How Rich was The Godfather Vito Corleone?

Vito Corleone was known to make offers they couldn't refuse but have you ever wondered how rich The Godfather really was it might seem like a simple question but what we found out might change the way you view the Godfather forever in the novel it's mentioned that even Michael himself the Don's very own son was absolutely shocked to find out the family's true wealth after all money is a vital tool for acquiring power the true extent of his wealth has never been revealed and what we'll share with you in this video will shock you but this actually goes a lot deeper than you might think we're gonna have fun with this one but to really understand the significance of this figure and tell this story we need to go all the way back foreign [Applause] had a very rough life and so began working from quite early on having gone through so much at a young age Vito had anything but a normal childhood his first job was with the abandondo family the family that had taken him in after he escaped from Sicily and I'm sure you remember how he ended up meeting Peter clemensa where he soon made a total shift from honest store clerk to low-level criminal well at that point they began to specialize in hijacking different trucks that carried all kinds of goods but everything changed once Vito dealt with Don fanucci after veto dispose of the former neighborhood Don the black hand he had built quite a reputation for himself Vito earned the respect of the neighborhood becoming known as a man of respect and was soon asked to intercede in local disputes gaining a reputation for never turning down someone who came to him for help and for being able to reason with unreasonable people although he had declined to do so at first out of modesty Vito eventually started accepting gifts from local businesses and Racket bosses in return for ensuring that our patrons know that they are safe it started with just a few hundred dollars a week but Vito was soon making an enormous amount of money just from accepting these so-called gifts Vito clemenza and tessio eventually took over the neighborhood treating it with a great deal more respect and fanucci did and in turn they were taken care of in case they needed anything alongside his other criminal activities this opened an entirely new Revenue Source but what really changed everything was when veto decided to enter the olive oil industry he was no longer just going to be a small neighborhood boss he was going to become The Godfather now with a stable stream of income and with the profits he was gaining Don Vito saw an opportunity to enter the olive oil business with his childhood friend and now consulieri Genco abadando it was a decisive period in his life as it was when he had to go up against some equally as powerful people it was the biggest test he would face so far and so it would shape his business strategies for years to come but Vito didn't simply want to compete in the olive oil industry no he wanted to take over the olive oil industry taking the page from the Oil Barons book at the time he was ruthless determined to create a monopoly so he used everything he had to get rid of his competition for instance let's say there was a competitor who refused Don Vito's offer to buy them out well for some reason the next day their warehouse seemed to go up in Flames or coincidentally their trucks would never make it to their intended destination and the olive oil they were carrying would somehow find its way into the Lakes you get the picture and as you can imagine the Don's tactics worked and soon he had a monopoly on the olive oil industry and it made him quite wealthy but not as much as his next venture in fact no one could have predicted just how much wealthier the Don was about to become late 1920 Vito Corleone was approached by a group of Italian Bootleggers who smuggled alcohol and whiskey in from Canada they needed trucks and delivery men to distribute their produce to New York City veto had everything they needed this is why the olive oil business business was so vital for Vito's rise as by this time he had built a vast distribution Network which stretched from as far as Havana Cuba to Canada all the way to Las Vegas Nevada not to mention his connections all the way in Sicily as we mentioned having a monopoly in the olive oil business alone was extremely profitable but another advantage that it gave the Don was a perfect legal cover no one could question the need of a vast network of trucks constantly traveling across the country and even abroad but during this time the Don realized the importance of building a network of individuals who all owed him a favor during the height of prohibition they would make more money than they knew what to do with and we'll get to exactly how much in a minute but it would be what Don Vito needed to exponentially rise and give him the ability to cement his legacy forever he also started protecting illegal establishments that would serve the liquor he smuggled as well as a well-connected gambling Network he then used these assets to then gain favor with local politicians cops judges and other officials learning early the value of political protection making them an offer they couldn't refuse having them in his pocket would turn out to be the best investment he could have ever made by the end of prohibition the Don realized that putting all his eggs in one basket was no longer an option in addition to the fact that he was now earning too much to hide it behind a simple olive oil business and what he did next would change everything