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Documentary, Inside the American Mob S01E02 - Operation Donnie Brasco
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00:00in the 70s we were all wannabes we did the grunt work for the mob bosses or the upper echelon mob
00:11guys and those mobsters had power in those days if they gave you an assignment you couldn't refuse
00:16and you had to do it francis lewis boulevard walk into the bank real quiet
00:22i run into the bank and vault right over the top of the counter and yell back up and all the tellers
00:39back up and i go into each drawer and start scooping the money out my favorite trademark was to carry a
00:47bag with me i'd have two bags in my pockets and it would be little plastic bags and it said i love
00:52new york i noticed every head teller would have a keychain with keys i said to the head teller let's
01:01go into the vault right now go and she hesitated she began to urinate on the floor right in front of me
01:09now i kind of felt bad that i made to do that but i don't have time for this to the vault
01:13she went to the vault she opened up the door she opened up a couple of drawers grabbed a
01:22whole bunch of stacks of money we got into the car we got back to the safe house and we dumped all
01:28the money on the bed that was like one of the fun moments dumping the money on the bed so i always
01:32swabbed the banks with the same bag i love new york bag eventually when i got busted they had reports
01:38and they said we know how many banks you did you always carried that little white bag you know
01:42it was a trademark of a criminal you just couldn't get away from it you know
01:46it's 1978 and the united states government is at war with a hidden empire
02:00mob warfare is on the rise all across the streets of new york city
02:04in brooklyn a low-level mobster is shot dead in broad daylight
02:08a network of gangsters who live by a code of crime violence and power
02:13in the middle of this struggle are two men michael francis a made man in the colombo crime family
02:19the other joe pistone an undercover fbi agent both trying to climb the ladder and survive
02:25in the american mob
02:27they along with their compatriots on both sides of the law are witnesses to this secret history
02:33stepping forward now to tell their stories firsthand a few stay in the shadows for personal
02:39safety fearing a criminal organization that reigned unchallenged in the united states
02:44until recent times and in the 1970s they were untouchable what was the deal on organized crime
02:50you joined the bureau back then it was a very closed society organized crime knew what
02:55police could or couldn't do there were crews within families that were literally untouched
03:01uh by law enforcement for decades in 1978 five crime families ruled new york city and through
03:09it most of the country the families go by the names of their best known leaders gambino colombo
03:16banano genovese and lucchese right in their midst hiding in plain sight is an undercover agent named joe
03:25pistone he's been living among the colombo family for the last year under the alias
03:31donnie brasco when i first started the fbi didn't think there was a mafia
03:35pistone leaves the colombo family looking for a deeper way into the american mob
03:41and now he's got a shot at infiltrating another of the five families
03:46the bananos
03:47the banano family controlled gambling and loan sharking back in the day but those days were over
03:53and they had to find other ways of making money the banano family can be fairly characterized as
03:59groundbreakers when it came to drug trafficking they would smoke drugs uh rob drug dealers and
04:04they were wild guys the bananos were really at this period of time the worst
04:09now for the first time in history thanks to a single undercover agent the fbi has a shot at taking down
04:17an entire family joe pistone was an fbi agent who was pretty effective as an undercover and he was
04:27recruited by the fbi to get into the banano family which he did by going to a guy named
04:32lefty gun for jerry up
04:34lefty was a 24 7 gangster he grew up into life he had relatives that were into life he was a tough
04:43guy to be around if you were in joe pistone's shoes you had to know that every second that you
04:50were dealing with these mafia guys might be your last moment on earth one mistake the slightest error
04:57you're through they never hesitate to kill when you're with these guys you have to blend in they
05:03have to you have to be believable he had convinced them that he was a very adequate and very good
05:10jewel thief i would bring around some diamonds i bring around watches you know all stuff that was
05:17confiscated uh by the federal government after a while lefty really becomes comfortable with me
05:26and he'd be telling me about who's the boss of this family the boss of that family
