For years, wherever he traveled, the same three questions followed him. He heard them in Southeast Asia, across Europe, in Australia, and throughout America, in every major city he visited.
The first question was always about where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. The second, more uncomfortable one, was whether he had ever killed anyone. The third was about the money: where did it all go?
He has decided to answer part of that third question now. Not all of it, he admits, but enough to tell a story.
The story begins with the gasoline scam, the largest operation of his criminal career. His partner was Larry Iorizzo, who has since died. Together they devised a plan to cheat the government out of the taxes collected on every gallon of gasoline.
They brought in Russian partners and ran the scheme for seven or eight years. The money was enormous. He does not deny that, and he does not boast about it either. It was part of the racketeering indictment that sent him to prison.
The government said the fraud totaled more than $2 billion. He believes that figure is exaggerated. It was a large amount, he says, but not $2 billion, or at least he does not think so.
Larry Iorizzo was a big man, six feet five inches tall and about 500 pounds, but not sloppy or overweight in the way people might imagine. He was powerfully built and, more importantly, brilliant. It was Larry who first planted the idea of defrauding the government on gasoline taxes.
At some point, Larry became entangled in a separate tax case unrelated to the gasoline operation. During that trial, he came to his partner and said he would not go to prison.
The advice he received was simple. The worst outcome in that case was about three years. If he fled and became a fugitive, he would remain a fugitive for the rest of his life. If caught, he would face five additional years on top of the original sentence, and he would be tried all over again.
Larry did not want to hear it. He was a huge man who could not picture himself in a prison cell. At the time, the partners had a private jet, extensive resources, and a compound in Panama. They were already dealing with Noriega and paying some of his men for safe haven there.
There was no extradition treaty between the United States and Panama at the time. Larry believed he could run his share of the operation from Panama and never be handed over. That was his first major mistake.
He fled during his trial and moved some of his family members to Panama. From there, he began running his business, and he also began to get careless. He hosted his daughter's wedding in Europe and sent invitations from Panama to people in the United States.
The government was watching. They were monitoring everyone, tapping phones, and doing whatever was necessary to find him. They wanted him badly, in part because they wanted to reach his partner.
Unable to extradite him, the government worked out some kind of arrangement with Noriega. In the middle of the night, agents broke down the door of his home in Panama, pulled him out, put him on a jet, and brought him to Florida, where he was locked up.
One FBI agent later told the story of what happened next. When Larry was placed in a cell and saw the small bed, about two feet wide, he realized he could not even lie down on it. He turned and said he would tell them everything they wanted to know about Michael.
That was all it took: the sight of a bed he could not fit on. From that moment, Larry began informing on his former partner.
The federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York were preparing the racketeering indictment, and now they had their key witness against him in the gasoline case, since the two men had devised the scheme together.
Before the indictment came down, Larry's son approached him with a message. His father did not really want to testify. He had a plan.
Larry would be brought to court in Brooklyn, in the Eastern District of New York, with only two or three marshals around him. He wanted his former partner to grab him, or kill the marshals if necessary, put him in a car, and get him out of there so he would never testify.
The response was blunt. Larry had lost his mind. He was either on something or losing his grip. They were not going to break him out of anywhere. He should do what he had to do, and the case would be fought in court.
The decision stung, because the two men had been very close. They never had a disagreement in seven or eight years. They made millions together, and he means millions.
At one point, the operation was bringing in between $7 million and $8 million a week. They were selling half a billion gallons of fuel a month and making 30 to 40 cents per gallon, depending on what the market would bear at the time.
The tax on every gallon of gasoline, between interstate, federal, and local, was roughly 40 cents. The business was enormous.
Larry's children called him uncle. Their families were close. He knew Larry was not the type of man who could do time. He was an important man who had never faced that kind of hardship and was used to living well.
There was a feeling that one day this situation would have to be faced. Sometimes, he says, you wonder why God chose you to come out of a bad situation and blessed you the way he was blessed.
When Larry began to weaken and people could see it, some thought about getting rid of him. That is the Mafia way. He was a mob guy and a field commander at the time, and people were considering it.
He could not do it. The children called him uncle. The families were close. He said he would fight it the way he had to fight it and see if Larry held up. He paid the price later, but in the long run, he believes it was the best decision he ever made.
Then came Rudy Giuliani. While the Eastern District was building the gasoline case, Giuliani charged him in a separate case in the Southern District of New York.
When Giuliani learned that Iorizzo would testify against him, and knew how close the two men had been, he wanted Iorizzo to testify in his case as well. The problem was that Iorizzo knew nothing about that case, but they put him on the stand anyway.
Iorizzo said whatever he had to say. He was destroyed on the witness stand, and the defendant was acquitted. His value as a witness dropped sharply because he had already testified and the jury did not believe him.
Now Iorizzo was furious. The government wanted to throw him out of the witness protection program. He was useless. He could not get a conviction in the Southern District, so why would they get one in the Eastern District?
What happened next involved a kind of black box the two men shared. They had been depositing money in a bank account in Austria.
The federal tax on a gallon of gasoline at the time was 9 cents. They took that 9 cents per gallon and put it into the secret Austrian account.
In those days, the accounts were numbered accounts. When the bank gave them the number, Iorizzo took half and his partner took the other half. Neither man could go alone to get the money. They had to go together.
The Austrian banking system was strict. You had to bring the full number, or you got nothing.
