[screaming]
It's a little over the top,
but I think it depicts a time in the mob
when they had power like that to send a message.
Hello, my name is John Pennisi.
I'm a former made member of the Lucchese crime family.
I also got involved as a low associate
to the Gambino family when I was very young.
Today, we're going to be looking at Mafia scenes
in movies and TV,
and we're going to judge how real they are.
All right.
He sat on one [bleep] the whole way over!
[laughing]
And what's depicted here is a guy getting
what we would call straightened out, inducted.
And it's inaccurate by the way that they're kidding around.
This is a serious ceremony
where there's no joking or playing around.
OK.
That's St. Peter, my family saint.
Now, as that card burns, so may your soul burn in hell
if you betray your friends in the family.
There was two members being made,
and that is not accurate.
It would be one at a time.
They would bring one person up into the room
and do the ceremony and then call the other one up.
Some of the things were accurate that were said,
and obviously the pricking of the finger
and the burning of the saint,
but all in all, it wasn't 100%.
I don't know if they put it there for this reason,
but a lot of Italians are superstitious about birds.
They don't even give cards out with birds on it.
They don't think it's a good sign.
You've been doing really good this year
with the sports book.
Yeah, it's been good.
I'm going to give it to you, my boy. It's yours.
Nothing's set in stone
of how long you have to go as an associate
before you become an inducted member.
Some people have been associates for 10, 15 years,
five years, 10 years, three years.
When I first got straightened out, it was the,
at that time, the highest honor
to be inducted into a family and to become a wise guy
and to be treated with that respect.
Looking back on it now,
it was the lowest point of my life.
It was an embarrassment,
because basically everything
that I thought the life was about
was a farce.
From a scale from 1 to 10, I'd rate it a 3.
Listen to me, Michael.
Know who your friends are.
We've been together 40 years.
Passing around jewelry, and — that's insane.
I don't even, I couldn't even answer what that is about
and why they would put something like that.
We want to do business with you, Michael.
We've been together too many years.
We can wash our money.
This was a commission meeting with the heads of families.
New York is chopped up by the five families,
and everybody knows their place, and they know who's who.
The commission would meet
if there was business to discuss within the families
and decisions to be made.
Only the people involved in the meeting
would obviously be in the know
of where and when and what time they were meeting.
They could take an underboss or consigliere,
or even a captain if they want.
The different families intermingle
a lot more than people understand,
and it's not so territorial as people think.
[glass breaking] [guns firing]
[helicopter blades whirring]
[gun firing]
If they were attempting to hit somebody,
it would definitely not be that flashy.
It was very Hollywood to me,
with the helicopter and the machine guns.
This would never happen.
It would be very low-key and be done quietly.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this a 0.
We're going to try you out with a little delivery job.
It's for a, uh, private lottery that we run.
The mob is always testing you.
They may give you something to do or an assignment,
and they want to see how well you do and carry it out.
That would be to just see how you perform overall
and that you stand up
and that you do what you're told to do.
There was a saying in the mob
that there was no rule book given out,
and you had to pick these things up yourself,
growing up and being around the life.
Gotcha!
What seems to be the problem, officers?
Was I speeding?
We'll decide what you were doing after an illegal search.
In that life, you should always assume
that you're being watched and followed and surveilled.
That's the FBI's job.
The FBI is out there doing their job, trying to make cases,
so you should always assume
that they are out there watching you.
Some people may call it paranoia.
I call it self-preservation.
First and foremost,
you shouldn't talk on the phone at any time.
And you should just watch who you talk to,
be very careful who you're speaking to
and what you're speaking about.
Most things are done and should be done in person,
and you should also be leery of new people
that you're meeting.
I'd rather plan some felonies.
Oh. Then we should meet at our Mafia crime headquarters.
I think years ago, they used to have storefronts
and then the back would be a club
or a place where they would gather,
more so then than now.
Meetings today would take place in a restaurant.
In our case, it was a cigar lounge.
Or at someone's house or even outside.
I beg you, I can't make this week's loan payment.
Look into your hard drive and open your mercy file!
File not found.