05:30i'm gathering great intelligence information he's like an encyclopedia of the mob
05:35law enforcement work requires infiltration you cannot do all of it through wiretaps
05:41you can't do all of it through uh through telephone intercepts you can't do all of it through bugs
05:46because you don't know what to wiretap
05:49what happened
05:51it's a real goldmine for the fbi now they have an agent who is really in the middle of a mafia family
06:12soon pistone under the alias donnie brasco and rogero hatch a scheme together lefty always said
06:20he was interested in expanding out of new york fortunately the fbi's already got a great front
06:26an undercover operation in a florida nightclub called the king's court
06:31so we got a club going in florida and because he knew that i was the kind of guy that could be
06:41trusted he put me in charge in there another fbi agent steve salmeri is already working undercover
06:49in the club the club was set up because this was a venue they could have and they could see that the
06:54money could be made so joe came down and you know it really solidified him with the banano family
07:00that nightclub becomes the bait that lures lefty and the bananos into a trap
07:05our operation was confined to a very limited number of individuals
07:11so agents would be taking photographs they're taking pictures of you know on surveillance
07:16and i'm on a lot of the surveillances and the agents didn't know donnie brasco was really an fbi agent
07:23operation donnie brasco is garnering results in florida but back in new york a mafia power
07:29struggle is about to change the game dramatically for joe pistone the problem an ambitious banano
07:36boss named carmine galante galante looked more like a grandfather than a godfather as he walked
07:42his dog each morning in greenwich village but his real interests embraced gambling prostitution
07:47loan sharking and most of all heroin and other drugs carmine galante who get out of
07:53prison after a long prison sentence for narcotics trafficking tried to muscle in and take control
07:59over the banano crime family he controlled all the importation of drugs into the u.s and galante
08:06wouldn't share any of this with any of the other families sharing is a golden rule among the mafia's
08:12five families and bosses who don't share get in trouble with the commission the governing board of
08:17the mafia which holds the power of life and death over all mobsters including upstart bosses so the
08:23other families got together and they decided he's got to go he's got to go carmine galante he's a regular
08:32patron at a restaurant in brooklyn called joe and mary's restaurant and he'd go sit out in the patio in
08:37the back with his body gloves it was august hot summer day he's sitting there he's having pasta
08:45with his friends they're holding a conversation car pulls up in front of the restaurant and there are
08:53four people in the car one is the driver who stays with the car the other three go through the restaurant
08:58they know exactly where galante's going to be he sits there puts a cigar in his mouth
09:06they walk into the patio
09:12they blow him over the chair into the tomato patch galante was having lunch in the courtyard of an
09:19italian restaurant in brooklyn when five men entered with automatic rifles and shotguns and opened fire did
09:25your uncle say who he was going to eat lunch with today no no he's stuck every day for coffee he's
09:29stopping here every day for coffee it don't matter when i get there the body's just still there because
09:34i get there pretty quick and uh there's one lane in a tomato patch with a cigar in his mouth and a zippo
09:41lighter in his hand i look at it it's carmine galante it was an iconic picture because it went all over the world
09:49my friends in washington said joe coffee put that cigar in his mouth
09:57because they you know i had a sense of humor so did he and uh of course i didn't do it but i let
10:02everybody think i did down in florida joe pistone gets a call from new york i was in florida looking
10:09out after the club down there and i called lefty because i had to call him every day he says have you
10:17seen the new york papers i said i haven't seen him yet he said well go buy the new york papers then
10:23call me back i bought a new york paper and there's the picture
10:30i knew from lefty that galenti didn't have a lot of admirers but i never had any indication that that
10:35they were going to kill him so i call him back and i said i got the paper he said you read it i said yeah
10:42he said well things are going to change they killed galante i want you to come back to new york
10:48galante's execution shakes up the banano family in the unstable new order in prison mobster rusty
10:54ristelli becomes the boss and a hard case named sonny black becomes a captain lefty gets reassigned
11:01to work under sonny black and long for the ride is joe pistone pistone is a godsend he's more than just
