Ex Mob Boss Reveals How He Handled Extreme Stress In The Mafia

➡ Michael Francis, a former high-profile mobster, shares his experiences of stress, trust issues, and managing multiple operations while dealing with the police and family. He also discusses his transition to a new life, including his ventures into podcasting and launching his own wine brand. Despite the challenges, he reminisces about the camaraderie and power he enjoyed during his time in the mob.
➡ The speaker had a large amount of cash from his 350 gas stations and had to find ways to manage it, even building a room in a bank for counting and transferring money. He also discusses the changes in the mob in New York and Italy, and how the most dangerous individuals are often the quietest. He mentions his various business ventures, including a film production company, car dealerships, and nightclubs, and how he used his street knowledge in these businesses.
➡ The speaker had a successful gas business but got into legal trouble and ended up in prison. Knowing he was going to be convicted, he sold off his assets and paid a large sum to the government. His time in prison was tough, especially due to being moved around and spending time in solitary confinement. Now free, he’s involved in various ventures including a pizza business, a wine company, and possibly a movie.

Please. Do not forget the punctuations! Please. Do not forget the punctuations! Having all these different operations running, not knowing who to trust whilst we’ve got the police, we’ll get off your back. And then you’ve got family to deal with as well. There’s a lot going on. It’s a lot of stress, but you know, I gave an example about a year ago. I go to the doctor and I say, what is this? And he said, well, it’s alopecia. How do you get that? You know, he said, well, do you have a lot of stress? I said, I don’t know.

Michael Francis is behind bars tonight. You know, what is stress? I have no idea. When you’re on the street like that and you were as high profile as I was and had so much going on, you just have to work. You know, you can’t worry about how it’s impacting you. I don’t feel it. I’m just so used to it. Everybody, welcome to another sit down with Michael Francis. Hope everybody is doing well. All is very good, very blessed on this end. As always, my friends, I give all the praise, honor, glory, and thanksgiving to our God for that.

You know, I’ve been on many, many good podcasts from other content creators, Jordan Peterson, being one of them, Patrick Bed-David, I can name a ton of them. And every once in a while, you get one that kind of stands out and those are great. Don’t get me wrong. They were great. But I had a guy recently, his name is Mike Thurston, and he flew in all the way from the United Kingdom to sit down with me. He might’ve had some other business here, but he came to my studio, wanted to sit down with me and really interview me.

So we sat in my studio and we had an interview, and I thought it was really good. He went pretty deep into some things about the mob life and about a lot of other things that I think is going to be interesting to you. He went pretty deep with me about a lot of different things that you might’ve not heard from me before. So we’re going to get into it. He was a really good guy, enjoyed him very much, got past the English accent that sometimes gives me a problem. We had a really deep discussion, and I know you’ve been wanting to hear some mob stuff, so you got some here.

You might want to be a little bit curious about some things that I haven’t talked about in the past. I don’t believe so, and I hope you enjoy it. So with no further delay, Mike Thurston’s guest, Michael Francis, take it away. Thank you for having me here at your studio. Well, thank you for making that long trip. Appreciate it. Yes, it’s a long trip, but it’s been worth it. Did you ever think back to what your life would have been like if you’d become a doctor? That’s so long ago. As much as I was on that road for a while, I don’t know if I was cut out for that, honestly.

I think my life had to go the way it went. Did you ever think you were going to be cut out for the things that you’ve done? This year now? Not in a million years. If you would have told me 25 years ago that I’d be speaking all over the world and writing books and doing all of that, I would have said you’re crazy. Never anticipated it, never even thought of it. Do you think if you had gone down that route of being a doctor, that’s what you were studying to become? Do you think you could have supported your family, your brother and sister, when your father was locked away? No, because my dad went away when I was just entering college.

I had six, seven years ahead of me that I had to be in school, make money there. There’s this big myth when you’re in the mob life that you go away and everybody takes care of you. The family takes care of you. It’s not true. My dad had a couple of things going on the street, but after about two years, the money ran out. That was it, and then we were on our own. I was basically forced to help my family survive. How quickly did the money start coming in as soon as you…

Well, I was fortunate. I was very aggressive on the street. I was the kind of guy that, if I had money in my pocket, I was a wreck. I had to have money. It was inbred in me, I guess. I think that’s an innate quality. I had a little bit of a head for business. I figured some things out early on and got into it right away. My friends, you may not have heard, but I now have a wine branded in my name, Franz Eastwine. I’m very proud of it. It comes from the world’s first vineyards.