Loan-sharking is a big part of the income of the mob.
Money would be lent to anyone.
You know, people in desperate need of money,
businessmen, anyone.
Ooh, this guy's an ox.
He's got oxen-like strength.
Hey, he needs a nickname, right?
Let's call him Clamps.
I myself didn't have a nickname.
There's names like Johnny Sideburns
that I speak about a lot.
Guys have names like Sammy Meatball, Sammy Clams,
and it depends. Sometimes it's an attribute to you.
I'm going to rate it, based on the future,
I'll give it a 1.
[screaming]
I remember seeing "The Godfather" when I was younger.
But I was very young and not in the life.
I think that a lot of young guys who watched "The Godfather"
all wanted to be gangsters after watching it.
It's a little over the top,
but I think it depicts a time in the mob
when they had power like that to send a message.
There were some forms of intimidation, verbally,
that people would give out or send a message.
At times, people could get a beating from the mob
or get their windows broken or something,
some kind of sign to tell the person, you know,
that they're not happy about something.
Being that it's "The Godfather,"
I will rate this at a 7.
Our mole with the Russians
tells things a little different.
That's a [bleep] lie!
If you're being questioned about something,
they already know you're guilty of it.
As far as punishment goes,
it could go from someone getting a tongue lashing
to them losing their life.
People in that life always make a lot of mistakes,
so there's always something that you hear of.
Someone's always in trouble.
Most of the time you would hear something internally,
but sometimes you would hear about somebody
that made a mistake in another family.
Now, my son is waiting out there in the car
to go to the movies,
and I ain't going to disappoint him.
[muffled screaming]
So, most of us would try
to keep our personal lives personal,
away from that life that we lived.
I believe most families assume
what the person is doing with their life,
but it shouldn't be talked about with your family.
Some family members are definitely completely in the dark
about what their either husband or father
or brother or son are doing.
As this whole thing unfolded
from the beginning to where I am today,
had a big effect on my family.
I don't get to see them as often as I like to.
They have to go through it with me,
and it's unfortunate, and they suffer too.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this another 0.
He says, "I must be dreaming."
[laughing]
Travolta tried his best to play John Gotti.
I don't think that really anyone can play him.
Although the makeup artist had him
look like John Gotti a little bit.
He tried to get the New York accent right,
but it wasn't 100%.
John Gotti was a caporegime,
which is a captain in the family during this time.
I had gotten to meet him twice, with his son, John Jr.
Once in Regine's in Manhattan,
second time at a club that they had in Ozone Park.
The job now is to maintain continuity of leadership.
So,
I nominate John Gotti.
So, this scene was depicted
obviously after Paul Castellano gets killed
and the family has to put in place a new boss.
This scene would depict probably
part of the administration
and captains in the family,
the administration being boss, underboss, consigliere.
Obviously in this scene, the boss is no longer alive.
I believe it to be pretty accurate.
I think that they would nominate,
as they did, John Gotti,
and they would not necessarily take a vote,
but no one would oppose it.
I second the motion.
[clapping]
So, after he's voted in as boss of the Gambino family,
it just goes to show you
that you don't have to have the last name.
That name came from Carlo Gambino,
and it was passed down to Paul Castellano
and then taken over by John Gotti.
Paul Castellano was put in the position
because he was related to Carlo Gambino,
but he was a businessman.
John Gotti took the position
from being a gangster, street guy.
Two different kinds of bosses.
I think as a good boss, you need brains and brawn.
So you need to be smart business-wise,
and you need to be a gangster,
a tough guy in the street.
I would rate this scene an 8.
Where you at? I got a lot of money here.
Let's play cards.
Guys like to play cards.
Card games that I'd seen was in cafés and things like that.
Not like that.
I got your message, Arty.
From here on, nothing goes down unless I'm involved.
No blackjack, no dope deals, no nothing.
A nickel bag gets sold in the park, I want in.
If the mob was going to deal with a drug dealer,
a known drug dealer, it would more be on the sneak
and very low-key and quiet.
It wouldn't be coming into social clubs like that.