11:10a wannabe he's got lefty ruggiero on his side who's bringing him in to meet capos like sonny black
11:17the palatano sonny black was a tough guy but you can joke with him plus he wanted to keep earning
11:25money and the undercover operation we had in florida made a lot of money pistone now gets close to
11:32sonny black whose fortunes in the banano family are rising thanks in part to the florida club he's
11:38inside a capo's council capo is talking to him dealing with him telling him secrets he's at third
11:45base i like sonny black i mean how could you have comfortable conversation with him uh if you really
11:55don't like him you know i used to spend a lot of time with him and i used to sleep in his apartment
12:01i can remember telling this story to uh my fbi superiors and they couldn't believe it
12:08i mean you know he slept in the bedroom i slept on his couch we get up in the morning and we sit
12:13around in our underwear and here's me an undercover fbi agent and one of the most powerful captains of the
12:20banano family sitting there drinking coffee having a hard roll with butter and watching cartoons on television
12:27you never see that in the movies but that friendship with sonny black is about to lead
12:36pistone straight to cold-blooded murder
12:45by 1979 fbi undercover agent joe pistone has achieved something no fed had ever done penetrating one of the
12:52mob's most notorious families the banano family the key to his success a powerful banano captain named
13:00sonny black the relationship with sonny really propelled the operation because sonny really becomes
13:06comfortable with me sonny and lefty would have conversations and not cut me out they tell me about
13:13what's going on after the execution of common galante three capos of the banano crime family
13:22tried to muscle in and take control over the family and it's open warfare they're looking to kill each
13:27other three captains wanted to take over the family sonny red and delicato phil lucky giacombe
13:34and dominic trinchero sonny black and joy massino call a sit down to iron out the differences
13:49but there is no ironing out these differences it's all about power what was supposed to be a sit down
13:56it was a trap an ambush joe massino was there he tackles uh sonny red and delicato shoots him in the head
14:12the other two capos are all also killed
14:19the three renegade capos are dead but there's a loose end
14:22sonny's crew killed sonny red and that pissed people so they were looking to kill each other
14:33and joe's in the middle what follows is a conversation that no fbi agent has ever had before
14:39proof positive that joe pistone has pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in law enforcement history
14:44sonny black invites him to join the club sonny tells me you know i already proposed you for membership
14:51in the family you're going to get made in december he tells me you know we took care of those guys
14:59he said one got away i said who he says bruno and delicato
15:06he's i'm giving you the contract to get bruno delicato
15:14now as an fbi agent you can't get involved in acts of violence unless you're protecting yourself
15:20or protecting a citizen and one of the rules in the mafias is that when you get a contract if you
15:25turn it down you're going to get killed so when i was told you got the contract to kill bruno and
15:35delicato i said okay sonny where do you think he is
15:42the hunt is on for bruno in delicato if pistone finds and kills him he's going to become a made man
15:49earning his place in the bonanno family with blood
15:53but over in the colombo family michael francis is earning his place with cold hard cash
15:59did you ever have anything you know not till later on when the media tagged me as being the yuppie don
16:05which i hated but nobody would call me that to my face i told him don't ever say that to me i don't
16:09like it you know it reminded me of california and all these kind of weird guys out there in suits
16:14michael francis was an immense earner for the colombo family and the guy who knew how to really
16:22deal with modern day capitalism he was a new breed
16:28this handsome young mafia prince from new york is michael francisi the son of a legendary mafia godfather
16:36michael francis father was sonny francis he was a legendary figure in in the world of organized crime
16:43very powerful figure in the colombo crime family you know my dad he just had that presence about
16:49him that people just really treated him well and that's you know for a young guy looking up to your
16:53father that's who i want to emulate that's how i want to be in my life one way francis hopes to make
16:59money is classic mob through the labor unions i had some very lucrative uh situations with unions
17:07one of them in a a major contracting a construction job with a major developer in um in queens and this
