Reformed mobster Michael Franzese: There’s a lot of trouble here in Ireland

Once known as the “Yuppie Don” and “Prince of the Mafia” and placed at No 18 on Fortune magazine’s 1986 list of “The 50 Biggest Mafia Bosses”, Franzese today counts the likes of Mike Tyson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, among his circle of friends.

The ex-mob boss, who served eight years of a ten-year prison sentence for racketeering in 1986, says nothing shocks him any more after spending so long navigating the many perils of life in the mafia. However, even Franzese admitted he found the scenes of anarchy, widespread looting and violence beamed around the world from the Dublin riots last November both “horrific” and “eye-opening”.

“Is there mayhem all around the world? Because we are experiencing some of the same things in the United States. I’ve been noticing too, even just coming to the UK and coming here to Ireland, that we’re all going through the same things. I remember those riots … it was really horrific and it was eye-opening. It seems that there’s a lot of trouble here in Ireland. It’s unfortunate,” Franzese, who frequently stays up late watching the news, said.

Though the New Yorker lived a large part of his life on the wrong side of the law and evading it, he has become an advocate for a stronger police presence in society, believing that a more punitive criminal justice system is needed to hold back what he sees as a tidal wave of civil unrest and crime sweeping across the globe, predominantly being caused by “wild” youths.

“People have said to me, ‘Michael, come on. You’re an ex-mob guy. You don’t like the police.’ I tell them, ‘No, excuse me. I have a wife, five daughters, seven grandchildren. When they walk down the street, I want the police to protect them. I want to know our communities and our neighbourhoods are safe,’” Franzese said.

He added that the kind of chaos that erupted on the streets of Dublin last winter would not have been possible at the height of his power in the areas of New York where the Colombo crime family ruled.

“You experience the same thing here as we experienced: burning down buildings, attacking the police, looting businesses. You know what? Very few people suffered over that except for the victims. Most of the perpetrators got away with it. When that happens, you’re gonna have more crime.

“When I was on the street, if law enforcement came to me and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. If you get locked up, we’re gonna let you right out. You’re not going to go to prison, you’re not going to have bail.’ Do you think I would have been a fine upstanding citizen? I would have been a worse criminal at that point,” Franzese, who was played by Joseph Bono in Martin Scorsese’s mafia biopic Goodfellas, said.

Franzese, who today lives in southern California with his wife, Camille Garcia, and family, believes other reasons behind the Dublin riots can be traced to what he views as the demise of the traditional family unit in western society, which he also blames for much of the violence and antisocial behaviour in the US.

“I believe the root of major problems that we’re having worldwide is the break-up of the family, the nuclear family. No father figure in the house, no proper upbringing,” he said.

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“When I spent time in prison, just about every young person that came in — all these gangbangers who were 20, 21, 22 years old with big time [behind bars] — you could write the same script for every single one of them. Broken home, no father figure, usually a young mom trying to do her best taking care of two or three kids without a father home.”

So how does a once notorious caporegime, who followed the footsteps of his father, Sonny Franzese, into an underworld of fraud, paranoia and corruption, believe other young men can be prevented from going down a similar “dead-end street”? Franzese’s answer is that positive role models within communities and stable families are essential for keeping the young on the straight and narrow.

Much of Franzese’s time is spent doing youth outreach work. He has collaborated with the Gloves Up Knives Down charity in London and is putting together a youth project in Glasgow. He has ambitions to do the same in Ireland.

“These kids get to the street. They gravitate to the local gangbanger or the local drug dealer and, before you know it, they’re criminals on the street. These young people have to have mentors, they have to have guidance. They have to be shown authority and discipline. When you don’t have it, they’re like little wild animals. It’s just not going to work.

“If I say this, it’s unpopular: you need a two-parent home. People get offended by that. I don’t know why, that’s just the way it was for centuries, but all of a sudden that’s offensive and it’s wrong. We’re seeing the destructive nature of what’s happening as a result.”

Franzese has an inside knowledge of criminal organisations, even working with the Russian mafia in a scheme to defraud the federal government out of gasoline taxes in the Eighties. Despite never having had any involvement with the Kinahan drug cartel, the Brooklyn-born ex-mafioso said his experience had taught him no criminal outfit could outrun the law for ever, no matter how formidable.

