- Picking this lock too?
Oh my God.
Only in a video game
would you see this, trust me.
(smooth jazz)
- My name is Micheal Franzese and I am
a former Capo, Capo regime in the Colombo
crime family, one of the five New York Mafia families.
I was born in Brooklyn, raised there for many many years
and moved out to the coast here,
I'm in Los Angles now.
I'm with my wife, and bunch of kids and kinda changed
the direction of my life but, I was part of
that life for over 25 years.
I did some time in prison, was indicted
several times, arrested more times than I can remember.
Somehow managed to get through it all
and here I am now today.
I came into that life at an early age.
I was 24 years old when I was inducted into
the family in a very solemn ceremony
Halloween night 1975.
I was made with five other guys, that's the
term we use, "made."
My father was a heavyweight in that life,
he was the under boss of the
Colombo family back in the 60's.
My dad, unfortunately, drew a 50 year prison sentence.
He was convicted of masterminding
a nationwide string of bank robberies.
Went to trial, was convicted, and got a
50 year prison sentence.
So he had a powerful influence on me,
I got involved with that life to try and help
my father get out of that prison sentence,
and then I got deeply involved myself.
I came in as a soldier,
I was elevated to the position of capo "captain,"
capo regime, and at one point in time they were slating me
to become the boss of that family.
So went on to make a very significant amount of money.
I devised a scheme to defraud the government
out of tax in every gallon of gasoline,
ran that scheme for over eight years
and at one point in time I was
bringing in close to eight million dollars
a week and became a major,
major target of law enforcement.
I was indicted actually five times.
I had two federal racketeering cases,
one brought on by Rudy Giuliani.
The trial that I was acquitted in actually.
But then in 1985 I was indicted on another major
racketeering case by the feds.
10 year prison sentence,
I had a 15 million dollar restitution,
I'd fallen in love with a young girl
who was actually a dancer in a film
that I was involved in.
Married her and wanted to kinda change my life.
So I took the plea as a result of that.
I did eight years on that 10,
which was the maximum, came out
and kinda turned my life around.
I'm now a public speaker, I've written several books.
I've heard of these Mafia games because
I've been asked to get involved in them in some way
and never really paid too much attention to it.
My wife would think I lost my mind if
I start playing video games, but actually
my boys said "dad you should get involved
its fun," you know, they want me to
play a few times but I just never did it.
But I heard of them for sure.
Well there's probably a lot of things in video games that
you can't really do in real life.
I don't know, I'm about to find out.
- Obviously we're in Manhattan, my old stomping grounds.
Grew up in Brooklyn but, obviously
spent a lot of time in Manhattan.
- [Vito] I don't really remember much about my old country.
And then one day, my father decided
it was time to move away.
- My grandparents came over a little earlier than
that actually, I think 1910,
my grandparents first came here.
My father was actually, he was born in April
on a boat trip that my grandparents went back.
He was born there, they stayed there for
about six months, and then came back to the states.
It's funny, he got in trouble, he was a naturalized
citizen otherwise they would've deported him.
The way the Mafia started to form here
in America Unfortunately you know some of
the street guys were doin' exactly this.
They were feeding off of their own kind.
Yeah, it's somewhat realistic, yeah,
I mean this is how it started out, kinda
preying on there own kind.
And then it got a bit more sophisticated.
- Load this pile of crates onto that truck.
Start now and don't take all day.
- They got the dialouge right huh?
These guys must still be from Brooklyn.
You know mob guys don't usually do honest
work when they're in the mob, that's for sure.
Well they may do some but it's always in connection
to something illegal that they're doing.
- When I said I needed a job
I didn't mean slave labor.
- Whatever.
- I can make a hundred times more
working for Barbaro Incorporated.
- Wait, you said Barbaro? Joe Barbaro?
- You know Joe Barbara was a real guy by the way.
You ever here of Appalachia?
Back in the 1950s there was a meeting of all
the major mob guys from all over the country.
It was in Appalachia, New York.
Law enforcement got wind of it,
it was a lot of guys there and
they actually kind of invaded the place.
Everybody ran away, they locked up
a whole bunch of guys.
It was the last time that a major meeting
of mob guys from around the country
ever happened as a result to that.
- So you won't mind if I give Joe a call, right?
- So would he be calling a guy on
the phone to ask about that?
I don't know, I doubt it, we didn't use phone
calls for situations like that.
You probably say you know I'll go and meet the guy,
you know I'll find out, come back tomorrow,
I'll let you know.
And you better be telling the truth 'cause
if you're not, you're gonna be in trouble.
'Ya didn't wanna use somebody's name
back in the day.
That would get you in trouble.
Even if you knew somebody and you used
his name without them knowing about it,
you'd be in trouble.
I was in a bar that my father had
something to do with, I was younger.
And there was a guy at the bar that was
bothering one of the waitresses.
And so the owner came over to me and said,
"Mike can you talk to this guy,
cause he's gettin' a little bit out of control,
bein' a little out of hand."
And I said, okay.
So I went over to him and I said
"Hey, why don't you leave the girl alone,
she don't wanna be bothered, you're gettin'
a little out of hand."
