Morning Wire - The Mafia's Rise, Fall & Resurgence | 6.26.22

Episode Date: June 26, 2022

For much of the last century, the American mafia controlled industries, kept police, judges, and politicians on its payroll, and literally got away with murder. How did it rise and fall – and is it experiencing a resurgence?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For much of the last century, the American mafia controlled industries, kept police, judges, and politicians on its payroll, and literally got away with murder. But somewhere in between Don Corleone and Tony Soprano, the once-powerful-organized crime syndicate lost its grip on power. In this Sunday episode of Morning Wire, the Daily Wire looks at what the mob once was, how it was brought down, and how it may be back on the rise. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howl. Thanks for waking up with us.

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towards your purchase of the bed, plus free shipping in the continental U.S. That's T-H-U-M-A-C-O-S-Wire for a $25 credit, Thuma.coma.coma-L-Wire. Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marita Lorty, did some digging into the mafia, past, present, and potential future, and she's here to discuss. So, Marade, you talked to a few ex-mobsters about how the mafia fell from power. Tell us about what you learned. Hi, John. Yes, so I spoke to two former made men, Bobby Louise of the Philadelphia Mafia,

and Michael Franzisse of New York's Colombo crime family. They were both imprisoned for several years and then released. Since then, they've both renounced the mob life. And now they shared some details about their glory days in the mob, right? They did. So Bobby Louise was a maid man, a capo regime, in the Philadelphia Mafia. In 1999, Louisiana was arrested and charged with cocaine distribution and served 14 years in federal prison.

Luisie talked about growing up in Boston's Little Italy in the 1960s, when the mafia ruled the streets, and being part of it meant power, money, and responsibility. It stayed that way in the 1970s when Louise joined the life. He was eventually tapped to lead the Philadelphia Mafia's Boston crew. The Philadelphia Mafia is also known as the Bruno Scarfo Crime Family. Luisi said the mafia began to crumble in the 1980s, when the feds finally broke the spell of the oath of Omerta,

which is the mafia's oath of silence. At one point, Louisiana was getting indicted for three murders and his mafia associates were all ratting on him. He said, they turned me into a rat. The other former man I talked to was Michael Franzis, who was once a powerful capo in the Colombo family. Franzis was a pre-med student when his father, Sonny Franzis, was an underboss. He joined the mob in 1971, four years after his father was sentenced to 50 years in prison for bank robbery. Franzis was a little bit different from other mobsters in that he became fluent in very sophisticated fraud schemes.

His most famous fraud scheme defrauded the government out of gas taxes. He estimated he earned $8 million a week in his prime before going to prison on conspiracy charges in 1986. He was released in 1994. Since going to prison, he has renounced the mafia life. Franzis said the mafia's zenith lasted from the 1950s through the mid-80s. However, he says the groundwork for the mafia's golden age

was laid during the 1920s and 30s, especially through massive corruption among law enforcement and politicians. The organization was built by the massive amount of money coming into mob coffers at that time. We should note, experts disagree about when the mafia's true golden age was. Mafia expert Christian Chippalini believes the mob thrived most in the 1930s when the Italian mafia worked with other organized crime syndicates like the Irish and Jewish mobs.

Scott Bernstein believes the golden age was a bit later in the 50s and 60s, and the last vestiges were in the 70s and 80s when the feds were starting to bust mob bosses. So that brings us to the 80s, and that's when things started to collapse, correct? That's right. The mafia, or La Cosa Nostra, as it's called in this country, was targeted with several tools by law enforcement. The main one was probably the racketeer influence and corrupt organizations act, or the RICO Act, which passed in 1970, but was not really leveraged against the mafia until the 80s. I talked to one of the former prosecutors who put Franzis behind bars, Edward McDonald. So McDonald led the federal organized crime strike force in Brooklyn in the 1980s, and he investigated some of the most high-profile organized crime. cases in the country. Actually, McDonald even played himself in the famous mob movie Goodfellas.

McDonald said that at first, Washington was afraid Rico was too powerful of a tool, so it was cautious about approving RICO prosecutions. Meanwhile, the FBI was wasting its time on things like bugging social clubs. According to McDonald, bugging social clubs is pretty futile because you can't hear conversations when 40 people are in there talking, but agents were keen to do it because it was a good way to make overtime pay. Eventually, the FBI became more sophisticated in its use of electronic surveillance, and they successfully planted bugs in the inner sanctums where mob bosses were having significant conversations.