17:15is a major that was the biggest co-op conversion in the country at that time and one of the guys in
17:21there happened to be the brother of a girl that i was dating at one time and he got in touch with me
17:28and he said mike i've got this job and he said the union is really harping on us he said you think you
17:33can help out i said yeah so um i go and meet the laborer guy and i said you realize what we got here
17:41right biggest job in the country i said let's work this thing and he said great so we made a deal to
17:47keep the union out of there and we charged the developer so much for every apartment that he
17:52converted we hired all the trades we did everything we made a ton of money both legitimately and through
17:58the unions and we whacked it up among everybody can i ask you the term whack it up is that the same as
18:05kick it up whack it up divide it up cut it up share it and yeah that's street term you never said share
18:11it's whack whack has different forms of uh different uses i would say francis is part of a new generation
18:20of gangsters rising up through the ranks of the american mob in the late 1970s another one is a guy named
18:26john gotty a small time hood from queens looking to make a name for himself and latch on to one
18:32of the five families i was involved in various investigations of john gotty through the years from
18:37a time when he was a nothing guy in the 70s we were all wannabes even john gotty was a wannabe in the 70s
18:47between scores gotty kills time with other mob wannabes smoking drinking playing cards we would be
18:54playing poker his cigar would be down he would just hold his cards and he wanted to play and every
19:00once in a while when he got a good hand this long denobly cigar would go up in the air and i would know
19:05this and no one spotted it and the minute we saw that cigar go up we were out the door we threw our
19:12hand in and he could never figure out what he did he was he had to tell he was a wild gambler he would
19:17just lose every night rumors start to spread of an outsized personality in queens all of a sudden
19:24you started hearing this john gotty john gotty this john gotty that we used to say who the is this john
19:29gotty i ain't never heard of him he was a wild and crazy flamboyant personality high energy
19:35charismatic he had a two-pronged attack to become a made guy in the mafia you made either one or two ways
19:41you're an earner or you do hits for them if you do both you're a huge made guy he was
19:49it's the beginning of a legendary career in the american mob
19:58in the late 1970s a new generation of gangsters is rising up through the ranks of the american mob
20:04among them is a guy named john gotty john gotty was a low-level gangster who was like man from the
20:10racetracks because he was a mafia figure he was involved in hijacking trailer trucks coming out
20:16of the airport plus he wouldn't hesitate to kill someone i had my first business encounter with john
20:23gotty it wasn't a very pleasant experience two brothers came to me and uh they had a guy that had
20:29a flea market in brooklyn this guy's partner was dealing drugs and it was disruptive to the market
20:37so i had to see it i go meet with him and uh we make a an arrangement and i chase his partner out
20:43two weeks later uh john calls me up john gotty
20:49he's mike i need to see you it's okay i go meet him and uh he says that flea market in brooklyn yeah
20:56he's the guy you chased out yeah i said he's with me i said well john come on you know he just ran to you
21:03no no i know the guy a long time john wasn't pulling out and i wasn't going to give up
21:09there's no way john gotty would walk away for an argument with anybody including himself thinking
21:14that he lost so i said john there's no way i want to this guy's a drug addict i don't want to be around
21:19him i said i'm going to buy you guys out name your price
21:25and it's like i knew it he said you don't buy me out i buy you out and that's what happened
21:32he bought me out gave me the money and i gave my guy a money we kept some he took the market and within
21:38three months they closed it was over so that was my first business encounter with gotty
21:45john gotty was a thug iq maybe a mothball but a thug but colombo family member michael francis is
21:56also making a name for himself as an earner among earners he brings in big scores that attract attention
22:02throughout the five families of the american mob but nothing so far compares to the scam he's about to
22:08pull off this guy came to me and he tells me he said look we can make some money i've got kind of
22:14a scheme i have gas stations so i said all right let's start a new company i says and show me how
22:20this thing works and i'll see if i want to pursue it i'll never forget a week or two later this guy
22:25came to me and he's holding a box and he used to bring me meat he was a butcher he walks in i says uh
