May 27, 1951 - Michael Franzese
At his peak in the mid-1980s, Franzese ran gasoline tax fraud schemes of a scale that drew comparisons to the bootlegging operations of Prohibition-era organized crime — generating revenues that placed him among the wealthiest figures in the American Mafia at the time. His trajectory as a Colombo family caporegime illustrates how traditional mob structures adapted to exploit legitimate industries, in this case fuel distribution, rather than relying solely on street-level rackets. He is also unusual among figures cataloged here for having walked away from organized crime entirely, later building a public career around that departure.
From Wikipedia
Michael Franzese Sr. () (né Grillo; born May 27, 1951) is an American former mobster who was a caporegime in the Colombo crime family in New York City, and son of former underboss Sonny Franzese. Franzese was enrolled in a pre-med program at Hofstra University, but dropped out to make money for his family after his father was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery in 1967. He eventually helped implement a scheme to defraud the federal government out of gasoline taxes in the early 1980s.
By the age of 35, in 1986, Fortune Magazine listed Franzese as number 18 on its list of the "Fifty Most Wealthy and Powerful Mafia Bosses". Franzese claimed that at the height of his career, he generated up to $8 million per week. In 1986, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison on conspiracy charges, released in 1989, rearrested in 1991 for a parole violation, and ultimately released in 1994. Soon after being released, he walked away from the mob and retired to California, and became a motivational speaker, commentator, and writer.
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