“I was bringing 8 to 9 million dollars a week into my operation. I had my own Learjet. I had a helicopter. I had a house in Florida, California and New York. I had 300 crazy guys under me that were willing to do anything I told them to do. "I was 31 years old." The speaker is Michael Franzese; his words come from an article in the Maine Campus newspaper. (They spell Colombo as Columbo, but I am not going to bother changing it.) Born May 27, 1951, Franzese, son of Colombo Crime Family Underboss John “Sonny” Colombo, is a former New York mobster with the Colombo crime family who was heavily involved with the Russian Mafia in the gasoline tax rackets in the 1980s. Since then, he has publicly renounced organized crime, created a foundation for helping youth and become a motivational speaker. And he's written the obligatory book or two that all former mafiosi write after they leave the rackets and have to earn legally.