building on the foundation he had laid out during prohibition it was now time to expand the Don had realized that it was now a necessity to expand it was not a choice anymore it was time to increase the number of income sources and streams of Revenue his Empire was generating and he didn't waste any time he began by buying up real estate small businesses and making Investments on Wall Street but as the years went on his Investments would become more and more ambitious by 1945 Vito had a vast real estate portfolio in New York's Midtown as well as massive real estate holdings a construction company entire Office Buildings two Wall Street Brokerage houses a law firm Hollywood unions as well as Investments and ownership stakes in banks in law Long Island a lot of these were set up through various fronts but his influence stretched across the country buying out Hollywood movie studios movie theater chains and music companies let alone a hotel and resort in Florida in addition to investing in some Las Vegas casinos but behind all these legal fronts there were several other illegal Ventures which primarily revolved around gambling however they also heavily relied on money they received for protection and of course other common activities however the legal side of his business were more than just a front most of the other Dons Used a few legal businesses to hide near real activities Don Vito was just as interested in building his legitimate businesses as much as his illegal ones the legal businesses themselves generated millions of dollars and this made the Don stand out from the other Dons he was a genius businessman and combined with his unique business philosophy nothing was or even capable of stopping him as you know the character of Don Vito is a combination of various monsters so in order to get a better estimate we'll look at what real-life Mobsters at the time were making let's look at one of the most notorious gangsters at the time Al Capone and his height it's estimated that Al Capone was generating 100 million dollars in Revenue per year from his various Ventures but let's say that the Corleone family was only able to generate half of that and considering prohibition lasted for around 13 years from 1920 all the way to 1933 at his height perhaps the Golden Era of the mob Don Corleone generated around 650 million dollars across his various businesses during prohibition now this you won't believe if we convert that figure into today's money it would be worth a staggering 15 billion dollars in total revenue then let's say after all the expenses the Don only keeps 30 profit that comes down to four and a half billion dollars it's still an unbelievable amount however this unfortunately for him did not last forever as following the end of probe Mission this figure would have gone down quite significantly which is also something that then triggered the olive oil War and the reason the Don started to invest more in gambling the olive oil war is quite intense and let's just say quite eventful don't worry we've got a video covering this but watch till the end to find out more anyway it was one of the most vital turning points in the rise of veto and his crew this was when Vita went from a local mom Don to establishing himself as The Godfather where he established himself as the most powerful man in the city but what allowed the Corleone family to survive was the fact that Don Vito had spent all that wealth wisely preparing for this precise moment he made sure that he had more friends than animes establishing very powerful connections making generous donations to some very influential people and giving out favors that he would cash in later on so let's say the Corleone Empire was a company how much would it be worth now there are multiple ways you can find out what a company is worth but we won't bore you with all that so let's keep it as simple as possible you here's essentially how to calculate a company's worth so if we put an average three times multiplier and let's just take the earnings we mentioned earlier Corleone Empire would be worth around 14 billion dollars today but let's say after prohibition the empire was only generating 7 billion with 2.1 billion in profit would make it worth around 6.3 billion dollars today still an incredible amount for context here's a list of today's companies that are worth a similar amount but now let's go a bit deeper and see how much the Don himself is worth where would he rank on the Forbes list foreign with all these factors in mind we can get a more accurate estimate to how truly wealthy the dawn really was so at the height of the dawn's Reign his personal net worth would have reached around 90 million dollars or around 2.1 billion in today's money now there's a common misconception that net worth equals how much money someone has in cash and that's just simply not true look for example at someone like Jeff Bezos or even Elon Musk although they might have a net worth of 219 billion and 171 billion respectively it doesn't mean that they actually have it in cash just sitting in a bank somewhere the reason they're worth all those billions is because of their ownership and stock in the companies they built now there are a number of ways that the wealthy use this to their advantage but we'll have to get into that at a different time I wanted to mention all this to say that these figures are often misleading and don't always tell the full story what's interesting is that even with this extraordinary amount of wealth donvedo still might not be anywhere near the wealth of the likes of John D Rockefeller