talking about Stanford Stanford drove Bruno the night he got killed too that's interesting thing he was the driver there he rolled down the window yeah right over here you know you said um before about uh the mafia you know they're all greedy so with Atlantic City you would have thought that being that Philadelphia was closer the the mafia would be real involved but then you were mentioning how New York mafia was real involved with the tip why wasn't there more war between the two mafias I mean when Bruno was boss everybody was allowed to come in to get a piece so there was no reason to fight because he was getting a piece of all their pieces like Atlantic City was always considered like neutral territory it belonged to New York and it also belonged just like just and also like um like in Donnie Brasco when they when they try to set up in Santo traan down there but Florida was wide open Wise Guys from all over the country in Florida Florida was like one of them wide open areas where like for instance Las Vegas belonged to the Midwest states it belonged to Milwaukee Phil baseri it belonged to the people in Kansas City belonged to Tony cardo in Chicago like you know Las Vegas belonged to to that to that to that group of guys anybody else so I'm not luxurious and I don't have cable TV you said Mark Summers as your producer do you actually have a Food Network TV show no I don't have what Mark has done is um and it's funny Mark saw that tap and uh Mark Summers made the crucial mistake of picking up the telephone one day when I called him he was real easy to find and um did it through the internet and I ever since I I guess uh when we start filming philly.com 2009 I've been calling this guy pitching a show to him I got this idea I want to do this cooking I'm real funny and I would just keep talking and talking and talking to him then finally um after I said I pitched another idea to him I said I F I promise you just listen to this picture and I'll never bother you again if you don't take it so he finally agreed to meet me for lunch and I took George with me and it was all over you know Jerry Maguire I had him at a he had me a low when he sat down and ate with me and you know lunch at Jones's in in Center City with George but what fascinated and I'm going to get into it and I was going to take me about 20 minutes to cover it the story about everything I'm going through since I came home from jail so yeah can I cook yeah Mark got me on cutro kitchen um you know we've tried to pitch and look it's you know in a way I'm embarrassed to say it but um Go Back 2010 2009 I had surgery at the University of Pennsylvania I had the bariatric surgery I had the the gastric sleeve I'm the only guy that went to jail and gained weight I came home from jail 472 lbs so um I came home I had gotten bariatric surgery I used to work at every day I got down to like 275 pounds 270 actually at one point and um I've gained about 80 lbs of it back and it's took a toll on my knee and all but when we finally he got me to Food Network I interviewed with them they love me they said I was probably the biggest personality to ever walk through the door since guy Fetti and the problem was demographic scripts female viewer 30 to 55 a 400lb guy 300 at that time it was like 340 doesn't appeal to the female viewers so they didn't want to give me show had nothing to do you know everybody thinks oh because I cook it'd become a Food Network show Mark knew all along that it wasn't for Food Network but contractually he was obligated to take me there but what Mark's taken on with me is the fact of we're on the crusade of at what time at what price is your debt to society paid and when I get into what I'm going through right now and I promise you it's an interesting story and I can do it in 15 minutes you'll understand why that's so he's basically considers himself my producer and I consider him my producer I get pitched all the time and I tell people you need to talk to Mark Summers because he'll protect me because it's a doggy dog world out there with television and entertainment and you know they all want to take a piece of his big fat ass but he's going to make sure they don't take too big a chunk and that's what he's around for anybody else you should try for yeah I was on QVC that's another story great another accomplishment that they said I couldn't do got to QVC till the inquire decided to run a story X Mobsters new racket selling on QVC lost my deal okay so anyway let me let me go real fast I can do this in 15 minutes I promise you I don't want to hold you up at long come home from jail I'm faced with absolutely nothing in poor health don't have anything going for me still friends with George still friends to a fault with Dave shat Weiser and um you know I started talking and George says to me hey an philly.com which was the video unit of the Philadelphia inquir Daily News at the time Jim Barry this guy we knew who was a mutual friend of ours and was a producer should used the word acquaintance and not friend um they're trying to do these things and they're going to do this thing called mob scene and he thinks he wants to do a cooking show with you so we started to do this and we planned this it was like a to get this thing