The Truth About Diddy and RICO Charges: Ex-Mobsters Weigh in

The RICO law, created in 1970 to combat organized crime, has evolved to be used against various groups, including Wall Street. Michael Franzese, a former New York mob captain, and Anthony Ruggiano Jr., son of a Gambino crime captain, discuss its application in a case involving Diddy, a music mogul. They question if Diddy, who is on trial alone, can be considered a one-man enterprise under RICO. They also discuss the difference in behavior between mobsters and the alleged actions of Diddy, emphasizing that in their former lives, they were taught to respect women.
The text discusses a high-profile individual who has been accused of despicable acts over a span of 20 years. The defense is expected to challenge the RICO statute, a law often used in cases of organized crime. The accused, despite his alleged actions, is expected to fare well in prison due to his wealth and status, unless he is sent to a Supermax prison where he would be isolated. The text also mentions that several witnesses have been granted immunity in exchange for their testimony, which is a common practice in building such cases.
The discussion revolves around the potential legal issues of a CEO, possibly Diddy, who allegedly used his staff to commit crimes. The debate is about whether this can be considered a racketeering enterprise under the RICO law, which is typically applied to groups rather than individuals. The example given is a hotel worker who was allegedly paid to hide evidence of a crime, which could be seen as obstruction of justice. The conversation ends with the anticipation of hearing from other staff members who might be involved.

Please. Do not forget the punctuations! Please. Do not forget the punctuations! The Rico Statute was definitely created, I think back in 1970, a fellow by the name of Debakey created it specifically to go after the mob. No question about that. It certainly evolved over the years because the government obviously could use a law in any way they see fit. They’ve gone after Wall Street people with it and a lot of other people, so they’ll use it outside of the mob. What’s a little bit confusing here is… Michael Franzese was a captain in New York’s Colombo crime family.

He served eight years for racketeering and extortion. And Anthony Ruggiano Jr. is the son of a Gambino crime captain who was locked up four different times for robbery, gambling and, yes, RICO. Michael and Anthony, welcome to both of you. And Michael, I said Franzese, and I think it’s Franzese, so I will correct myself before we even get started. Thank you both so much for being here. I have so many questions for you. Let me start with this, and I’m going to open it up to the both of you, but Michael, I’m going to get you to start.

For a lot of people, RICO is all about the mob. It’s all about what you see on the Sopranos. It’s those kinds of crimes. It’s not the stuff that they see on tape where Diddy’s beating his girlfriend up. But I know that you guys have had a chance to kind of look into this case. You’ve heard what I just said in the opening of this case. So do you think that this is RICO, or are you scratching your heads? Well, you know, first of all, you can say my name either way, Franzese or Franzese, so you’re correct.

But I will say, you know, the RICO statute was definitely created. I think back in 1970, a fellow by the name of Debaky created it specifically to go after the mob. No question about that. It certainly evolved over the years because the government obviously could use a law in any way they see fit. They’ve gone after Wall Street people with it and a lot of other people. So they’ll use it outside of the mob. What’s a little bit confusing here is normally there is a criminal enterprise that’s involved, a group of people. I had three racketeering indictments, two federal and one state.

And in each case, it was the Franzese family, the Franzese group as part of an enterprise. And I had a lot of codefendants. I didn’t hear the government’s opening statement on this to see how they tied this into a racketeering statute, because as far as I know, it’s only Diddy on trial, and he’s on trial alone. So are they claiming that he is a one-man enterprise? You know, that’s what’s kind of confusing to me, because the charges against him can certainly stand alone. I don’t think they need to be part of a racketeering indictment.

But again, I’d have to know what the opening statement was and how they put that theory together that this could be under the RICO statute. So you know what? I’ll throw this in here. And Anthony, you can jump in. From the way I see things, what the prosecutors have tried to determine is that here’s Diddy at the top of bad boy records and the enterprise that he’s created, the big businesses that he’s created. He’s got employees that he has. He’s paying his security. He’s got employees like Cassie, who is supposed to be releasing music. He’s got employees like assistance, who he tells you go and set up the freakoffs and you go and get my drugs.

And you grab Cassie and bring her to this vacant building and threaten her with a lie detector test. So I think what they’re trying to say is that he used his business and he used his corporate card from bad boy enterprises and he used cash from the business plus assistance and employees to carry out a lot of the crimes that they’re alleging one after the other with these witnesses. So if I lay it out that way, Anthony, what do you think? Do you think this lines up with the RICO that you know? My friends, I want you to picture this.

