"QUITTING THE MOB: How the ""Yuppie Don"" Left the Mafia and Lived to Tell All"

by Michael & Dary Matera Franzese ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 12, 1992

A young mobster's progress, 1980's sizzle-style. After his powerful and feared father, a capo in N.Y.C.'s Colombo crime family, took a 50-year fall, Franzese became, at age 24, a made Colombo man. Here, with the help of former Miami Herald reporter Matera, he tells of his meteoric criminal career, which ended in 1989, at age 38, in a plea bargain taken against a 177-count Florida indictment. College-educated Franzese, disliking violence (or so he says), was apparently a businessman with a genius for operating on the fringes of laws and regulations, and here he lovingly details the schemes that caused him to become, at age 32, as financially powerful as the five New York mafia families combined. Among his coups was a gas wholesale business that took advantage of a New York law designed to return more tax dollars to the state. This complex shell game--a daisy chain that ended in a ""burnout company"" in Panama--netted Franzese $5 to $8 million per week for three years (and incidentally lowered the price of gas to Gotham motorists). Between discussions of his craft, Franzese speaks of Manuel Noriega, who provided banking connections for the gas scam; of boxing promoter Don King--a ""tough negotiator""; of black advocate Al Sharpton--""a player...[who] offered to use the considerable black power forces he commands to assist me in any way""; and of the ""Jewish Scarface""--a kingpin in the new wave of Russian and Eastern European immigrant thugs taking over parts of Brooklyn. Throughout, Franzese's estimate of his own and others' characters gives a depth unusual for this type of memoir. On a sit-down with capo de tutti capi John Gotti: '""Who's John Gotti?' I remarked to an associate....'Remember, I came from the best.' It was a psychological edge I carried throughout my mob tenure. By comparing every opponent to my father, I could never be intimidated."" Sharp and contemporary; a bullet rising.

Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1992

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 304

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991

Categories: NONFICTION