Meet the former Mafia boss who lost £240 million and now earns a fortune as a PREACHER

A FORMER mafia boss who lost £240 million when he went to prison has rebuilt his fortune – after becoming a PREACHER.

Michael Francese – known as the Yuppie Don – rose to the rank of captain in the Colombo crime family and made “more money than anyone since Al Capone” selling bootleg petrol on the black market.

But, in Channel 4’s How’d You Get So Rich, he told Katherine Ryan he found God after meeting his dancer wife Camille on a film set.

He said: “It was not only life changing but life-saving

“Cami introduced me to our faith. God has had a different purpose for me and he made that very clear to me.

“Without that I’d probably be dead or in prison for the rest of my life.”

The former mobster, who was penniless when he left prison in 1994, is now raking in millions as a motivational speaker and has written four bestselling books.

He preaches to audiences as big as 20,000 and his Q&A sessions often last over two hours.

He said: “I never realised there was a such a fascination with my former life because when you’re in it, this is what you do, you don’t realise how people take to it.

“But when I got out of prison I started speaking all over the world.”

He told Katherine he gave up a promising career as a doctor to follow his dad into the mob.

Michael said: “I was involved in organised crime. I followed in my dad’s footsteps because he was a prominent figure back in the 60s and 70s and I got drawn into it.

“My dad got a 50 year prison sentence and I was a pre-med student at the time, planning to be a doctor, and things started to change.

“My dad’s friends said ‘Why you going to school. You need to help your dad.’

“I defrauded the government out of tax on every gallon of gasoline and it turned out to be a lot of money. It was a white collar crime. “

Although he refused to reveal whether he had killed anyone in his criminal days, Michael admitted he had “done bad things”.

He said: “People are astounded with the transformation.

“They’re writing a movie script and whenever a writer tries to write something about me they try to make me a good mobster but I say, ‘Listen, I don’t hold myself above or below anyone in that life. We did what we had to do and that makes us, at one time, people that did bad things.’ I was one of them.”

After serving eight years in jail, for racketeering and extortion, Michael turned his life around and quit the mob.

Through contacts in the world of sports, he was invited to talk to sports men and women about gambling, and that led to his new, very lucrative, life.

He said: “I had a big gambling operation early in my life and they wanted me to come and speak to athletes about the dangers of gambling.

“I’ve been doing it now for 20 years. I tell my life story, I talk about hanging with the wrong people, bad relationships and how to make a success of your life.

“A lot of the things I learned on the street you are able to apply in your real lives – you just don’t do the bad things.

“But the education you get is pretty good, It’s street sense. It works for you in later life very well.”

How D’You Get So Rich is on Channel 4 on Monday night.