done because I was a convicted felon and a mob guy it was like a big covert Affair I mean this made the Iran Contra Scandal look like nothing how he snuck this video thing into philly.com and got me got it got it taped and aired me on philly.com and you can go to my website and they're all little videos called cooking with the kitchen console y so we start doing these shows and I became friends with this girl Marty Hall who was a friend of George's and she was like kind of like a Martin and Lewis type thing I was the comedic part of it she was the straight person she would ask me these questions about guys I was in jail with I wouldn't want to do the answers and it would be a tongue and cheek type thing so basically in five and a half minutes I showed you how to cook something I told you who I was in jail with I told you a little bit of a story about them and that was the end of it people liked it some people liked it some people didn't caught a little heat downtown over it because one of my friends was still in jail that would really tell people to mind their own business so I was kind of treading on on thin ice in South Philly with that but I didn't stop me I kept doing it and um we got some offers to to do so one of the offers was on a guy named John Parson Pito out of New York uh Parco Productions he wants to sign me he's going to take me here he's going to do this we're going to get a TV show so like I loved it like working in front of the camera natural I love it there's no believe me it's the greatest thing in the world when they say cell phones off we're rolling I love it I love working in front of the camera camera and then like all these producers that have seen me said especially it was true with cro kitchen which you can see my episodes on my website camera loves me I love the camera so um we got to sign a contract to do this George is going to be involved and we're going to get these big Agents from New York involved so we go to a little restaurant in South phy called Mr Joe's it's across the street from Thurman's Bakery it's owned by terminy Bakery it's a little trat that they where they sell pasta dishes and panis and stuff like that so we're sitting there and the whole time I was in jail I would talk to these other guys from New York and everywhere and I would talk about how all these people like Rayos and New York uh if any of you are Italian you understand what lentils are lentils is a peasant dish it's a bean that you cook with carrot and celery Middle Eastern people eat it it's a peasant dish well lentil is get raos is getting $29.95 for lentil and Pasta in New York because it's rails so they're making a lot of money and I used to always say there's a market to be made for this so make this long story short we go eat we're Mr Joe's we're eating and and the first time I was there I said let's go there cuz I wanted to I heard a lot about it I says George this guy stole my idea cuz I saw the way the girl treated you had paninis and omelets and all fadas they called it scori omelet and I says George I can do this I can do this now at the time I'm dead broke all I got is the home which I own that my mother got rest her soul she left to me when I was in jail so I owned my home free and clear so you know forget old Do's reality that the mortgage Market imploded while I was in jail that you know before when I went to jail all you had to do is give two pay checks and you get a 20,000 $50,000 mortgage it was that easy well I didn't know that all the stuff had imploded so I said George I can do this I can do this and he's laughing at me he said do what I said I'm going to open up a restaurant I said what he said where you going to get the money I said I got the house I'm going to gamble on myself I said why I got got a gamble on some guy with dreadlocks dropping a ball and costing me $500,000 you know you know what I mean I says the bottom line is I'm going to do it myself so he left so I started looking for places so the key in the restaurant business find a place that's got the hood the ventilation because that cost a lot of money to put in so I find this place in Collingswood went out of business it was a hot dog joint called him up I said George I found the restaurant where I said Collingswood I start describing it to him he goes I know where that is I know where it is I go over and look at it so in the meantime I'm making all these grandiose plans to get this restaurant so I figur call my friend Raph up he's a mortgage broker raly Papa B he goes okay we need this what do you mean you need this now I'm on probation at the time I'm still on federal probation for three years one of the conditions of my probation was I'm not allowed to apply for any lines of credit I opened up a Walmart charge she wanted to put me back in jail the probation officer for opening up a Walmart charge so you know the mind was thinking because believe me I'd have put together all the bogus documents and done it but I didn't want to go back to jail because that's how much I believed in myself so um I find this place and I'm going to open up a restaurant so can't find nobody to lend me the money because I got no tax returns no work history I'm getting a little disability check from the government