We have alcoholic wine and non-alcoholic wine, several varieties, fruit varieties. You’re going to love it. Different than anywhere you’ve ever tasted before. So enjoy this with your friends. Go to FranzEastwine.com, and offer you shouldn’t refuse, but a taste you’re going to love. You must have had such a high stress tolerance. I don’t know how… Having all these different operations running, not knowing who to trust, whilst you’ve got the police who will get off your back. And then you’ve got the family to deal with as well. There’s a lot going on. It’s a lot of stress, but you know, I’ll give you an example.

I went to, about a year ago, I went to the doctor. You know, you have this, I forget what they call it, when you lose your beard a little bit. I’ll piece it. I’ll piece you, yeah. So I go to the doctor and I say, what is this? And he said, well, it’s alopecia. He said, how do you get that? You know, he said, well, do you have a lot of stress? I said, I don’t know. You know, what is stress? I have no idea. You know, I’ve been dealing with stuff my whole life, so I just deal with it.

I would imagine it affects you in some way, but I don’t feel it. You know, I don’t, I’m so used to it. I’m just so used to it. Well, I think some of the most successful people in business who are just responsible for billions and tens of thousands of staff, you know, they just, they deal with it. You just deal with it. You know, I would imagine it’s stressful, and maybe it comes out in certain ways, but you don’t feel it. Yeah, exactly. I remember speaking to one of my podcasts, it was like a year ago, I was wondering how I could get rid of stress.

They said to me, why do you want to get rid of stress? Like stress is a part of life. What you want to do is build up your tolerance, so you can handle stress, and you can build up more than you can handle all stress, and you can just go with your day to day life and not let it affect you. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s how you deal with it. You don’t dwell on it. You don’t think about it. You know, look, when you’re on the street like that, and you were as high profile as I was, and had so much going on, you just have to work.

You know, you can’t worry about how it’s impacting you. Is there anything that you miss in most days? Yeah. Listen, you know, look, there’s parts of the life that I enjoyed. There’s guys, I had some very tight friends. They’re all gone now. But look, I don’t think there’s anything more powerful, maybe a marriage, but other than that, there’s nothing more powerful than a group of guys getting together. You know, I had a very idealistic view of that life. Coming to the life, you know, they told me, wherever you go in the world, don’t worry about anything.

You’ll have a brother who will have somebody there. Don’t ever worry about your wife, your daughter, your mother, your sister. Nobody will ever abuse them, your family. I got your back, you got mine. That’s very powerful. So I kind of missed that camaraderie that we had with the guys. Yeah, I mean, you know, that’s a powerful thing for men to have in their life. And I enjoyed that. And then, of course, you’re making money and people catering to you. You know, I had my own plane, my own helicopter. I had houses in various parts of the country.

So I mean, we were living good at a young age in life, so I was good. How old are you during this time? Well, I started really making money in my mid-20s. So by the time I was 30, I mean, I was flying pretty high. I had my angelic up the whole bit. So me, it was pretty early. And this is one thing that I’ve always been curious about. When you’re dealing with such a large amount of cash, how do you reinvest that and clean it? Like, because sure, there’s not many places that will accept it.

No. You know, I’ll give you an example. We had a lot of cash. Initially, we had a lot of cash. And then at some point in time when the law changed, and you had to become a wholesale or complicated, but we started doing a lot of wire transfers. So I had foreign banks that I was dealing with in Austria mainly, a little bit in the Caribbean, but Austria mainly. And we had a lot of cash collected from our gas stations because I had over 350 gas stations. We either owned or operated, one of the two, leased them, owned them, operate, whatever.

And so we had a lot of cash coming in. So I had a guy in a bag. I don’t want to mention his name. And poor guy went through a lot of headaches because of it. But I called him one day and I said, Rocco, you got a basement in his bank. And he says, yeah, why? I said, come on, let’s go downstairs. We’ll go downstairs. And I said, Rocco, look, business is really good for me right now. I said, I’m going to have a lot of cash. I said, you can’t handle it upstairs.

And he says, but here’s what I’d like to do. I’ll refinish the old basement. We’ll put a safe in the air. Hire a couple of tellers. We’ll get a couple of counting machines. I says, and let this be my room. I said, oh, my expense. He says, you got it. And so I built a whole room for him down there. We hired two tellers that had the counting machines. And we’ll bring in in cash every single day. And we’re counting it. Some of it, I was moving out, physically moving out to other banks and others we were wiring out.