22:31what are we having a party we're gonna do with all this meat he says hey chief it ain't meat and he goes
22:36in he puts it on the kitchen table he opens it up he said first week's take in the gas business
22:42three hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash got my attention right
22:49michael francis was an immense earner for the colombo family and his biggest coup was something
22:56known as the daisy chain gasoline scam what happened was new york state in the 1970s
23:05decided to use a different way of collecting gasoline excise taxes every year at that time
23:11whoever owned the gas station was responsible to pay the tax on every gallon of gasoline that they
23:16bought and pumped and somebody hit upon the idea this was stupid so the legislature in new york said
23:21well let's make distributors responsible for paying the taxes they want a living but the gas
23:27companies are required to pay the tax on the honor system so francis figures out all he has to do
23:33is set up dummy companies that don't pay it takes months for the government to figure out the scam
23:38and collect and by that time the dummy companies are long gone it was a fairly complicated scheme
23:45that involved a lot of dummy corporations which made it difficult to trace back to the original source
23:51that being francis and somewhere along the line a stamp would come out and would say tax paid and it was
23:58very difficult to establish just you know which which company was saying that they paid the tax
24:03that's because no company is paying the tax all of the money is going into michael francis's pockets
24:09i had 18 licensed companies all of them were operating uh out of panama so there was no trail back to any
24:17of us the gasoline tax scam has to go down in history as one of the most successful coups ever pulled by the
24:25mafia i was making a lot of money in the gas business millions of dollars a week i had a jet
24:31plane i had a helicopter i had all the money i wanted i did whatever i wanted to do and word was
24:36getting out on the street that even though i was handing in millions that i was making billions
24:42the so-called francisi group a new mafia organization that the story came out i believe in news day again
24:48that i was becoming powerful enough to break away from the columbos and start my own family said to be
24:54behind the mob's theft of hundreds of millions of dollars in gasoline taxes in new york my dad then
25:00got out on parole francis's father sonny is released from prison after serving time for masterminding a
25:06series of bank robberies but he's also rumored to be a cold-blooded killer an accusation familiar to his
25:12son law enforcement said he's killed at least 30 people back then now it's i think it's 60 but as far as a
25:20dad he was dad for me i loved him i idolized my dad he was everything that i thought a man's man should
25:27be
25:30every child wants a reason to love their parents you have to give them strong reasons not to
25:35love their parents and i don't have any reason not to love mine regardless of anything
25:40the word gets out on the street i'm becoming a target of law enforcement and all of a sudden the
25:44two friends eases together the son is making tons of money guys start to think about it you know
25:49double-edged sword even my own father was told he put a contract on me
26:01by the early 1980s colombo captain michael francis's success in gas tax scams has earned him and the
26:08colombo family millions but in the american mob success can be as dangerous as failure especially
26:14if the mob thinks you're skimming the take so when michael's father the legendary gangster sonny francis
26:20calls him he starts to sweat one night i get a call from my dad and he said i gotta see you
26:27i said okay he was on parole so i go to his house hey how you doing pop we're in the driveway of his house
26:35and he said uh junior wants to see us tonight i said okay what time you want me to pick you up
26:40he said well they want to do this differently they want me to come in first and they want you to come
26:43in second i said why would we do that he says well this is what they want i said well we're not going
26:49to do that dad finally i remember i threw my hands up in the driveway i said all right dad i've been
26:55listening to you all my life i said i don't like it but if this is what you want we'll do it
26:59so i leave and then jimmy angelina calls me and he tells me to meet him on on 18th avenue
27:12jimmy was a captain too at the time now i knew jimmy all my life
27:17i get in the car there's a guy sitting in the back that i didn't know and uh he don't introduce me
27:21and um you know at that point i was just really thinking something's really bad here
27:32it was a house in brooklyn that we were going to
27:39i get in the car and i start walking and jimmy gets behind me and the other guy is behind him
27:45now this is bad setup and i'll be honest with you i was getting really nervous i wasn't a religious