how am I going to pay it back for me I figured it was easy the house worth 200 give me a 100 if I fail go live in an apartment to to me it's a no-brainer for the bank you can't lose on the deal that's the problem Banks don't want to be in a real estate business any anymore they're going under from being in the real estate business because they gave mortgages to people that couldn't afford them so Ral finds me this saint when I tell you a saint this woman should be canonized she lent me $91,000 15.9% interest five points at the table one year to pay it back interest only loan hard money loan basically legalized lone sharing legalized it was legalized loone sharing I got eight years for that legalized loone sharing he says to me you're not going to take the deal I said oh yeah I'm taking it no I I'm I'm all in cuz I cuz I'm just that determined I'm the type of person don't tell me I can't do it because I just keep running into the wall till either I die or the wall breaks down and that's how I am so I take the deal so now I call the probation officer up and tell I'm opening up a restaurant where you getting the money I'm on my house well you better now I owe the government $144,000 $114,000 on my fine s 14436 or something like that she goes oh well you you can't borrow the money unless you pay us what do you mean so this is how nuts I was I would call up the prosecutor in the case Dave frie yo Dave cut me a break let me get the business off the ground I give you like 200 a month you know it's like I'm bordering on the street with this guy they didn't want to know nothing so let me tell you what I had to do so I started out at the table with $91,000 she took it was $1,100 month interest payment only for a year she took 10 months interest up front right off the top she took five points of that money off the top the government took $14,400 off the top by the time I left the table that 91,000 was $57,000 I lost 40% of the money at the table took my $57,000 I cleared up a couple bills I had 51,000 I started my business and that's exactly what I did because I couldn't borrow money anywhere so I started this business and I would cook and I had and I and I paid a designer and I got involved with this this friend of mine um this doctor friend of mine he had a daughter and she was about 18 years younger than me but we became really really good friends and she was like an underdog in all my life I like an underdog like her brothers would really cool her they would torture this poor girl so she sold me on this bill at Goods house he was this great restaurant person I said well look I'm going to put up the money I says I'll make you like a partner you work the business and if it shows a profit you get some Sweat Equity into it you'll get like 10% at the profit and you'll be kind of like an owner big mistake well anyway she did sell me a bull of goods uh my barometer's been off about three times since I've been home from jail that was one of the times so I got involved with her and we start running this business and nothing was she got her sister involved with me and we just go on and on and on and you know every day I'm going there sweating I'm cooking and I'm doing all the cooking myself now I'm no Chef I'm just a cook I can cook pretty good food and it's kind of like you know a guy can get up there and sing and hit the high note and a guy can throw a ball fast or hit a ball hard I'm just it comes easy to me I might mess a dish up once or twice but once I nail that dish I got it and I just start cooking for people George and his wife would come in so everybody says to me well how are you going to be successful so I was friendly to all the Press so I said I'm going to call in all my chits in other words all the people that I gave the interviews to during the trial I said I'm going to open up with a little bit of a media presence so George helped me out you got a Woman by the name of Monica y Kenny two weeks before my restaurant opened and it opened November the 10th 2010 I'll be in business five years in November she wrote this beautiful article about me moving you know opening up a restaurant called up Jen Frederick at good morning Philadelphia Fox News they spent three hours there my opening day like they all paid me back I got a lot of notoriety I had a VIP night a month after I opened more news came George covered me with mob scene with philly.com a lot of things were going on it's getting a lot of publicity people were coming in oh that's that mob guy that cooks curious what there was happening was they were coming in they were fat my my now my other restaurant was a classic little tat the it just really looked nice the girl did a beautiful job decorating it it was quaint it was really had no nothing there was no mob thing to it nothing other than the name and um I would uh you know I would come out kbits with the customers cook I I have a have a Mexican guy help me I'd say just simmer simmer I'd run out Shake everybody's hand run back in people loved it they were curious I sat 38 people but the food was good and people kept coming back and we started out with paninis and like that other place then eventually I realized I couldn't pay the rent on $12 paninis so I learned I start doing