That included private rooms frequented by Gambino boss Paul Castellano, and Genevese underboss Fat Tony Salerno, as well as the offices of labor unions that were controlled by the mob. Another crippling blow to the mafia was the witness protection program, which protected mafia turncoats from being killed by the associates they betrayed. Then in 1987, new, federal sentencing guidelines began mandating long prison sentences of decades or hundreds of years without parole for mafia members. So given the choice between dying in prison and getting a new

identity, wise guys started to crack. Yeah, that makes sense. By the mid-90s, there had been enough significant prosecutions of mob bosses to really hobble the mafia. So the mob was declining in the 80s, but ironically, that's also when their fame kind of peaked. Right. And a great example is Gambino boss John Gotti. He became a a media superstar before he was sentenced to prison in 1992. In his case, charges included being behind the murder of his Gambino boss predecessor Paul Castellano, who was shot dead outside of Manhattan's Steakhouse in 1985. The Gotti family even had their own reality show in the early 2000s called Growing Up Gotti. That's right. That desire for fame may have actually been Gotti's

downfall, according to Luis. Franzi says he thinks Gotti gets a bad rap because the media latched onto him and, quote, just didn't let it go. Another colorful character the feds nailed in the twilight of the glory days was Vincent the Chin Gigante, who was dubbed the Oddfather, because for decades he could be seen wandering around Greenwich Village in his bathrobe and slippers muttering to himself. Many assumed he was mentally unstable, and he was initially judged mentally unfit to stand trial, but Gigante was ultimately sentenced to prison on racketeering and conspiracy charges in 1997.

He later admitted that his bizarre behavior, he was. was a ploy to avoid prosecution. After Gotti was locked up, mob bosses pretty much took the organization underground. Mafia expert Nick Christopher says he remembers seeing wise guys on the corners all the time in his neighborhood. But after Gotti, the mafia said, no more social clubs, no more guys hanging out on the corner, that's got to stop, according to Christophers. Now, you've reported in your series for The Daily Wire that the mob did not fully go away. It's still there. It just went underground.

Exactly. And there is. certainly less mob activity today than there was 30, 40 years ago. Louise said that in the 90s, mobsters were jockeying for position, whereas today fewer mafia members want the dangerous job of boss. As in the 90s, FBI informants are still the main risk. So there are fewer mob murder headlines because there are fewer murders. Plus, the mafia life is less glamorous than he used to be. Mobsters wear sneakers and jeans now instead of Armani suits,

and for the same reasons, they commit fewer murders. All of that just draws attention, they don't want. So the mafia still hums along quietly, but as a shadow of its former self. But some of your sources say the mob is poised for a resurgence. Why is that? Well, Franziz said he thinks the FBI

is more susceptible to corruption now than in the past, and he says that's fertile ground for a mafia resurgence. Frenzies also said that one of the mafia's biggest assets was that they knew how to manipulate people. He said, quote, there's a breakdown in morality in our government officials, and if that happens,

guys on the street will take advantage of that and you'll see a rise in power again. Neither Louise nor McDonald are predicting the resurgence of Kosoostra specifically, and in fact they predict the Italian mafia will probably die out. But there are still indications that the mob has more power than a lot of us probably assume. Even though we don't see a lot of flashy mob headlines anymore, some of the traditional mafia-controlled industries like waste management and construction were actively controlled by the mob in some areas within the last decade.

Really? So what are some examples? Yeah, so the port authority of New York and New Jersey had mob ties as early as the 40s. In 2018, New Jersey began pushing to get rid of the Waterfront Commission, the agency that combats mafia control of the port, arguing that the agency has outlived its usefulness. But New York fought New Jersey's move in court, saying the mob's influence is alive and well. The commission's executive director said in 2018 that, you can't throw a stone at the port without hitting the son, the daughter, the son-in-law, the nephew, the cousin, the godson, of a maid guy. Around the same time, the New York chief of detectives at the time said mob violence

had been slightly more frequent in the city lately. In 2016, a former NYPD cop with mafia ties was arrested and charged with running what prosecutors said was a high-end prostitution ring in New York whose clients were some of the wealthiest men in the country. In 2013, dozens of people, including mafia members and associates of the Gambino, Genevizi, and Lucchese families were charged in Manhattan federal court as part of an investigation into the mafia's alleged control of a lot of the commercial waste disposal industry

in New York and New Jersey. In 2011, local 6A of the New York Cement and Concrete Workers Union was reportedly still controlled by jailed Colombo boss Carmine Persico. The mafia has also found subtler ways of maintaining influence by infiltrating corporate America,

according to some experts. Meanwhile, drugs and illegal gambling remain very present in mafia business. So while lurid headlines, lines may have faded and the flashy aesthetic of the mafia is largely gone, the mob still exists under the surface of society. It just remains to be seen if it will ever rise to the often deadly heights of power it once possessed. And I guess as Francie says, all it takes is a culture of corruption. Exactly. Right. Thanks for reporting. Thanks, John. That was Daily Wire investigative reporter

Marada Lorty, and this brings us to the end of this Sunday episode. We hope you enjoyed tuning in and we look forward to hearing listener feedback. As always, leaving a review and comment. helps our show climb the podcast rankings, and it helps get a fresh perspective out there. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.