Henry Ford or Andrew Carnegie for worth hundreds of billions of dollars what separated Don Vito from the rest was not his wealth he had something that money alone simply cannot buy something that all these wealthy people want to acquire power and influence Don Vita was loved by the people at the same time not complying to his law came with serious repercussions therefore he managed to strike that perfect balance that Machiavelli speaks of being both loved and feared without a doubt in Vito's world the world he created for himself he had true power Vito literally went from absolutely nothing to his name to an Empire worth billions laying the foundation for the Next Generation to make the Corleone family one of the wealthiest in America and that's something to note when we look at Vito he was fairly modest considering that at one point it was literally making a few billion dollars in today's money every year now of course a lot was tied to assets and property and went down significantly by the end of prohibition he still managed to become a billionaire in a very short while so although the Dawn was incredibly close to becoming one of the wealthiest men in the country it was just not enough time the end of prohibition really dealt a heavy blow to the Corleone family and to organized crime as a whole the drop was pretty drastic I mean you saw it yourself going from generating a few billion dollars per year in today's money down to half of that that really would have crushed most people hence why Don barzini and many other Dons wanted to get into another extremely high risk but High rewarding venture now let's look at where the Don would rank today in terms of wealth this may not seem that impressive however that makes him without a doubt part of the .0001 wealth class in America now let's look at how he compares to a slightly different group what made Vito Stand Out was his strong conviction to what he believed was right and wrong he definitely would have made a lot more money getting into these new Ventures and he put a red line where that was not something he was going to do willingly it's no secret a lot of these CEOs and leaders are just as ruthless as a mob done ask anyone in the corporate world especially in the higher levels you'll find a lot of plotting and scheming betrayal and even all the power games prevalent in the business world the difference is that they do it mostly within the confines of the law we won't name names but if you look at history you'll find a lot of these people who also made offers their competitors couldn't refuse there are a lot of let's just say interesting people in the real world who are masters of the game of power and the truth behind their wealth and the tactics they used to build it seem quite familiar to the tactics used by all these successful Mobsters comment below if you want us to uncover the truth behind this in a future video now let's look at how the dawn compares to some of the most powerful real-life bosses as you know he was a composite of multiple real-life gangsters let's start with Carlo Gambino also a sicilian who immigrated to the United States despite a more than 50-year career in the mafia he was able to mostly avoid prison only serving 22-month sentence on a tax evasion charge he led the commission for the American Mafia from 1959 until his death in 1976 by the 1960s he had more than 500 soldiers and the family business made 500 million a year and just like Vito he died of a heart attack his total net worth was 400 million dollars moving on to Joe profacci the founder of one of New York's five crime families like Fido he used his legitimate olive oil business as a front for his criminal activities when the demand for olive oil increased following World War II Mamma Mia importing company gave him cash in addition to his illicit business he became the olive oil King and his fortune was one and a half million dollars before his death in 1962 which is the equivalent to around 2.1 million in 2022 last but not least we've got the notorious mob boss Frank Costello perhaps the biggest inspiration behind the character of veto similar to Vito Costello had a very intriguing personality and Charisma even though he ran one of the wealthiest and most powerful criminal organizations in history he disliked violence and was known to be one of the most civilized and Humane mob bosses like Vito Frank Costello was one of the wealthiest Mobsters in New York he never carried a gun and died free at age 92. by the time of his death in 1973 his net worth was equal to one billion dollars at the peak of his career he was generating the equivalent of 60 billion today again similar to veto Frank had an unbelievably eventful life going from a small Time Thief to council yerry to Lucky Luciano all the way to becoming a Don let alone all the rivalries he made Frank Costello is quite an interesting figure we have a video if you want to find out more Vito Corleone followed essentially everything that Nicolo Machiavelli wrote about in The Prince he followed every single instruction that the Italian Diplomat and philosopher proposed luckily we've got a video that breaks down the dawn's principles and how you can use them in your own life one last thing we've got a video you simply cannot refuse this is our most anticipated video yet you guys have been asking for it and so stay tuned you definitely don't want to miss this one [Music]

Channel: The Culture Mafia

Views: 214,261

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Id: AolF0i3_cYM

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2023