27:54guy anyway but i started to pray because i really thought that i'm dead
28:03look i've been in the life quite a while i know that you get walked into a room by your best friend
28:09you don't walk out again so um door opens i get in there and a couple of guys there and um they
28:17start grilling me about the gas business and the money and all of this and that and everything else and
28:23they're trying to make an impression on me that you know i'm still a boss don't think you can get
28:27away with anything without saying it they said it i got it the meeting ends and to francis's surprise
28:34he's still alive so now jimmy's gonna drive me back i said goodbye to everybody we get in the
28:39car i'm ready to really open up on him i was really upset with him he didn't tell me anything
28:45so i get in the car and i said i know you all my life you don't prepare me you don't tell me
28:49anything that's going on he said i'm gonna tell you something michael he said your father was in
28:53there before you tonight he didn't help you one bit you were on your own in there and it really
29:00affected me in a bad way and i said man i can't trust my own father here
29:11i kind of felt the walls closing in on me at that point
29:17he threw me under the bus in that he didn't defend me and that's as almost as bad as indicting me you
29:23know and saying he did it and i said this money that i'm making what do i do do i stop this is like
29:32a double-edged sword for me and um i didn't have an answer i didn't have a solution i said i'm just
29:39gonna keep doing what i'm doing while colombo captain michael franzese struggles with the consequences
29:45of his gas scam across town in brooklyn undercover agent joe pistone is about to become an official
29:51member of the banano family an organization who make their money not just from extortion and loan
29:57sharking but drugs under the alias donnie brasco he's penetrated the organization deeper than any
30:03law enforcement officer in history he's about to become a made man but first to prove himself he must
30:10kill when i was told you got the contract to kill bruno and delicata i accepted it because what
30:17am i going to say no i don't want to do it i can't do it but we had a plan in place you know
30:22the son he sent me looking for him if i spotted him i'd call the fbi and they come and snatch him
30:27and we stage a hit or if they found him they'd snatch him and we stage a hit the fbi is faced with
30:33an incredible dilemma what are they going to do if joe pistone aka donnie brasco is asked to go along on a
30:41hit that's a no-no they can't do it but will it blow his cover and uh the slightest suspicion could
30:49lead to donnie brasco's death so the fbi makes a decision joe was not allowed to become a member of
30:57la causa nostra the bureau decided that would not be the best interest of him or the bureau uh and so
31:05we pulled him out of there after six long years undercover the feds pull pistone from the streets and
31:10shutter operation donnie brasco now it's time to let the mob know the truth when the operation
31:17was going to be closed down we had a meeting with three agents and one of them knew sonny black
31:23so what i did was i took a picture with these guys with my credentials and uh the agents uh went to sonny
31:29black and they showed him a photograph of myself and and the guys and they said you know sonny we just
31:38want you to know that uh this guy you know is donnie brasco is really special agent joseph
31:43de pistone at the fbi he's been working undercover for six years
31:49what sonny said was well i don't know if i see him i'll know and that was it
31:55then they told him that sonny once this comes out you're better off coming with us
32:00because you know you're going to get killed and he just told them look i don't believe it and he
32:08just shrugged it off and that was it and they left and he calls lefty calls the other guys in the crew
32:16they all go to the motion lounge and he tells them what happened
32:24in the beginning lefty couldn't believe it either uh lefty couldn't believe that i was
32:28another cover agent when he found out i can't say here on camera what his response is it wasn't good
32:35it wasn't good word spreads in the streets banana associate donnie brasco is actually a federal agent
32:44an infiltration that will soon shatter the american mob
32:49the fbi's joe pistone has pulled off an unprecedented coup against the american mob
32:55infiltrating the banano family to its core but after six years undercover the feds pull him out
33:01before he must kill someone or get killed himself and the news quickly spreads in the streets that the
33:07wise guy known as donnie brasco they say donnie's fbi isn't what he appears to be i remember meeting
33:13donnie brasco joe pistone with lefty we didn't have any business it was hello and goodbye he was there