clams and macaroni and chapos and ve dishes and chicken dishes higher price tickets and um bottom line was place was too small I was turning too many people away and all I was doing was surviving and sometimes not even surviving I had a couple little things on the side going legitimately I was involved with a cleaning company I used to get a check every week I was just put all that money into my business and and in and in and in so what happened was um an opportunity arose for me to move around the corner to another restaurant something was going up for sale like or for rent so I tried to start to borrow money I wanted to get a small business administration loan can't do it I'm barred because I'm a convicted felon I can't bar small Administration money so I did what most of these businesses do today I start borrowing all my credit card sales I needed to come up with $100,000 up front and believe me the location I moved into now I overpaid but you ever know how you just want something because it's a great location I didn't buy the building I paid this guy and I don't want to use any explo lives or any freaking but that's the type of individual he was that pilt the society I paid him $150,000 for him basically to to buy his business which he had no business and close it down he married 50,000 for 6 years that I owned four more years on and then I owe lump payment there I scraped together barred from credit cards a few close friends everybody I can get a $100,000 together because that's how much I had to give him up front he wasn't budging he I'm Italian I'm an Italian American he gave new meaning to the word gree ball let me tell you that's how bad this guy is so um and I bought all his equipment and everything that was in there so I was saying to George when I move in I said yeah we'll paint I'll put some gang the pictures up I got this idea for this Kitchen conso Cafe so once again me big thoughts Big Ideas it was there used to be a movie with with the James Kagney maybe you'll remember it it wasn't angels with dirty faces I don't know if it was it's anyone he's in jail he's Cody Garrett or whatever white heat so he goes to jail and and and he says to this uh guy they call him Big Ed because he's got big why do they call him Big Ed because he's got big ideas that's me big IDE ideas no money no money in my pocket but Big Ideas So I says to George I said I'm going to hire a designer he goes that cost a lot of money I says Ah we'll worry about it cross that bridge when we come to it so in the meantime I'm figuring like what's this going to cost what's that going to cost so I hired a designer so she wanted like so much money to design what this place is going to look like so I figured worst case scenario what could she charge me a couple thousand dollar and I'll either have this beautiful restaurant that I can build or I won't have the money to build it so she chared me a couple thousand dollars and I told her my thoughts and about me and she researched me and she designed this crazy restaurant The Kitchen conso yri Cafe there's like murals on the wall with all gangsters and Me In The Middle With a whisk like feeding them at the table pictures of every gangster imaginable there's a section of the restaurant that's called The Rat Pack Lounge it's got old Martin Sinatra and everything there H we have a little itly section in there where we got the light strung like malberry Street I mean it's really really a nice restaurant so how was I going to pay for it so what I did was um I crowdfunded so what I did was I set up a crowd fund where give me $25 now and I'll give you a certificate for a sausage meatball give me 50 and I'll give you a certificate for Nanny Pasto give me 300 now and I'll give you $500 worth of gift cards at Christmas time I just Bartered with all I raised $377,000 George got Diane mastell from the inquire to run a story about me doing this I raised $37,000 more money towards the renovation in the middle of the renovation I've invented in a me a meatball made out of sausage it's called a sausage meatball it's going to be coming to Market pretty soon it's just a regular Italian meatball but the product itself is made out of 100% sausage before it goes into casing so um this guy comes from Detroit passing through town with an Associate of mine and he comes and eats at my restaurant and George Happ to be there and it's during the crowdfunding and he sees all this stuff going on sharp sharp sharp businessman he's a true shark in every sense of the world let me back up a little bit got picked for Shark Tank guess what convicted felon can't be on Shark Tank these are all the pitfalls of everything that I'm faced by as this as being a convicted felon so these guys come in and next thing you know they see the restaurant busy and all I take them around I show them the restaurant the next day I get a phone call from this guy Nick who's happens to be traveling with him he goes I think the guy's name was Keith he says I think Keith is going to give you some money to help you finish the restaurant I didn't know Keith from Adam so like when we were sitting down at the dinner table that night talking about everything I said look let's get something straight right now and I didn't know