You lock your doors at night. You set your alarm, right? You feel safe. You feel guarded. But let me ask you this. Who’s guarding your personal information like your social security number? Right now, it’s probably sitting in some database that’s already been hacked and the banks promising you security is practically gift wrapping it for these hoodlums that rob you. Bank of America, they just had another data breach and they kept silent about it for months. In my world, we call that Omerta. But at least we had a code. These companies, you know, they wait an average of two hundred and seventy seven days before telling you about a breach.

That’s nine months that these criminals have all your data. Look, with cyber attacks happening daily, your personal information is probably already at risk. That’s why I personally use Aura. After rebuilding my life post prison, I’m not letting some faceless hacker take what I’ve worked so hard for. Aura alerts me immediately if my information is on the dark web or if someone is trying to access my accounts, my social security number or even my emails. Plus, this is a bonus. They back it up with five million bucks in identity theft insurance. You know, these companies that offer free credit monitoring after the breach, it’s like calling to tell me my front door is open after the thieves have already cleaned out my house.

People, family is everything to me. So I want you to go to Aura dot com slash family for two weeks free service. They’ll already find out if your data is exposed before these companies are forced to tell you some nine months later. Remember, it’s better to have protection and not need it than to need protection and not have it. That’s an offer you shouldn’t refuse. You know, I feel a lot like Michael. You know, I’m struggling with it, too, because my recall is also there was co-defendants. I read his indictment. I started reading his indictment today.

And his business is the enterprise. And the people that worked for him were part of the conspiracy. So maybe that other died of co-conspirators and they got immunity because, like Michael said, on my indictment, it said the United States of America versus and then there was eight names. And we all conspired to commit crimes. Did he alone? Who did he conspire with? Did he conspire by himself? Did he extort people? Yes, he did. Did he kidnap people? He held them against his will. Yes, he did. He brought people across state lines, which is a federal offense.

But to be a recall just on him, you know, it’s hard for me to understand how that happens. Yeah. And I do think that, I mean, listen, we’ve got weeks and weeks left of just the prosecutor’s case. But already we’ve seen one of the assistants who said he got immunity. And my feeling is that his second in command, Christina Corum, either she’s going to plead the fifth or she’s going to have been offered immunity or use immunity for her testimony. I do think you’re right. It’s kind of confusing without the conspirators. But my feeling is that right now to get the testimony against the guy at the top, they may be offering them immunity.

But like I said, we still have to find that out. I got this question for you, Michael. I opened the show by saying that I felt sad by sitting through a lot of today’s testimony because this stylist, he just went over instance after instance of just vicious, vicious beating and control that Diddy had allegedly over Cassie. Things he saw firsthand, things that he even tried to step in and stop by jumping on Diddy’s back. You know, blood coming down Cassie’s face during one of the beatings that Diddy allegedly turns around and says, look what you all made me do.

And I wondered about a guy like that. Now that this is all coming out in the public, if Diddy’s convicted, this is not the kind of behavior that I used to hear about with the mob. They beat up and killed guys, but they didn’t beat up and killed girls all the time. Do you see a big difference here with the kind of behavior Diddy’s accused of doing compared to the behavior of mobsters? Oh, absolutely. Let me say this. I always take the position, you know, someone’s innocent until proven guilty. That’s just my position all the time.

However, we have seen certain things. I think everybody has seen the, you know, the hotel video where he was obviously beating her up. And the testimony has been absolutely despicable. And nobody in my former life would ever approve of something like that. And I think Anthony will vouch for that. We didn’t beat up women. We didn’t do things like that. You know, we were taught to respect women in a big way, especially our families. So, you know, in our life, if you violate another another made man’s wife, daughter, sister, mother, you’re in a lot of trouble.

So we didn’t stand for that in any way, shape or form. And like I said, you know, the acts that are being described here are disgusting, despicable. You know, if somebody like that was in our former life, he wouldn’t last, you know, quite honestly. So, you know, and again, I would love to hear. I believe that the defense is going to attack the RICO statute here. You said, you know, possibly there are witnesses have been given immunity, not possibly 100%. I mean, that’s how government builds cases. They go after people, they get them to cooperate and give them immunity.