33:19there was nothing more discussed but when we found out what happened and it was common knowledge on the
33:24street that he wasn't an informing fbi agent it was pretty shocking because they he was almost straightened
33:31out he had gotten that far and then what happened once they found that it was me uh the commission
33:37got together and the commission put a 500 000 contract out on me pistone gets out of new york
33:44fast hiding out in fbi headquarters in washington dc but within the mob those who are responsible for
33:50donnie brasco's rise must pay the price sonny had to fess up to to all the bosses what what had happened
33:57so he gets a call to go to a sit down he walks into the emotion lounge and tells the bartender
34:04i just got called to a sit down and he gives him his ring gives him his money gives him his keys except
34:11his car keys and he calls his girlfriend and says they tell me that donnie was an undercover agent
34:22i didn't believe it now i believe it if you ever see donnie tell him i'm glad it was him
34:31so he goes to the sit down and the next thing they notice sonny black is gone
34:42lefty was on his way to get get killed
34:45and surveillance team snatched him up because they heard that you know when he gets here we're
34:51gonna kill him whack him a year later law enforcement makes a gruesome discovery they
34:59found sonny's body in 82 in a body bag with his hands cut off and the reason that they did that
35:06was he introduced me to bosses that i shook hands with
35:11did i want to see him die no i mean look you know that's not my job my job is to gather evidence
35:18to put you in jail lefty he spends his 15 18 years in a can doesn't say a word because they took that
35:27oath and they believed in that oath they took that oath and they believed in that oath
35:32but pistone's not the only one choosing a new path across town michael franzese a captain and top earner
35:41in the colombo family is becoming disillusioned with his way of life but that's the least of his
35:46troubles law enforcement's closing in i started to feel the pressure in the early 80s and and the
35:53the government uh opened my eyes to it and that they had a major undercover operation on me
35:58on this gasoline case and everything else it would seem that michael francisi is unfortunately following
36:04the footsteps of his father the fbi can allege and say whatever they like they've been doing it for
36:09many many years well the fbi identified him as a significant target informants providing information
36:15to the fbi about this up-and-coming um you know sophisticated gangster so the fbi came to us and and
36:23said that they wanted to bring a case against him and i got a visit uh in my uh officers out in long
36:28island from two fbi agents and they came in to see me and they said we need to talk to you and i said
36:33what do you want and they said uh listen tell us what you're doing and uh and we'll give you a pass
36:39yeah right i said well i don't know what you're talking about with gas you know so i knew i said man
36:44this is this is not good i mean i really got their attention now we gathered evidence primarily from
36:51from cooperating witnesses and when he was faced with a lengthy trial and the prospect of getting
36:58a very lengthy sentence people were being convicted a hundred years 150 years i said they're going to
37:03give me a thousand years if i go down on this he decided to plead guilty and to make restitution
37:10payments of 10 million dollars which he pretty much defaulted on michael francisi indicted on 28 counts
37:17of racketeering fraud and extortion it made two very bad decisions in my life i trusted my father
37:24look where it got me i surrendered my life to la cosa nostra and look where it got me
37:32i got death threats hits all over me the fbi hates me everybody on the street hates me my father
37:37disowned me i don't have a friend in the world i'm going to spend the rest of my life in a six by eight
37:42cell and it was the first and only time in my life that i i really felt hopeless
37:52ben he kind of shocked us because he came forward and agreed to cooperate and based on the cooperation
37:59he provided he did get his sentence reduced i got four years on a parole violation and i spent 35 months
38:06and 13 more days in prison 29 months and seven days in the hole and during that time is when i um
38:15strengthened my faith and um started to read the bible
38:21but francis gets out and lives to tell the tale do i find it surprising that i'm alive i i feel i'm the
38:27most blessed guy walking the streets what should my fate have been i should either be dead or in prison
38:32for the rest of my life the son who once followed his gangster father blindly into the life now walks
38:38away from the mob forever unscathed i cannot explain how michael francis was able to do what he did
38:45the only speculation you could have is that he paid his way out somehow he was able to persuade people