whether this guy wanted to invest in me or not I says listen I'm not Frankie Lyman in the 50s some black hip-hop singer you know singing Do op and all with a Jew business promoter where they screwed them them all them artist like Frankie Lyman back then they sell a record for a dollar they give him 8 cents cost three cents to make and they made 89 cents you know what I mean that's how it was back then I let it be known I'm not selling out to nobody so when they called me and said I said I wonder what this is going to be like so the windup was they met with me later that day and then they said the I talked to another friend of mine Gerald and I said what do you think of this idea he says dude he said you just got turned down for Shark Tank would you be willing to open up your books to these people I says yeah why not so I said to my business manager Marty he's still around I said Mark can we open the books he says yeah you got nothing to hide so we opened up the books and everything within seven days I had $150,000 wired into my account on a handshake it was strictly a business loan and at 7% interest my lawyer said find that guy again how you got commercial money at 7% and that's what I did I got a six-year $150,000 loan so between that infus of money the 30,000 I raised I was able to open up the kitchen conso Yuri Cafe uh October the 23rd will be two years that I opened up the new restaurant but every day I'm faced with the pitfalls of being a convicted felon and where my past and the choices I've made keep coming back to haunt me now I love the gamble I always did so when I was at the old restaurant go back maybe three three and a half years ago some nights I would leave and I lived in South Philly at the time I would travel to Harris and Chester and I would play cards I love the gamble I would play Blackjack you know I'd win some money and all so I was pretty lucky there and I was really doing well here I mentioned the name John me I said I'll bring it back John me who was a special agent with the FBI who retired it's one of them guys retires from the FBI grabs an FBI pension decides to go work for the division of gaming enforcement for the state of Pennsylvania so he'll grab another state pension when he's done that he sees me in the casino he starts filling out all this paperwork they wind up putting me on the exclusion list me and Al Capone were on the exclusion list we're not allowed in the state of Pennsylvania it's like you know they says two names on the list that the guy in Casino you and Al Capone they put me on a list they barred me from going to the casinos so they said I'm detriment to gambling I said detriment to gambling now if you understand the location of where Harris is in Chester it's pretty bad area drugs and everything I said did you ever look at the demographic that's in there with seven tiar drops on face with a stack of $100 bills like that peeling them off at the blackjack table and you want to tell me I'm a detriment to gambling so windup was they were fighting me and all I signed that I signed I did a voluntary thing where I agreed for three years that I wouldn't go into the casinos to gamble at least that's what I thought I was signing fast forward now seven eight nine months ago an executive from one of the Pennsylvania Gaming facilities comes in eats in my restaurant absolutely loves it wants a kitchen console area in near Pennsylvania gaming facility person said to me you don't look too happy about this he said I'm willing to give you a restaurant I'll license you your name it's just only one problem I'm not allowed in the building as a matter of fact I'm not even allowed in the parking lot again my past is coming back to haunt me and for any of you um my Facebook page is Kitchen conso yri Cafe um if you can like it there's an online petition there where try we've got over a th signatures to petition the state of Pennsylvania to take me off the list so that I can open up my my restaurant in one of the casinos and anybody could tell that to a friend that would appreciate it but these are the pitfalls and this is what Mark Summers has trying to get behind me this is what we're pitching to reality television at what price is your is your debt to society ever paid I went to jail for I did seven years I did threee supervised release I paid back my fine I'm the only one of my well the second one of my Cod defendants that never violated their probation you know what makes it hard for me is the guy in the middle of the snowstorm that goes to the GameStop in North Philly and kills a cop that's what make that's where we get categorized as you know I I don't deserve a break you know what I mean I'm a convicted felon I didn't kill nobody I didn't rape nobody I was a gambler I didn't even if anybody got beat up in my trial it was me and it came out in testimony but here's what I'm faced with today this is the battle that I'm faced with I'm scarred for the rest of my life I'm a convicted felon the only thing that can help me is a presidential pardon here last week we had Obama let 6,000 nonviolent drug offenders back on the wall back at on the street that's why like I'm tired of like and George knows where I stand on this like this guy Elite yeah he might be