And he looked at me and he said
"You know who I am?"
The worst line you could ever say
to somebody in that life.
And I said "no, tell me who you are."
He says, "You know who owns this place?"
I said "nah, tell me who owns it."
He said "guy by the name of Sonny Franzese."
I said "Really?"
He said "Yeah," he said "Lemme tell ya' this."
He said "Sonny's doing time right now,
he's away, but I make one phone call
and I'll have his son Michael down
here in five minutes."
And he's talkin' to me, okay?
So needless to say I said, "I'll tell you what,
come in the back, since you mentioned
such a strong name, I wanna talk to you," ya' know.
We took him in the back and I guarantee you,
this guy never would mention somebody's name again.
That was commonplace in New York.
People mention other people's names all the time.
Get in trouble.
So he's a collector.
So in other words, you'd Shylock
money on the street, and he's collecting, common job.
When I was a captain, I had a lot of guys around me.
I used to give the money to them at one or two
points a week, and they in turn
would lend it out.
You know, and add another point or two
for themselves so they could make some money,
because we had a lot of guys around us
that couldn't earn five cents,
if we didn't help them, ya' know,
give them something, they wouldn't have any money.
So, but everybody any mob guy that has
any kind of money, he's always
putting it out on the street.
When I went to prison, I had about
a million dollars on the street.
I was collecting two percent a week, so.
Do the math, it was a lot of money.
- Now get out of here before I kick your ass.
- Well, you know what, as soon as he said that,
that's what would happen.
(grunts)
(tense music)
- Now to be honest with you, I never,
usually there's no fight like that.
Normally it's one punch or one kick
and he's down, that's it, and the money comes back.
When a guy owes money they're not fighting back.
They're gonna pay because they know
who they owe it to.
And they know that if they don't pay
or if they do anything out of turn
they're gonna be in trouble.
You gotta remember, in that life,
you know, you make a mistake, you pay for it,
you could pay for it with your life.
I mean, it could be serious, so,
you don't see fights like that.
- Hey, pal.
Derek needs you to pay the fee for the barber.
- Oh, yeah, I must have forgot or something.
- Next time try to pay on time, okay?
Thanks.
- Now that's how it would go, normally.
- Hey, Derek needs you to pay the fee for the barber.
- Sure, here it is, I don't want no problems.
- Don't leave it until the last minute next time.
- Yeah, this is normal, boys.
You collect the money off all of these
guys that are just workers.
They must be gamblers.
- Hey pal, Derek needs you to pay the
fee for the barber.
- Gotta be a gambling debt, because
you wouldn't be lending money to guys like that.
This is not real, I gotta tell ya,
this is not realistic.
You don't see fights like this.
See one thing you gotta remember,
we didn't fight on the street.
If we fought it was some spontaneous thing
that happened in a club, or whatever.
Or if somebody got out of hand then
they didn't pay, they'd be in a hospital.
I mean they may as well be in a boxing ring.
I mean this is not realistic at all.
That's it, good kick, saw a lot of that.
A lot of this was unrealistic.
First of all, these are guys that,
they're working stiffs.
If money was lent to them, I'm sure it
wasn't a lot.
You lend to what you know you're gonna get paid back.
And when you put money out on the street,
guy can keep it forever as long
as he pays the interest.
That's the whole deal, you don't
have to pay the principle back
for as long as he keeps it, as long
as he doesn't miss an interest payment.
You miss a payment, you're in trouble.
You never see a fight over that.
You know, maybe the mob guy would hit
the guy that didn't have the money,
but nobody's gonna hit back.
That's the least traffic I ever seen in Manhattan.
- I need gas stamps.
They're worth a fortune to me now
because of the gas shortage.
- Gas stamps.
- Where can we get 'em?
- Pretty close to home for me.
The case that I finally got convicted on,
I took a plea on, was a case in which
I defrauded the government out of tax
on every gallon of gasoline.
I ran that operation for about eight years.
I had all the Russian mobsters involved
with me on that.
And at the height of my operation I had
350 gas stations I either owned or operated.
And I had 18 companies that were licensed
to collect tax on every gallon of gasoline.
The height of my operation, we were sellin'
a half a billion gallons of gas a month,
and we were takin' down 20, 30, 40 cents a gallon.
Close to eight, nine million dollars a week.
I had my own jet plane, I had a helicopter.
I had houses all over the country.
So, I mean, I had it goin' on.
If you have gas, it's like having money.
You know, I had a terminal out in Long Island
in Ocean Side, and we always had three
or four million gallons of gas in the ground.
And that was like cash.
So the object here is, this guy Vito,
is supposed to go in to pass security guards.
Without planning this, without thinking about it,
without putting a crew together,
somehow get through the security guards,
in a place that he's never scoped out before,
cause normally you're gonna scope it out,
you're gonna see what's what.
You gotta plan something like this,
and then how're you gonna get into the safe?
He's got no tools with him, he's just
walkin' in there and somehow
magically gonna open the safe?
Would never happen that way.