It was a big operation just to handle the cash. There used to be people on your face and I’m like, find out where. Oh, gosh. They wrote a book. The government hired an investigator, his name was Panya or something, to try to find out where I had my money. And he wrote a whole book about it. Never found it, tried to. But yeah, it was… I mean, it’s a good problem to have. You don’t complain about something like that, but it was a lot of work. Tell me, is the mob still a thing in New York at the present day? It is.

It’s not nearly the same as it was in my era or before me. I always say the golden years in that life, mid-40s to the mid-80s, when they really cracked down with the Racketeering Act, was a RICO statute that destroyed whatever we really had going. They’re still there. Five families still there. They operate, they got smart, pretty well low key right now. But it’s not nearly what it was when I was around because they took all the union control away. They took a lot of power centers that we had and they took it away.

What about like in Italy, it’s Sicily? Italy’s still strong. Yeah, I mean, look, the Italian government came down on them too, but they’re still strong. I mean, it’s Sicily, they control a lot in Sicily, for sure. Yeah. How do you know if somebody is somebody not to be messed with, like who is like a genuinely powerful, scary individual? Is there any signs? Because what I’ve noticed, especially a social media word it might be, those people who are super loud and they act like they’re the tough guy who’s making all the money, they’re usually not about that life.

The ones that are really about that life probably don’t even have social media. Yeah. No, they don’t last. The guys, look, there was a guy by the name of Roy DeMeo. I always use Roy because everybody knows him. Do you ever hear that name? Roy was a serial killer. He probably killed 200 guys. Like he actually did that. He actually killed. I mean, he and his crew, but his answer to everything was just kill the guy. And he ended up getting killed because who’s going to deal with a guy like that? You may as well just get rid of him.

You never know what he’s going to do. He’s a wild, loose cannon. But people would say to me, Michael, were you afraid of Roy? Because I knew Roy fairly well. I said, why would I need to be afraid of him? I can shoot the same way he can. I’m a made guy he is. He’s not going to hurt me. If I think he is, I’m going to act first, right? I’m not going to allow that to happen. We’re both capable. He’s just a serial killer. That’s his answer to everything. And people say, well, that’s what the mob did to him.

I said, no, the mob didn’t do that. The mob made it easier for him. He would have been a serial killer, whether it was in the mob or not. It just happened to be where he ended up. But people like that, they don’t last. I knew so many guys that threw their weight around, wanted to talk like tough guys. And at the end of the day, you say, who needs this guy? Just get rid of him. And he’s gone. It’s the guys that you know, don’t mess with this guy because tomorrow you could not be here, you know what I mean? And there were guys like that.

They usually be like the quietest people. Yeah. Yeah. Like my father was a tough guy. You don’t mess with my dad. You don’t mess with him. My boss at the time, Carmine Persico, tough guy. He said, Michael, were you ever afraid in that life? I said, yeah, I’d be afraid to step out of line because I know people above me were very capable of handling it. So you stay in line. But we all know how to shoot. We all were capable of doing that. So you don’t fear somebody unless you have a reason to be afraid.

Yeah. But would that usually be from word of mouth or just feeling the vibe? Well, it’s both, you know, reputation too, you know, because look, I was one of the youngest guys in that life. So a lot of guys were there for a long time before me. And you get to learn who, you know, who was a real guy and who was just one of the guys because they’re there. So you know that. And the top guy, the big boss, did they go out and about in public and go to bars and restaurants and things like that? Or were they very much staying at home? No, they don’t stay at home.

But look, you had your John Gotti types that like to be in front of the camera, like to be out there, you know. And then you had the biggest family in the world, in the country, I shouldn’t say in the world, and you never seen him. And he ran his family for 20 years. Never even went to prison, really. Did a little time but nothing substantial and created the biggest family in the country. Very low key, stayed in the shadows. I’m sure he went to restaurants and things like that, but he didn’t want the limelight at all.

Gotti was different. You know, he was always in front of the limelight, but who would you rather be? Yeah. You know, Coler Gambino died in his home with his family around him. John Gotti died in jail. I’m going to imagine you live a lot from that life, which could be applied into business today, particularly the negotiations. Absolutely. Business is business. Whether you’re doing it on the street, you’re doing it in a boardroom. It’s business. You got pretty much a lot of the same techniques and tactics that you use, you know. I mean, I learned, I learned on the street.

Was there any particular business venture that was surprisingly lucrative? That was legit. Well, I mean, look, I had my hands in a lot of different things. I had a film production company, but the industry was different then. I was able to make a lot of money in that business, but it was different back then than it is today. Today, it’s a little more difficult. I had two automobile agencies who made a lot of money. They’re very successful. Um, you know, I had a couple of restaurants that I owned at nightclubs that I got involved in.

