Scott Hoffman's Inside: A Unique Perspective on Mob Life

You are seen.

You are worthy.

You are not alone.

The world loses one person to suicide every 40 seconds.

Let's change the stats together.

We can say, not suicide.

Not today.

Welcome to True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People, the podcast where we bring two passions together.

The show that gives new meaning to the old adage truth is stranger than fiction.

And reminding you that there is an extraordinary person in all of us.

Here is your host, David McClam.

What's going on, everybody?

And welcome to another episode of True Crime Authors and Extraordinary People.

Of course, I'm your man, David McClam.

Hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you follow us on all of our social media.

One link to a link tree is everything you need to know pertaining to the show.

All right, before we get started, as you heard at the top of the show, if you are someone who is considering hurting yourself or someone else, please go and call on dial 988.

You can do that by text message or by phone call.

Nothing is worth your life.

And if no one's told you today, you do matter.

All right, so some trigger warnings.

We will be talking about the mob here today in detail.

You'll probably be talking about some murders if these are triggering to you.

We understand if you cannot listen to this episode, but today is author day.

I have a good one for you today.

Let me introduce to you who he is.

So his name is not a name that is listed in any court records or historical documents about the Mafia, but he was in the room when meetings took place.

He saw street enforcers and juice collectors deal out punishment.

And he interacted with the real goodfellas and godfathers, including notorious gangsters Henry Hill, Tony Accardo, and Sam Giancana.

He witnessed his first murder as a little boy and was asked to get rid of the 22 silencer.

He worked during college at social clubs run by the Lucetchi, Colombo and Bonanno crime families.

And he heard many stories from his father, who spent over 55 years in the family business, rising up to be a conciliary.

For Giancana, he had to make a decision when he graduated college.

Will he live a straight and clean life or will he spend his life being chased by the FBI, competing mobsters, and fellow gangsters.

His book is a work of historical fiction that ties in true events and real hitmen and tells a unique story of the hardships, consequences, and rewards of living the life.

He is the author of Inside.

Please welcome Scott Hoffman.

Scott, welcome to the show.

Thank you, David.

I'm glad to be there.

I am honored to have you here, my friend.

Before we begin, is there anything else that we should know about Scott Hoffman?

Know that Scott Hoffman did not get involved as a participant in organized crime.

I was an observer.

That's what I told my father.

I'll be an observer.

And people ask, what's the difference?

I said, the difference is you can't get invited as an observer because you're not participating, but you're watching.

You're seeing, but you're not participating.

So just to kind of give the audience who may not know a lot about the mob, There is actually five main mob families in America at least.

There's the Gambinos, Luce, the Genovese, the Bonanno and the Colombo families.

A lot of people know the Gambinos because of John Gotti.

Now, your father was a part of the outfit.

Now, I've never really heard that name before.

Was it all of them collectively, or how did that work?

The families you discussed were New York families.

Okay.

The outfit was Chicago.

That was something different.

That was, you know, had nothing to do with New York in that sense.

They were their own family.

And that was.

That was really the difference.

Each major city would have their own crime family, but they all didn't inter.

Tie, you know, together.

They would be part of a.

What is known as a Mafia commission.

Chicago had a seat on the commission, but each one ran, you know, separately, of course.

Oh, that's good news.

I didn't know any of that before.

I thought that those five families was it.

I didn't really know that there was a separate chapter for Chicago and things of that nature.

Oh, no, no, it wasn't.

Well, you've taught me something here today.

Because a lot of families reported to the.

Oh, I see.

I see.

So I have read.

Started reading that.

Your book.

It is wonderful.

You start out by telling us what it was like growing up when your dad just came and pretty much said, hey, I'm going to show you what it actually is like to live this life.

Can you describe to me, the audience, what it was like to grow up with your dad being in the mafia in the 50s and 60s.

Wow.

And 70s.

It was very hard because I started very young, his approach with me.

My father had the plan for Las Vegas.

Seven hotels and seven casinos.

Okay.

And when I was eight years old, I started going maybe five times a year with them.

His approach with me was that he wanted me to see everything go in with my eyes open, if that's my decision.

But I would make the decision.

He Wasn't grooming me.

He just wanted me to see everything.

And I saw all facets of mob life, all facets.

So, you know, basically it was my decision.

But the reason why it was so difficult is I'm seeing things at a young age.

Most guys, when they go into mob life, they drop out of high school.

They might be 18.

They're not 8 years old.

They're not 9 years old seeing their first murder.