Over time, they deposited money there and accumulated about $33 million. The idea was to leave it there with the interest and perhaps one day have more than $100 million, separate from everything else they were doing.
When Larry's son said his father would testify, and that he wanted to be broken out on the way to the courthouse, the answer was to forget all of that. But there was one instruction: no matter what his father did, he should not reveal the account.
That was their money. If the account was revealed, the government would seize it, and they would not be able to use it anyway.
Iorizzo agreed at first. But after losing the Giuliani case and facing removal from the witness protection program, he became desperate. He told them about the $33 million in the account.
Now the lawyers were negotiating a plea deal. There was some leverage, because Iorizzo had been beaten in the Giuliani case, and the government was worried about getting a conviction in the gasoline case based on testimony that had already been destroyed.
So they were willing to make a deal. The negotiations, handled by his lawyers, lasted about three months. At first, the government wanted 25 years in prison and a $100 million fine.
He said no. The sentence was reduced to 10 years in prison and $15 million in restitution, forfeiture, and everything else. That was the deal.
But now they knew about the $33 million because Iorizzo had told them. They told his lawyer that Franzese had to hand over the number.
He refused. He said it was impossible. Why should he give it to them? It was $33 million, and they had made it part of the negotiations.
The federal authorities went to Austria and tried to withdraw the money using the half of the number that Iorizzo had. Austria told them to bring the full account number or they would not get the money.
The government told Austria the money was mob money, Mafia money, illegal money. Austria said it would freeze it. But whoever came with the full account number would get the money.
In the end, there was no real choice. He had to give them the other half of the number, or he would not get the deal he wanted.
At the time, a 10-year sentence did not seem so bad when others were getting hundreds of years, 50 years, or life. He was under the old law, which meant he would still be eligible for parole at some point.
He thought that in 10 years, he might only serve five. He would still have a life and could manage things with his family. That was his thinking.
So he gave up his half of the number so the government could go and get the $33 million from the account. That was the amount that was there, $33 million and some change.
He lost that $33 million, or his share of it, about $16.5 million. He never received any credit for it. The money simply disappeared. He does not know where it went.
He does not accuse anyone. He hopes taxpayers benefited in some way, but he never heard anything about it. It was not part of his plea agreement. He knows nothing about it.
His lawyer, Tommy Michael, who has since died, told him he had to do it, or he would not get the deal. That was all.
That is the answer to where some of his money was buried and has now disappeared.
There is one part of the story he knows well. The IRS, or the government, returned $2.5 million of the $33 million to Iorizzo. It was part of his deal for testifying.
They gave him $2.5 million of the stolen gasoline tax money and returned it to his account. That is a fact. It came out during the discovery phase and during the plea negotiations.
Iorizzo was already out by the time the other man went to prison. He moved to Texas because he knew he could not stay in New York now that he was a known informant.
He brought his whole family to Texas and went back into the gas business. He began defrauding the government on taxes again, and this time he was caught.
He and his entire family were arrested. When he was arrested, he went to the federal authorities and said there were other things he had not told them about Michael.
They did not want to hear it. They told him to forget it. Michael was serving his sentence. They were not interested.
He went to prison. His son and daughter both testified against him in court. He does not want to use the word karma, and he does not really believe in it, but sometimes the circles come around.
He was tried and convicted. He received 20 years and served 17 of them. He was released, and a few years later he died.
So Iorizzo was gone. Another one of his associates.
He will be honest with people. He loved Iorizzo. Even after he became an informant and testified, he understood that this was part of that life. When you get involved in that life, you have to realize you are exposing yourself to certain things and certain consequences.
He knew Iorizzo was weak. He knew he would not hold up. But he still loved him. They made a lot of money together. They had a lot of fun together and a lot of good times. He felt bad when he died. He really did.
But it proves something. He cannot tell a truly good story about anyone, meaning a good ending for anyone he was involved with in that life. It all ended now. Everything ends badly.
That is something he always tries to tell people, especially young people out there. If you try to follow a criminal lifestyle, your life will end in failure. It is only a matter of time.
Either someone close to you will hand you over, or law enforcement will. They are very smart, and they have many tactics and weapons. You will fall at some point. You will destroy your life.
No matter what you think, you will not get away with it. You have to straighten out your life and do what he did. Surround yourself with the right people and be accountable to the right people, those who care about you and want to keep you on the right path.
Without that in his life, he would not be here now. His wife, his children, and the people around him who care about him. He goes to church and talks with pastors and with people who look at him as a role model. He does not want to let them down.
It is very important to be accountable first to your God, and then to the right people around you. Surround yourself with the right people. That is the key to life. There is no doubt about it.
Some may say he dodged the question. Where did all the money go? He will say this: he lost millions upon millions of dollars. Eight years in prison, earning not a single penny.
Fortunately, he had enough money to support his family. Not a lavish lifestyle, just support. As part of the plea negotiations, he made sure he could do that, because that was what mattered to him.
He lost all that time, eight years in prison, unable to earn. There was $15 million in restitution. There were properties he had to give up under the forfeiture provision. Many things were lost.
So what did he gain from all of it? All the money he made, and he made millions and millions of dollars. What did he gain from it? Not much.
If he had put his energy into legitimate ventures the way he has been doing over the past few years, he would be much better off. His family would not have had to suffer eight years without him. They would not have had to go through all the struggles and challenges of trying to rebuild his life.
So believe him: earn your living the right way.