38:52in the colombo crime family not to do anything to him really the only way that ends is when you end
38:57and you're in a coffin it's over how michael francis got out of the american mob with his life remains
39:03a mystery to this day but the worst deeds of francis's past still haunt him especially the murder of a
39:10close friend champagne larry caroza colombo captain michael francis walks away from life in the american mob
39:22and begins cooperating with law enforcement but the worst deeds of his past still haunt him especially
39:28the murder of this man champagne larry caroza larry caroza was uh someone very close to me i mean the
39:36kid loved me and i loved him i baptized his kids he baptized my daughter unbeknownst to me he was having an
39:45affair with my sister i was brought in and i it was told to me that this is what was going on
39:53no one messes with mob women those who do pay a heavy penalty i was told he disrespected you and
40:01he disrespected your father and that's something that uh we don't stand for in this life and i said
40:06but you know he's not made guy stupid how do we know what really happened and let me talk to my sister
40:11and nope you want to take care of it you take care of it if not we'll take care of it i said i want to
40:17do it i says the guy's too close to me larry caroza's body is found near his car he's shot a single time
40:29behind the ear his murder that's probably something that uh has been the heaviest on my heart these days
40:36it's faith that helps franzese cope with dark memories of his past guys be honest you don't
40:42come to church but you figure hey sopranos is off the air let me go see what the real mob guy is all
40:46about right that's what i did i did and that's it as christians we happen to believe that we can be
40:54forgiven for what we've done in the past so i believe with all my heart that i've been forgiven
41:01a line that's hard for a lot of people to swallow people can say it's a phony thing and
41:06it's a scam and you know fortunately in the end they're not going to be the ones that judge me
41:11but i can't fool god you know i bless you all thank you very much thank michael franzese
41:17michael franzese is out of the life today but his father sonny never walked away you know my dad's 96
41:23years old he's the oldest living mob guy in america i think he's part of his life uh 66 or 67 years ago
41:29he took the oath he just recently was convicted at the age of 96 i think he was convicted on
41:35on racketeering charges and was incarcerated again uh was active until the age of 96 and it's absolutely
41:41amazing he is a a treasure trove of mob stories if you can get him to talk about it sonny franzese is
41:48the last holdover from the golden age of the american mob an era that ends with the success of operation
41:54donnie brasco the historic infiltration of the banano family by undercover agent joe pistone
42:00up until 1970 all you could do with the mafia was like you know men with their eyes closed trying
42:06to feel an elephant you would get a little piece of it but all you could prove was someone who actually
42:12committed a particular crime joe pistone did something uh unique which is he infiltrated uh
42:17the banano family an organized crime family with such success that he was on the verge of being made
42:23as a member in doing that not only did he collect direct evidence of crimes against the banano family
42:30but he was able to talk knowledgeably about the structure of the whole mafia
42:37this undercover case was the beginning of the unraveling of the mafia in america as we knew it
42:46as it once was all in all the information pistone provides law enforcement leads to over 200 indictments
42:53and more than 100 convictions of major mob figures but it is only the beginning of the
42:58government's all-out assault on the american mob joe pistone's role as donnie brasco was historic
43:06in the fbi historic in law enforcement this don't broke the confidence of the mafia he broke the mystique
43:15that you couldn't infiltrate the mafia that mystique was very very important in getting people to
43:19cooperate because now all of a sudden it isn't this impregnable organization that nobody's ever
43:24penetrated joe pistone in his case was the perfect storm for organized crime we we kicked the out of
43:33them we really did
43:34the american mob still has enormous power in new york city and around the country in the 1980s you
43:47always have to use your brain and you always have to use the gun in cities like philadelphia home to
43:53one of the most violent mob families in the united states we live by our own set of rules and a major
43:58battleground in law enforcement's war to end the rule of cosa nostra his reign becomes a reign of terror
44:05i invoke my right and decline to answer the question we got away with murder
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