They're not 11 years old seeing a guy's hands cut off.

They're not 12 years old seeing a guy's head taken off.

Same guy who cut the guy's hands off.

They're not seeing all the violence I'm seeing.

And they're not really trying to relate with the classmates in school, kids in the neighborhood who, you know, had a norm, what I would call a normal type life.

So I'm really leading two different lives.

And it was often difficult in school.

I'll give you an example.

When I was in fourth grade, they were teaching us multiplication tables.

And the teacher writes on the board six times five.

And I'm kind of looking around, I see it on the blackboard, but I'm looking around and the teacher calls on me and says, scott, how much is six times five?

And I say, oh, it's 30.

She says, that's correct.

You write 30.

And the reason I'm looking around, because six times five was used in long sharking.

There's all different ways for loan sharking.

And what it meant was that if I came to you, David, for a loan, the principal would be 500, but the interest was 600.

So the actual amount that you owe the next week was 1100.

Well, if you come in for 500, where are you going to get the 1100 the next week?

And it would double up.

So, of course, that's what I'm thinking when I see six times five on the blackboard.

So it was, you know, like I say, it was difficult from that respect because my father said, you can never tell anybody because if you tell one person, that one person can hurt you.

So I'm leading really two different lives, and it was difficult because of that.

I never had a kid's life.

I never had birthdays.

I never learned how to ride a bike.

My father never took me to a baseball game.

No, we didn't do any of that stuff.

Everything we did was mob related.

There's, in my end of life, as mob life is called, there's only one free day.

One free day.

And I'll tell you about that in a second Thanksgiving, Christmas, I was out with my father collecting money.

We start at 1:00 on Thanksgiving and maybe go to about 8, 8:30 on Christmas.

My father would say, let's wait till 1:00 so the kids can see their presents.

And on Christmas day we're out collecting money, okay, so the one free day, the only day that nothing ever happened, no one got beat, no one got shot, was Mother's Day.

Everybody went to see mom, everybody.

So my father, during the week before Mother's Day, he would buy candy, you know, and, and then he would, that Sunday of Mother's Day, we'd start out six in the morning and go to a florist and get flowers.

So with the candy Fannie Mae, we would stop at homes.

Either they were the wives of guys who were away or they were the mothers of guys who were in a federal facility because the children would never know.

They'd be always told, your father's going away to college or your father has an out of town job.

Now, you know, it's not going to take you 15 years to get your bachelor's degree, okay, and.

But the kids never knew where their father was.

Okay, but we're going to these houses.

And of course my father would try and make a good day for these people, at least for that.

So they were always very thankful.

But that was a long process.

But that was Mother's day.

Then at 12:01am Monday, Mother's Day is over, all the action begins.

If guys are going to get shot, that's all happened then that's when it's back to normal.

Was like, you have your weekend, you do your weekend activities and Monday is back to work.

That's how it was the day after Mother's Day.

Now you did something that a lot of young boys don't do.

What was it like for you the first time when you walked into that strip club that your dad took you to and he started talking to you about the mafia and what was behind the scenes of all of that?

When you first walked in at that young age, what'd you think?

Well, it was very hard because I never would see, you know, I'd seen women like that.

And my father was the type of guy, if you think about a sporting coach, every day they're having practice with the team and they go over and over and over things.

That's how my father was with me.

We would constantly go over and over and over.

We were going to the strip club because the street tax on a strip Club was 10%.

So we were there to collect money.

Okay?

That's really what it's all about.

Because in mob life, the first question today is about money.

The last question is about money.

Every conversation involved about money.

And that's what it was all about.

When my father developed Las Vegas, the outfit at its time, at its height, had $200 million that was coming in from all illegal activities.

Las Vegas brought in 100 million.

And there's a mob rule.

Every mob family follows it.

Whether it was the outfit, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, you know, anyone was that cops and kids are off limits, not women.

Cops and kids are off limits.

In other words, leave them alone.

That rule is not going to apply to me because my father was bringing in 50% of the total revenue of what the outfit was collecting.

So that didn't apply to me.

I wasn't a kid as far as they were concerned.

So we briefly touched on it.

But you did witness your first murder on your ninth birthday.

And then you witnessed a head decapitation at 12.

Can you tell us why that happened and what did it do to you as a young man at that time?

Well, I was very excited that day because that was my ninth birthday, okay?

And I'm so excited, I figured my father says, Sam Giancana is going to give you a present.

When?

And he had told me, you know, on Thursday.