When you get involved, these guys come to you and look, there is a little, hey, you’re in a club business. You know, you’re gonna, you’re gonna be shaken down by somebody. It may as well be me because I’ll be a good partner. I’ll save you from all the other guys, you know, and that’s the line you’re giving them basically. Because if it’s not me, it’s going to be somebody else, but I’ll be your best partner. Trust me. Okay. You got a piece, you know, and that’s how it went in the street. Um, but anything more lucrative than the other, I mean, other than it, look, the gas business outweighed everything, but we were stealing tax money.

But, uh, you know, I had a lot of success in the things that I tried to get involved in. Didn’t, you know, but I worked hard. Didn’t just happen. I worked hard. So what happens with the gas thing is going well, but then you get locked up for that. Yeah. I took a plea. So does that mean that all the businesses which you had running, could you continue to operate them whilst you were inside or did they just? No. I mean, I sold off when I knew, when I knew things were closing in on me, because I went to trial five times.

I beat all the cases, but I knew when my partner became an informant that the gas business was going to be a problem. And so I cut my losses by taking a plea because I knew they really wanted a conviction on me. Giuliani put me on a big case. They thought they were going to take me down. He was going to give me 50 years, a hundred years maybe. And I beat the case. So they really wanted a conviction on me. So I knew I had some leverage with them. When I offered to take a plea, they were like stunned and they jumped at it.

They really jumped at it. I said, wow. So we negotiated for 10 years sentence. I had a $15 million restitution, $5 million in forfeitures. And I started- What does that mean? Well, forfeitures mean my assets. I had to give it to them. So I gave them the plane, I gave them the helicopter to take it and some property that I had. And then I had to pay them $14.7 million. And I knew that they would try to take other things that maybe, so I started selling things off, sold my agency, sold everything.

So I really didn’t have much left when I went to prison. I’d rather have the cash so my wife can live without working and take care of my family. So that’s how I did it. So they didn’t get anything other than what I gave them. And during the time you were in prison, what was that like? Obviously it sucked, but- Yeah, well, listen, I visited my father for 25 years. So I was no stranger to prison, but I had got locked up a couple of times. I had 18 arrests. But, you know, prison is what you make of it.

The worst part of prison is just being separated and losing your freedom. What they do to you in there, you know, it all depends. I mean, you know, I was in solitary for almost three years. The feds were really upset with me. They tried to get me to cooperate, and I wouldn’t. And they really took vengeance on me. So they did two things, which probably the worst part of being in prison, they put me on diesel therapy. You know what that is? That’s when they, you know, the feds have prisons all over the country.

So what they do is they take you out in the middle of the night, throw you on some plane that the marshals confiscated from a drug dealer, and they ship you to another prison. You don’t know where you’re going. You have no idea how long you’re going to be there. You can’t get on a phone. You can’t tell your family. They don’t tell your family because of security reasons. You get to the new prison, they keep you there for three days, pick you up, put you on a plane again. And they’ll run you around.

They did that for me for almost eight months. Just ran me ragged. And it’s the worst part of being in prison because you never get settled. You can’t get a visit. It’s hard to get on a phone, and they put you in solitary when you’re there. So I mean, they ran me there for about eight months, and then they put me in a hole for almost three years. This was because they were trying to make you cry. Yeah. Yeah, they were pretty upset with me. So that was tough, no doubt about it. Solitary is rough, especially for that length of time.

But when you’re in the yard, it’s fine. Do your thing. One of the most precious things you can have in life is your freedom. You know this. People take your freedom. It’s precious. So to be given my freedom and to be given my life, what more can I ask for? I’m blessed. No matter what happens now, I’m going to be three quarters of a century if I’m here next year. Amazing. I appreciate it. I enjoyed that conversation. Well, thank you. Same here. Where can people find the… Wow, you’ve got a lot going on. You’ve got the pizza, you’ve got the wine.

It’s cool for you to eat. Yeah. We’ll give you all the post. Franz Eastwine. We do direct-to-consumer. Also, we’re in markets all over the country. FranzEastwine.com. The pizza, you’ll find it in grocery stores everywhere, hopefully in one major establishment that everybody knows all over the world. That might be happening soon. And then we’ll have these vending machines that are being placed all over in hotels and everywhere else that you’ll hear about it. Slices pizza. You’ll hear about it soon. But I’m easy to find. I’ve got my YouTube channel. I’m all over social media.

And hopefully it’ll be a movie that’s worth seeing in the next year or so. We’ll see. Thank you. But thank you very much. Thank you. [tr:trw].