“I know of them [the Kinahans]. Today, everything is covert. When law enforcement is following organised crime, they have surveillance techniques, they have undercover informers, they have hidden cameras. They have all that technology. So a guy can be under investigation and not really know about it until it’s too late for him,” he said.

“You can’t do it [evade the authorities] for ever. They’re going to get you. They’re too sophisticated. They have too many weapons worldwide now, and the message I preach day in and day out to young people is it’s a dead-end street. You can’t get involved. It’s a bad life.”

While touring on the motivational speaking circuit has become Franzese’s bread and butter, the 72-year-old has also written several books on his life and times, including his journey out of the mob to forge a career as an entrepreneur. His Franzese Wine brand, for example, gives a nod to his past life with the tongue-in-cheek marketing slogan: “Most wanted wine from most wanted man”.

The former criminal is particularly big online, running a successful YouTube channel with more than 1.25 million subscribers and more than 170 million combined views. He is happy to be compared to controversial public figures such as Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan and Patrick Bet-David, who use social media to reach a population, typically young men, and air views on leadership, disenfranchisement and “the crisis of masculinity”. During his visit to Dublin, Franzese posed with Conor McGregor for photos at the MMA fighter’s Black Forge Inn that were later uploaded on Instagram.

Popular uploads to the YouTube channel include “Donald Trump’s Connection to the Mob”, in which Franzese explores alleged ties between the former US president’s business empire and organised crime; reviews of films and dramas about mafia life, such as Donnie Brasco and The Sopranos; and interviews with prominent guests including Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s ex-lawyer and a former New York mayor whose office indicted Franzese for racketeering in 1984; and Andrew Tate, the social media personality dubbed “the king of toxic masculinity” by critics.

The recent interviews with Tate and his brother Tristan, who have been charged with various offences in Romania including rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, landed Franzese in hot water and led to one Glasgow nightclub cancelling one of his gigs.

The Tate brothers deny the charges against them and Franzese vehemently rebuts that his association with the brothers means he shares any of the misogynistic attitudes they are accused of promoting.

“I was extremely upset about it because they kind of inferred that I was a misogynist. There is nothing further from the truth. My wife and my daughters are very independent women,” Franzese said, adding that the Tates had been interviewed by other journalists and the brothers were “innocent until proven guilty”. Yet he clarified that he did not endorse all of the Tate brothers’ views and conceded that some of their statements were “inflammatory”.

The outrage surrounding his links to the Tates brought Franzese’s name and speaking tour to the attention of Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, in a debate at the House of Commons last week. Alison Thewliss, a Scottish National Party MP, claimed she was harassed and had received hate mail after she backed calls from campaigners to shut down Franzese’s show.

Franzese hit back at the campaign against him by arguing that he was just another victim of cancel culture and attempts by political forces to curb freedom of speech. “If you don’t go along with the current ideology, there’s a threat of cancellation,” he said. “If you don’t agree with the ruling party or the people that speak the loudest, you get cancelled and it’s terrible. I don’t know why this is happening but it’s very unfair.”

Franzese’s reformation and vow to turn his back on “the life” has gone hand-in-hand with the development of his spiritual life. While it wasn’t until Franzese ended up in prison that he fully embraced Christianity, he says Catholicism had a strong presence in his early life.

“If you’re not accountable to God, who are you accountable to? God keeps me accountable … what’s happening now is biblical. What’s wrong is right and what’s right is wrong. That’s what’s happening. I’ve done well on social media but if somebody told me tomorrow we were going to get rid of social media, I would say, ‘Do it.’ I think it’s harmful to young people,” he said.

“There are too many distractions at … [young people’s] fingertips that we never had growing up. They’re getting too many mixed messages and peer pressure.”

Franzese added that he believes Ireland should maintain a strong Catholic ethos in society and that young people are better off being raised in a strong faith-based environment.

Growing up on Long Island, Franzese attended a Catholic grammar school called St Ann’s in Queens. He also served as an altar boy.

“The school I went to was dominantly Irish and there were only a few Italians. The funny thing is that in the schoolyard, whenever we would come out for lunch or recess, it would be the Italians against the Irish in all the sports that we had. There was that friendly rivalry there, but all my friends were Irish,” Franzese said.