So Friday, a mobster who would drive for Sam Giancana, Chucky English, was in the apartment in the front room when I came home from grammar school.

And my father says that Chucky's going to take you to pick up Sam and you're going to go out.

I said, oh, that's really great.

Because I'm figuring, wow, this will be the first birthday present I ever got in my life.

So we go to pick up Sam Giancana in Oak park, which is a nearby suburb.

And we drive to Cicero, Illinois, a little bit farther suburb, but close.

And we parking behind the bank in the bank parking lot.

Now, in those days they did not have branch banking, okay?

So the banks closed at 4 o'clock Friday.

They stayed open till 6pm Saturday, they would stay open till 1pm so I'm sitting, you know, I'm sitting in the back and Sam Gene Khan is sitting in the front.

And he takes out from the glove compartment a gun with a silencer who's a.22 caliber with a silencer.

And he puts it, the silencer on.

He tells Chuck English, rev the engine.

Rev the engine.

Because a silencer does not completely Silence.

The noise.

There's always going to be some noise.

So he wanted to eliminate as much as possible.

The banker's coming out, and Sam Giancana gets out and puts three in the hat.

Now, three in the hat meant three in the back of the head, okay?

And the banker falls down and Sam Giancon puts the banker's hat on his chest and gets back in the car.

And Chucky English, he slows the engine down.

And Sam Giancana says to Chucky, this is what happens when I get bad financial advice.

This was not a mob murder, had nothing to do with mob activities.

This is because Sam Giancana was the type of guy you didn't give bad advice.

You didn't give him any advice unless he asked you, okay?

Like I said, when describing Sam Giancana, it was a violent mind and a violent body.

So then he takes the gun apart, takes the silencer off, and he turns around and says, here, Scott, get rid of it.

And Chuckie English said, are you sure you really want to do this?

And Sam says, he's got to learn.

So I put it in my coat.

It was in March of 1957, right before Sam Giancana took over day to day operations.

And I put in my coat and I.

They take me back home and Sam Giancana says, happy birthday.

And I come.

I go home, walk upstairs.

I'm trying to figure out what do I do with this.

I never seen a silencer.

I didn't know what a silencer was, but I got to get rid of it.

So we had the Chicago Daily News newspaper, and I figured I'll just wrap it up the next morning and, you know, put tape on it.

And the next morning there was a business not far who had a dumpster maybe four blocks from the house.

Figure I'll just throw it in the dumpster.

So I get up about 5:00 in the morning.

That's a school day.

And I take the gun and I go out and I get rid of it.

And I come back to the house and I was a responsible kid.

So they always gave me a key.

I was like the first original latch key I had around my neck.

My father says, don't lose it, otherwise you won't get another one until you're 47 years old, maybe then.

So I come back home and they put the key in the door.

Door opens up and there's my father standing there and.

And.

And he said, how did you like Sam's birthday gift?

And I said, well, he never told me about It I didn't know what to do.

And he said, remember when I told you that you're going to see everything and if you want to go into mob life, you're going to have to see everything?

This is what you're going to see.

In other words, murders are what you're going to see.

So that was, you know, like I say, that was the first one.

And then he started sending me out with juice collectors.

These were guys who collected gambling money, loan sharking money, and the street enforcers who collected street tax.

Now what the public doesn't know is the reason these guys are so aggressive is they get 50%.

Whatever they bring in, they get half of it, okay?

So that's why they were always very aggressive.

Not only just using baseball bats.

I saw people beat with police batons, two by fours, bicycle chains, blackjacks, small hand blackjacks, pipes, brass knuckles, you know, a golf club.

I saw a guy beaten with.

And that's why they were very aggressive.

It's like, you know, the public will hear the term a contract guy's contract on somebody.

And the reality is, unless there's a number put on someone's head that's part of their job, they don't get paid any extra.

That's part of the job.

You know, that, that's like a job responsibility.

Unless there's a number put on somebody's head.

Like what happened with Johnny Carson, for example, the talk show host.

Yeah, I know all about that.

So, you know, like I say, it was difficult at that point.

Then I'm seeing my first real physical damage to a guy when his hands were cut off because he owed juice money and he wasn't dead yet.

At that point, he was still alive.

And he's screaming in pain.

The blood is flying all over.

They got plastic on the floor.

Eventually he dies.

And I'm getting this like kind of nauseous feeling because, you know, I'm 11 years old, but I'm seeing a lot of violence.

And when I was 12, same guy who cut off the guy's hands decapitated a guy again because he not only did he owe money, but they thought he was talking to the G.