It would have to be done on the sneak
because there was a rule
that there's no drug dealing in that life.
So that's a rule that's often broken.
The other rule, that you're not to go
with a made member's wife or girl,
is broke all the time.
You think you're going to live long enough
to spend that money, you [bleep] hump?
[gun firing]
I think the violence, all the way up till the '90s,
was at a high as compared to today,
and that's because of the cameras
and cellphones and technology,
so the violence has been more low-key.
I would rate this a 2.
You will be hearing from me, Mr. Scott.
OK, well.
I can be very, very persistent.
Do your worst.
Most likely the guy that was selling insurance
was just trying to portray himself as a street guy.
He definitely wasn't what we would call
a friend in the street, selling insurance.
All mobsters have a front.
Sometimes it's selling insurance,
sometimes it's waste management or sanitation.
For the record, not all Italian Americans
are in the Mafia.
The legitimate businesses that they get into varies,
and it's really what fits that person.
They get involved in a lot of legitimate businesses.
It is a front,
and it's to kind of throw law enforcement off too
as to where they're getting their money from.
I would say 90% of the people in the life are Italian,
and then you would have probably 10% who are non-Italians,
and they're just associates.
I would rate this scene as a 5.
I want to go to college.
I can't get caught with [bleep] like this.
Look, you take the speakers, right?
At the same time, you say to yourself,
"This is the last time I'm ever gonna steal something."
It's that simple.
It's a low-level thing that he's involved in,
but he would gradually graduate
to more sophisticated crimes.
You start hanging around with people
who bring you around someone that's involved,
usually on the outskirts,
and eventually you'll become an associate
if they want you to.
But for the most part, it's being young
and easily influenced by these older guys.
That's what drew me to the life,
being part of this group of well-respected men.
That is the allure of getting involved in our life.
You don't pick that life.
I always say that life picks you.
I would give this scene a 5.
A young guy just don't wake up one day and say,
"Hey, I'm gonna join the mob."
By circumstance, you may know somebody who knows somebody,
and that's usually the way it goes.
As a young man growing up in both Ozone Park
and Howard Beach, Queens, the mob was always around,
and I kind of got involved
as a low associate
to the Gambino family when I was very young.
But by the age of 19,
I'd wind up getting myself in a lot of trouble.
I did 17 years in prison.
I kind of stood away from the street
for various reasons for about five years
and then was pulled back into the street,
and I'd wind up becoming affiliated
to the Lucchese family at that point.
And I became a Lucchese associate,
and I went on to become an inducted member inside of a year.
I was inducted into the life in 2013,
and I left in 2018.
So, I was falsely accused of cooperating on a case
that just happened within our family.
And I know there's no such thing
as walking away from the mob,
but I basically just wanted
to just try to live my life in peace.
They would not stop hunting me down,
sending people to come after me,
and that was the deciding factor
in my going to the government
and cooperating with the government.
Here is a list of every known member in organized crime,
according to the FBI, that you cannot talk to,
meet, associate with, come in contact with.
This character is obviously out on parole,
or on paper, as we say,
and his lawyer's advising him of his stipulations
that he has to follow,
and some of those stipulations are
not associating with anyone known in organized crime
or anyone with a conviction.
I mean, guys don't want to be in the life today.
Are you [bleep] nuts?
They get locked up and arrested within three years.
10 guys get pinched, nine guys want to cooperate.
It's a [bleep] race to the government's doorstep.
When a pinch comes down, which means an arrest,
10 guys get pinched, nine guys flip.
That may be a little high,
but it's pretty accurate that a lot of guys turn quickly.
They want to avoid going to jail.
The movie and TV depicts Mafia members
as being honorable, loyal, and respectful.
And it's a myth.
There is no loyalty,
there is no honor,
there's none of that.
In today's times, all that has been replaced
by selfishness and greed,
and people have a misconception
of really what it's about.
I would give this scene a 10.
I created a blog. It's called Sitdown News,
and I basically cover most mob stories.
And created a podcast called "The MBA and the Button Man."
I want to thank everyone for watching,
and if you enjoyed the video, please click the link above.