“Let me make this clear: This is a silly article.”
That’s how former mobster Michael Franzese described Fortune’s November 1986 list of the “50 Biggest Mafia Bosses” in a 2020 YouTube video, while holding up a copy of the issue. The list ranked the most influential figures in America’s Italian Mafia—an underworld that Fortune reporter Roy Rowan estimated to then be worth $50 billion, based on what could be ascertained about its “wealth, power, and influence.”
In many ways the list resembles Fortune’s other rankings of corporate bigwigs. Rowan even compares former Chicago boss Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo (No. 2 on the list) to “many a chief executive lately,” as Accardo was brought out of retirement to intervene in a Mafia management crisis. More out of character for the magazine, however, are the columns describing legal status and sources of income that range from “construction” and “vending machines” to “bootleg gasoline” and “topless bars.”
At the top of the list was Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, then the boss of the Genovese family, who was facing racketeering charges at the time. Just over a week after the list hit newsstands, Salerno was sentenced to 100 years in prison, where he died about six years later.
Franzese, then a capo in the Colombo family and the youngest man on the list—Rowan described him as “a true yuppie” and “a fast-talking 35-year-old businessman”—was ranked No. 18. He had been indicted and charged in an elaborate scheme to funnel millions of dollars to the family by scamming New York, New Jersey, and Florida out of gasoline taxes. Franzese pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy charges in 1986 for crimes including tax and insurance fraud.
In his 2020 video, Franzese recalls the first time he saw the Fortune article, while incarcerated at Fort Dix in New Jersey: A prison lieutenant called on Franzese and tossed the magazine to him, angry about the publicity.
“I don’t want any Mafia bosses taking over my prison,” Franzese remembers the lieutenant saying. He protested that he couldn’t control what was written about him, but it didn’t matter—Franzese was put in lockdown for two weeks, he said.
In his video, Franzese quibbles with some of Rowan’s choices, and makes it clear he didn’t see the list “as a badge of honor or courage or anything like that.”
After leaving the Mafia in 1995—a year after his release from prison—Franzese began speaking publicly about his past at schools, prisons, churches, and now on his social media channels, warning against getting involved in organized crime. He points to the Fortune list as a cautionary tale: “The sad thing about this list right here,” he said, is “I believe 46 or 47 of them are dead.” (Even at the time of publication, only 24 were described as “free.”)
Nearly 40 years later, it’s not just members of the list who have faded away, but in large part the cultural and financial pull of the traditional Italian Mafia as well. As Franzese says, “You can’t get away with this stuff anymore.” That’s not to say that organized crime doesn’t still operate behind the scenes: Transnational groups continue to traffic and run rackets, but they’re more likely to be lurking behind computer screens doing cyber scams than lounging in social clubs.
As for Franzese, he seems to be thriving as an online influencer: He has 1.7 million YouTube followers, and opines on topics ranging from the RICO charges against the music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs to the U.S. bombing of Iran.