The G being government.

So he was going to have to go.

And that was kind of hard.

You know, not only the violence was hard, but a lot.

Just learning mob speak was hard.

Okay, that was difficult because of what they're talking.

I couldn't talk like that to my classmates or kids in the school.

I, you know, I just couldn't do that.

It wasn't going to work.

For example, everyone watches a movie or a mob show and they heard the term, whack him.

He got whacked, which is a term for someone being killed.

But there's another term that I jokingly use this.

But I would say for yourself and your listeners, if you go into a store and a clerk says, would you like your receipt?

Make sure you run as quickly that your comfortable shoes are tied tight, you run out the door.

Because when you say, do you want your receipt?

Or give them your receipt, that's another way of saying, kill them.

That's another way of saying kill him.

When you.

When a guy got made, it would be opening up the books or straighten them out.

That'd be terminology for maid.

As far as, like, say, for example, black women, they were known as Chocolate or Midnight.

And a couple of these guys, maybe more, maybe three guys, I can remember their side girls were black women.

But, you know, like I say, just learning the mob speak was difficult because then I have to go back in the neighborhood, go to school and.

And try and say to myself, don't use that.

Don't say that.

Because, you know, people aren't going to know.

Say, what are you talking about?

Crazy or something, you know.

So I was going back and forth with language.

So you've seen all sides of mob life at a young age.

So as you're coming up in this, I'm sure you've seen the good sides, too, the lucrative sides of that.

The money, the women, the cars.

Was your mind starting to go in the mindset that you may want to do this, or were you thinking more of not maybe not doing it?

Well, it was a very strong temptation.

Okay, And I'll give you an example of, you know, how it could be using Henry Hill as an example.

He lived across the street from Paul Vario.

I knew Paul Vario.

I knew Henry Hill.

And it would be just like if you think about a kid who lives across the street from a drug dealer and sees all the clothes, the nice car, the girls, everything looks nice.

And they're saying to themselves, gee, I don't want to work at McDonald's for $15 an hour.

I want to go into this type of life that I can have the money and do all these things.

That was same thing with Henry Hill.

He was, what I would say, a mob groupie.

He saw what was going on when he was a young man, and he'd go into it.

So the temptations are very great because you have to remember it's not only the Money, it's the power.

You know, like my father would always say, there's always two ways to manipulate somebody through money and through fear.

Okay?

And that would be like, say, for example, you wanted to see, say, the Temptations or some singing group, but you couldn't get tickets.

Well, somebody would make the call to the promoter and you get tickets.

You'd be maybe in the second or third row, and you go backstage after the show is over, and maybe someone like David Ruffin, you would meet him, you would talk to him, maybe take pictures.

But that happened because you were not connected.

You were mob connected.

So the.

The advantages you had were very simple.

You know, you go into a restaurant and the restaurant owner, which a street tax on a restaurant was 2%, bars were 3%, and they want to give you a free meal.

They want to give you a free meal.

Okay.

My father would never take it, but they.

All other guys, sure, yeah, yeah.

Give me a free meal.

They want it free.

Because if you give wise guys free stuff, they're your best friend.

They'll do anything for you.

Give them a free pencil and they'll like you.

So, you know, it didn't matter.

So, yeah, it was difficult because you're single.

How easy this was, how women would retract to.

Even when I go out now with in person presentations of my book inside, I always allow for a question and answer statement period after the presentation.

I can't tell you how many women will always say, you know, this life is fascinating.

I like this life.

You know, I'd like to know more about this life.

You can see it in their face that, yeah, they like to be associated with someone who's in mob life, just like girls who, like, maybe bikers in the biker gang.

Same thing.

So, yeah, it was very attractive, you know, and at a young age, you're seeing all this and you're saying to yourself, wow, this is really.

Could be something, man.

I could be part of something big.

And it was.

It was true.

It was true.

So it was difficult.

Now, during this time, you got to meet one of the most iconic, who is considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world, Marilyn Monroe.

What did you say to her when you met her?

Well, first thing I said to her, you know, my grandfather, because my grandfather was the photographer who took her photograph.

This was for the COVID for Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine, I think, in July of 1953.

And that was the first thing I said.

And she says, oh, your grandfather was tough.

And the reason she's saying that is because she was supposed to come 7:30 in the morning.

My grandfather, who's a portrait photographer and the reason Hugh Hefner wanted to use them, he'd heard about them, was by hand.