I wanna see if he's gonna case it out first,
if he's gonna look, see how many
security guards there.
He didn't get any information whatsoever
on what that safe looks like,
what kind of safe it is.
So, how do you just go in there
and crack a safe without knowing
anything about it, or having any tools,
or figuring anything out.
What is he gonna do with the security guards?
How is he gonna get past them?
What is he gonna tell them?
Gonna sneak in a window?
He's driving Maria, now to the hospital.
- [Vito] They keep the back door open at night?
- [Maria] No, but the basement window
usually is, so --
- How did I call that, he was comin' in through a window.
Never happens.
How many guards are there, she didn't say.
What are they guarding?
The front, the back, are they walkin'
through the halls?
I mean, you're gonna pull a job off like this,
you're gonna wanna know everything
as in detail as you possibly can.
So you know what you can do
and what you can't do.
Now the problem with this, you know, also,
is Maria is a -- if this heist does take affect,
she's a potential witness.
See right off the bat, I can tell
you this is not a one man job.
You'd have at least two people there,
you know, somebody watching out for him,
maybe somebody trying to distract
the security guards.
It would never be a one man job.
Alright, well that was convenient,
the window was left open.
He's in the mens room.
- Alright, here's the key, now I gotta get to the safe.
- Find the safe and steal the stamps, okay.
You wouldn't count on trying to get
around the guard, or sneaking around,
you'd probably just get the guard
and hit 'em in the back of the head,
knock 'em out, and then go about your business,
because you don't even know where the safe is.
You gotta go look for it, so you can't
keep sneaking around from the guard.
You just take 'em out right away.
Okay, well the guy is not a safe cracker.
He's never done anything like this in his life,
but he's gonna go in there and he's gonna
crack a sophisticated safe.
No, that's not happening.
Now we did have people that were, ya' know,
safe crackers, they knew how to do this.
But you're not gonna tell a guy, cold,
to go in and crack a safe, not gonna happen.
Picking a lock, very difficult.
Again, you gotta be a locksmith,
you gotta have tools, you gotta
know what you're doin', you can't just
walk in there cold, and pick a lock.
I wish it was that easy, we would've
been a lot wealthier.
Now, he's pretty good, he got it done somehow.
Now this looks like a pretty secure safe.
It looks like it could be like
a bank vault almost.
Now how's he gonna open this.
Pickin' this lock, too?
Oh my god.
Only in a video game would you see this, trust me.
Now, first of all, he wouldn't
only take the stamps.
He'd take everything in there.
Alright, so the alarm went off.
Security guards are still roamin' around,
this is why you take them out.
There's no way that he would get out of this place.
No way in the world.
This whole scene is totally unrealistic.
I had somebody shoot at me once,
but it was a mistake.
I was getting out of the car at a diner
in Brooklyn, was three of us,
and a drive-by, a guy shot at us.
They thought we were somebody else.
- These stamps you took have an expiration date.
- You didn't say anything about any expiration date.
- This would blow up real bad, in real life.
Real bad, guy went through all that trouble,
I didn't here him say anything about
expiration dates on the stamps.
He almost gets himself killed, he gets in,
gets what he has to get, gets out,
hand him the thing, and then he said
this isn't any good.
That would end very badly for one of them there, trust me.
- What the hell is this?
- Crazy bastard.
- So this is the Irish mob and the Italian guys.
- What the hell are you doing here, you --
- They're pullin' off a heist at the same place,
at the same time.
- Fatso, this is our --
- Pretty unrealistic, now you gotta understand,
you know, back in the day, back in the 30s,
20s, 30s, 40s, when things were unorganized,
possibly something like this coulda happened.
But in later days, when, you know, the families
were formed, and we got a lot more sophisticated,
something like this would never happen.
There would never be a major shootout in the street.
You know, among rival gangs, there would never be
cops coming all at one time.
This is pretty unrealistic.
In my day, other than the Lufthansa heist,
which you might have heard about.
It was a big, big heist in the airport
at the time.
I don't remember anything like this ever occurring.
In the 25 years that I was part of that life.
Nor did I ever hear of anything.
But again, you know back in the 20s, 30s, possibly,
but certainly not in the mafia that we know.
Now there's two guys, they're gonna go in against
an army of cops?
I mean, that would never happen, you know
these guys would be running for their lives,
trying to find some place to get out of there.
I don't think the game was very realistic.
It certainly was intriguinng.
I mean, ya' know, the graphics were amazing.
You can tell that, you know, whosever
creating these games, they don't have
a real knowledge of the life.
And that's not really knocking them
because unless you're an insider,
you don't really have knowledge of that life.
You wouldn't see shootouts in
the middle of the street,
you wouldn't see warring gangs going after each other.
It was a fun ride.
Realism, on a scale of one to 10,
I'd give it a four or five.
After watching this and playing this game
a little bit, I mean, it's so sensational,
so to speak.
I don't see how anybody can look at this game
and actually, you know, let it effect their
life to the point where they would wanna
go out and commit a violent act.
I mean, I just don't get it, to me,
there's no relation to that
whatsoever, it's a game!
(adventurous music)