So like Anthony said, there’s probably several unindicted co-conspirators here that all decided, hey, we’re not going to take the fall. We’re going to testify. And that’s why they weren’t indicted. So I would believe that when Anthony said that, you know, they’re going to use the theory that you said that the whole, you know, bad boy records was a criminal enterprise. He was at the top of it. He used these other people to implement his criminal schemes. And that’s how they charged him with RICO. But these acts are just, you know, you know, the real question is, how did this go on for 20 years? 20 years this was going on.

A guy as high profile as that. I’ve said this before, and nobody gets charged for it. It’s allowed to continue for 20 years. There’s no question that people knew that this was going on. There were high profile people involved. How does something like this go on for 20 years? Anthony, you know, an awful lot of life. This wouldn’t last a year. You know, people would go down and… Yeah, you know what, Anthony, I’m going to get you to dovetail on that because I want to know if Diddy’s convicted and he ends up spending the rest of his life in a federal prison.

Given what we know now, the filth of his behavior, the absolute filth of his behavior when it came to how he treats women. One woman, absolutely. The others, so far, it’s just an accusation. How will he fare behind bars? Well, I have two scenarios. It’s the only…it’s the BOP variation in like a Marion or, you know, the Supermax in Colorado. He’ll do a terrible bit. But if he goes to my opinion, if he goes to a regular federal prison, he’s going to be fine because the kid’s there. The people there, he has a lot of money.

He’s still…you know, he’s in the music business. Everybody wants to be an hip-hop artist. He’s going to do fine in prison. He’s going to do a good bit. He’s got a ton of money and he’s going to do fine in prison unless the BOP buries him in a Supermax. That’s the only way he’s going to have issues. Other than that, I don’t think he’s going to have a problem with a certain group of people. Maybe mob guys might shun him. I’m sure people might throw, you know, innuendos at him. He might have a fight or two, but overall, I think he’s going to do fine in there because of who he is and all his money.

Just like Madoff did fine in there and all his other criminals. Tell me why you think he would have a tougher time at a Supermax. What would be the difference and what would that tougher time look like? He’ll be isolated. You get an hour a day, you know, he’ll be locked in his cell 23 hours a day. He’ll have no rep. He’ll have no contact to the outside world. He’ll have nobody to talk to. He’ll be just alone, isolated. And that’s, you know, that’s hard on a person to be isolated like that. But you know what? Maybe if you got a target on your back because of the way you allegedly used women as punching bags for 20 years, maybe it would be better to be isolated than the alternative.

Can’t thank you both more for being so candid about your past and helping us to sort of understand what’s at stake in this federal courtroom. I’d love to have you both back. Michael Francis and Anthony Regina. Thank you so much. Let me start here. And actually, Michael, I’m going to give the first one to you. The feds typically stack RICO cases, right? They line up the predicate acts, the underlying acts of crimes, and then they sort of lay them all out by, you know, bringing witness after witness or pieces of evidence out. I want to ask you how damaging you think Bana was on this stand today, talking about being dangled over a 17th story balcony.

Well, listen, it sounds terrible. Obviously, I’m not in the courtroom evaluating her as she gives her testimony. But look, all of this is adding up. It seems like these witnesses are corroborating one another, the same kind of behavior with all of them. I mean, it’s very damaging. I also wanted to mention something. You know, you think it’s so out of the ordinary that, you know, he’s being charged in racketeering. The only thing out of the ordinary for me is that he’s the only defendant. Normally, you have multiple defendants. But remember, they use this against Wall Street.

They use it against our ex-president in Georgia. They try to, you know, they accuse them of racketeering. So you give the government a statute. If they can expand upon it, they’ll use it in every way that they can. But what’s really puzzling here is it seems that most of these witnesses were given immunity. So some of them might be unindicted co-conspirators that would make up the enterprise along with Diddy. It’s just that they agreed to cooperate and not indict it. I mean, that’s my take on it so far. That’s a really good point, Sammy. Jump on that, because Bana was the third person, by my count, to be given immunity for her testimony.

And each of those three that got up there, they all said they did not want to be there. They did not want to be a part of this. They weren’t looking to put Diddy away. They just didn’t want anything to do with him. Do you think that jurors see that? Do you think they see immunity as something that’s really important? No, I agree with Michael 100%. They all got immunity because they’re cooperating. They’re all part of the enterprise. And that’s exactly what happens. When I cooperated, I was part of the enterprise. And I was cooperating, and nothing that I said could be used against me.