They didn't have airbrushes in those days, but by hand my grandfather could put in the textures of the skin, the color textures.

And if you look at that cover and it's online, you will see that everything looks normal.

Her thighs, her face, everything looks normal.

Because my grandfather, by hand, with a brush, would be able to put in the skin tones and the negatives.

But did Marilyn Monroe show up at 7:30?

No, she did not.

She came about 12:30 and at 1:00.

My grandfather had a young couple who was getting married and want to take pictures before their wedding.

So she says to him, I'm here.

And she was there with her people.

Her road manager, my grandfather says, you had a 7:30 appointment.

You were supposed to come at 7:30.

I'm not going to use other people's time for you.

You were late.

Get out.

Go.

So she didn't, she, I guess her manager called Hugh Hefner and he called my grandfather later that day.

My grandfather says, unless she can come on time, I don't care who she is.

Because my grandfather did not like that type of photography, okay?

He, he did families, he did Harry Truman and Harry Truman's family.

He was interested more into that.

He wasn't interested in those days, what you call pornography as composed of what real pornography was, that type of stuff.

But he got paid $50, which was a lot of money in those days, and so he did it.

So the next day, Hugh Hefner had Marilyn Monroe there at 7:30 in the morning.

That's what she would tell me.

Says your grandfather was tough, but he was really, really good.

And then she would start, she would start, we would talk and I'd say, you know, my father would always say to the girls who brought the carts with the free drinks in Las Vegas and the hotels, casinos that do a Maryland.

Do a Maryland.

She says, what did your father mean by do a Maryland?

Because she came in, she was wearing a wig of brown.

She was a brunette with this wig.

And I said, well, he would always say that if you dye your hair blonde, you will see, your tips will double and triple.

Because men are attracted to blondes.

That catches their eye right away.

They might like brunettes or black haired or redheads, but when they see a blonde, yeah, they're real.

Their eyes just focus on them and they'll do.

You know, you'll be able to manipulate them.

Can manipulate them to get some extra money.

And sure enough, these girls would do that, and their tips double, tripled, quadrupled.

Okay.

So she took off her wig, and her hair was blonde.

She said, you mean like this?

And I said, yes.

So she told me, well, you're kind of right, because everyone talks about my blonde hair.

So, you know, we went.

We went from there.

She had a very difficult life.

Her mother was a diagnosed schizophrenic, was in and out of institutions and asylums.

And when she was born, the DCFS of California said, can we take her?

Because they had somebody there.

She healthy enough to go on?

The doctor said, yes, she's healthy.

And she was in.

She wind up being in 12 foster homes and four orphanages in her life.

And she eventually, with the help of a private detective, tracked down her real father.

Because on her birth certificate, it says, Norm would say Norma Jean Mortensen.

But that was her mother's kind of boyfriend.

He was willing to use his name so there'd be a name, a man's name on the birth certificate.

And she finally tracks down her father in Rhode island, your biological father.

And he says.

And she says, you know, they know me as Marilyn Monroe, but I'm your daughter, Norma Jean.

And he says, I'm married now.

I have a family.

Talk to my lawyer.

And he walked away from her head, kind of bowed down.

And I realized later, when I, you know, look back at it many years later, that's the moment when I realized that's why she would go after the top people, the Joe DiMaggios.

I know how things started between her and the Kennedys.

In fact, I know how things started between the Kennedys and the Outfit.

So I understood, because in a way, she was trying to show to her father, you know, I'm worthy of your love.

I knew.

I had that feeling.

That's what it was really all about with her.

She always wanted the top guy to show to her father, hey, what?

You know, why did you walk away from me?

You wouldn't talk to me.

And he.

And he didn't, because I asked her.

I said, did he speak to you at all?

Other Saying what you said?

And she said, no, that's all he said.

He walked away.

And we never talked or had any contact after that.

And she was hurt.

I could see in her face, because she starts looking down.

So, yeah, it was.

We talked for about two hours.

And then she says, how old are you?

And I says, Just a little past 13.

She's, yeah, 13 going on 40.

She says, what have you lived a thousand lives?

I said, maybe a thousand one.

So we had, we had a nice conversation.

She was nice to me.

And the Blackstone Hotel were.

Where we met was a mob hotel in the sense of Saturday night.

They had prostitution, mob prostitution there, as did other hotels in downtown Chicago.

See, my prostitution from downtown Chicago and a place on north side, place on south side that was bringing in a million dollars a year.

12 million a year was coming in from prostitution.

So that was pretty big.