a genuine tough guy but in my book he's a coward and a rat okay he may be walking around Benson Hurst or wherever he lives but you know because right now there's really no rep retribution that happens anymore but the point is is that I made my bed I slept in it these guys all get in trouble they run to the government and they say please I'll never do it again I committed n 15 murders I'm like Samy the bull where does he show up he shows up in Arizona next door to your niece and nephew selling him ecstasy then they glamorize him with his daughters with his Mob Wives I had M wives came to me George set up the meeting this new girl this Natalie D that's on there she wanted to do a show with me to me she cheapens me I wouldn't do a show with her I met with her just to have Recreation for the night and listen to her say the F-word 75 times but it is what it is and I'm tired of these people that make make these deals get new new names and and just go out there and guess what if they commit crimes you don't know it and like George says nobody gets killed you don't know if they got killed because their name is James Smith now and not Joe bagad Donuts you understand what I'm saying to you I'm tired mom thing is about it's about time that somebody went to jail did the right thing kept their mouth shut whether you knew something or you didn't know something if you knew something you kept your mouth shut if you didn't know nothing like in my case I still kept my mouth shut didn't become Walt Disney and write a hundred stories about my friends I'm tired of these people that make the deals with the government getting the perks and getting everything here I am did paid my debt to society served my time lost my mother in jail you know they offered me a deathbed visit and to go to my mother's funeral if I gave up my codefendant but Point Blank six years in give your codefendant up and we'll send you I says you know what they'll take a picture of my mother in the funeral home which they did I kept my honor what what you know like you're saying well what honor yeah I made a mistake but talk about second chances I mean us as a society is B get based on a second chance Adam bit the Apple basically what he did and we're all here as a result of it we're not walking around naked because that's dirty now because that's what happened they were naked in the garden I mean I can go on and on and on and amuse you with [ __ ] but the bottom line is I'm the poster boy because there are no Second Chances there are no Second Chances especially if you're a convicted felon in the federal prison system there are no Second Chances and that's what I'm fighting for and that's that's what I'm trying to bring to light you can't borrow money sometimes you can't vote I don't care about being a gun toen citizen I can't own a liquor license these are all rights that I lost as a result of my conviction and I really am trying to become the champion I'm trying to get before Congress to talk to them and say hey look I'm not saying you just open up the gates of heaven and let guys like me back in but there should be some time period like 10 years no seven five years no running you get this and 10 years and F eventually you should be able you know because we are a society it's built on Second Chances and you may not all feel that way about me but that's how I feel so that's the unique story that I brought here tonight that Mr Hart wanted me to talk to you about and let me tell you something you're looking at one of the great investigators for the mob guys was right there right there he's the guy that the mob lawyers hired because he was a great investigator he really was and know I want to thank him for inviting me to come again tonight and my deal was real simple I don't ask for money you don't have to pay me I'm getting the greatest gift in the world tonight for me and georgees this young lady over here is taping it we'd like to get a little disc made we'll get it edited down and now we can go out and say well this is what we could do and this is what we could present and maybe down the road I'll take a little something but I'm not like these other guys that get paid $5,000 to go speak I mean my story is not that intriguing it's an interesting story but to me I'm just out there trying to hammer my point across so I thank you all for having me [Applause] tonight I'll take I'll just take like two or three more questions if anyone has them now that you heard the rest of the story and we'll call it a day um if I had it to do all over again I tell you the truth I go all the way back to being a much healthier person as a young individual your AG and would have probably went for Commission in the service is what I would have did how much like regret just whether like you talk about trying to get alone or just reflecting back on your life like how much of that is a daily everybody says to me what keeps you going the thought of as an only child my mother died while I was in jail and my first cousin who's like my sister had to bury her stay at her side in hospice and everything if that ain't enough to live with the thought that you were total failure to two parents that keeps you going every day anything else thank you good job all right