And that’s exactly what’s happening here. Same exact thing. So they’re all part of the enterprise. And do you think that’s going to amount to RICO in the jurors’ minds? Are they going to see that as racketeering? No. I mean, I don’t think they’re going to see anything wrong with dangling 17 stories out or for building. I agree with Michael. I think it’s horrible. It’s disgusting. But I don’t see it as a RICO thing. What is it? I mean, he was mad at her. They’re not even saying why he was mad at her. It could have been an argument.

How is that part of a criminal enterprise? That’s a good point. So, Michael, how about this? When it came time for cross-examination of Bana, I lost count. So did the News Nation reporters who were in the courtroom taking notes. The number of times she said, I don’t remember. How powerful do you think that is for jurors who start to think, eh, well, maybe your story isn’t so strong if you just can’t remember conveniently on cross? Yeah, I think that that goes against the witness. But again, you know, I’ve been following this in the paper every day.

And I just think the totality of these witnesses claiming the same type of behavior, they seem to be corroborating one another. And the behavior, at least as it’s being brought out, is really is really kind of horrendous. You know, I mean, they have I think the most damaging thing that the jurors are going to remember. They saw this video with Cassie. And so they know that he’s he’s, you know, very capable of this behavior. I think the attorney Garagos had to get up there and say, look, that was a bad act, but it was more of a domestic violence thing.

It wasn’t Rico. So it’s really going to depend on how capable, how competent the summation is by Garagos with the Rico. That’s that’s what it’s going to come down to. Hey, he did some despicable things, but it’s not racketeering. And if he can convince the jury of that, then they have a shot. Other than that, I think it’s a tough case. You know, they were talking a lot about him taking the stand. The only time you take the stand is when you’re desperate. And the attorney will tell you, you never take the stand unless, hey, we got a bad case here.

You may as well go up there and try to help yourself. Normally, you don’t want to take this stand. Wow. Oh, yeah. Listen, I think we all know by this point that Diddy has a bit of a God complex and if not a God complex, a king complex and a hair trigger anger management problem. Sammy, because of that, do you think it is the dumbest idea ever if Diddy took the stand because it would be real easy for those feds to get under his skin real fast? Yeah, I agree. You never take the stand in your case.

Like Michael said, as the last resort, your case is dead. You try to revive it and take the stand, but it would be a bad move. But I don’t think he has to do that. I’m becoming more and more. I don’t understand the Ricoh law. I saw a lot of people it was used against. I don’t understand how they’re using it in this case. What’s the enterprise? Okay, I’ll give you an example. All right. I’ll give you an example. The enterprise is that he’s the CEO at the top of bad boy records and he allegedly uses all of his staff members, his chief of staff, Christina Corum, his bodyguard, D Rock and the other bodyguards to carry out a lot of these crimes like this one is alleged.

A hotel worker said he was paid $100,000 in cash in a paper bag to make some video of a felony assault go away, which you could say is obstruction of justice. So there’s Diddy allegedly using his staff because they, according to the witness, were involved in the whole setup and planning of this, the non-disclosure agreement he had to sign. Michael, jump in on that. Do you see that as evidence of obstruction of justice? One of the predicate acts to prove Rico. Yes, but there again, you know, I think the challenge here is the lawyers going to get up and say, well, where’s the racketeering enterprise? And enterprise is one person.

All of a sudden, I think he’s going to have to say that these other people were unindicted co-conspirators or maybe he won’t use that word, but he’s going to have to say that these other people helped him carry out this pattern of racketeering that caused all of this stuff. Because to me, it doesn’t make sense to have one person being dotted for Rico and saying that he’s the criminal enterprise. Normally, the criminal enterprise is made up of a number of people. Every one of my cases was that way, and I had three of them. And every case that I’ve known against all of my former associates, there was always a number of people that were part of the enterprise.

Yeah, still had a couple to go. We haven’t heard from DRock and we haven’t heard from the chief of staff either, Christina Corum. So that still could be to come. So that means you guys have to come back. Michael Francis and Sami the Bull Gravano, thank you both so much for your insight. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, too. Thank you. Thank you. [tr:trw].