Michael Franzese

Franzese was made into the Colombo family in 1975 and a caporegime by 1980, running a petrol tax fraud with Russian partners that federal investigators valued in the millions of dollars a week, which made him one of the largest earners in American organised crime. He pleaded guilty in 1986 and served time, then quit, which men of his rank had generally not survived doing. He speaks about it now, mostly to churches, corporate audiences and locker rooms, and gives a religious conversion as the reason. His father Sonny was a Colombo underboss who spent decades in prison and never left the life. The books are his own account, and nobody has independently audited the numbers in them.