And I'm sure the current owners of the Blackstone Hotel would be very surprised to know that their place on Saturday night was used for mob prostitution.

Wow, what a story.

Yeah, I've always read that, you know, Marilyn Monroe had a very troubled life.

I've dug in a little bit into it.

I did read that she was often depressed about things that you just discussed, but she hid it very well, you know, when she was out in public.

So, yeah, her life, like you said, was very troubled.

You know, I learned about when I was in, going to Las Vegas, who the good celebrities really were.

In other words, what were, what was their private life like as opposed to their public life, and who the bad ones were.

You know, I knew.

I knew who was good, who was bad.

And that people would be surprised, you know, when I tell them, oh, this guy, he's not really too good, or this guy is good, you know, they'd be surprised because they see a public image of someone, they think, oh, that's how they are.

Oh, that's not how they are.

That's not how they are at all.

They just put on a public face.

So in your book, you go a little bit about this.

So let's discuss it for the audience.

So what was the Outfit really like?

You know, what was the events of personality, the history behind it?

Well, it was.

The Outfit has been in business for about 120 years.

They're still around today.

There's four street crews that they don't have the numbers.

At one time they had over 330 guys involved.

And they were in business before Al Capone was brought in by Johnny Torio to come to Chicago.

And basically at that point, the big thing, of course, was the black hands.

Always the black hands.

And the black hands, what they were, they were Sicilians, born in Sicily and came to America.

And as far as the mob went, they would accept maybe somebody who was northern Italian, but never in a leadership capacity.

Anybody else.

No, they would never accept as part of the mob, they didn't want them.

So of course there was always concern about them because they were extortionists.

They were all over this city.

They could be very violent.

They come to your business and want extortion money.

Telling you all the neighborhoods, there's some rough things going on here, but you need protection.

And if you didn't go along with them, say you owned a grocery store that night, they put a black hand on your door.

That was like telling you, okay, we're coming after you now.

And they would do it what my father would always refer to as phases.

Phase one, phase two, and phase one would be break all the windows.

Then the next day come back and, you know, same thing, trying to get extortion money.

And if they didn't get it that night, they'd set the grocery store on fire, okay?

So then if the guy came in the next morning and saw his place in rubble, they said, well, you know, when you rebuild, we, this is why we're telling you, see, there's problems in the neighborhood.

And if they wouldn't go long after that.

And the guy was a target, okay?

The guy was a target.

He was never going to see a sunrise again.

That was the end for him.

But as far as the outfit went, after prohibition ended there, you know, they had so much money coming in from so many different ways.

They had control of the Hollywood unions, okay, which when I talked to Marilyn Monroe, I knew how she got the part in the movie Some like it hot, 1959, they were getting street money and street taxes, okay?

They had control of the unions, and that was 10%.

There was multiple unions in Chicago.

They had control of, say, the producer industry, not only the companies that own produce, but the trucking industry.

And that was always one thing I'll never forget.

About a year and a half after my book came out, I'm giving a in person presentation and I'm telling people how, well, maybe you don't have mob family connections.

The mob has touched your life at some point.

And so when that's over, a guy stands up, says, Mr.

Hoffman, I, I don't, I don't ever have any mob people in my family.

I don't know anybody.

There's nobody on my block.

So how can you say that the mob has touched my life?

And sitting next to the gentleman he was standing at the time she's sitting was an elderly woman, white haired, a grandmother looking type.

And she gives him, gives him a couple light taps on the arm, very light.

And he turns and she Said Jimmy Hoffa, Teamsters.

And he sat down.

He understood, because the Teamsters union, when, you know, especially when Jimmy Hoffa took over, who my father knew had given money to Jimmy Hoffa when he ran for his first local office, like secretary, treasurer of his local, they could shut a city down.

In other words, the teamster drivers, the truck drivers wouldn't deliver food, they wouldn't deliver medicine.

They'd be off that day.

They wouldn't deliver, you know, like construction stuff that was needed.

The same thing worked if you were building a commercial property and you were not paying fast.

You know, things were.

There things going on.

The labor union guys wouldn't show up.

The heavy equipment guys wouldn't show up.

That is why when Mayor Richard J.

Daly was mayor, Bill Lee was head of afl, CIO and every political function.

Bill Lee and his wife were sitting at the dais right next to Richard Jay Daly and his wife, because Daly always wanted to make sure.

Don't get the unions upset, make sure everything is smooth.

City workers who were tradespeople, they got prevailing wage, even though they weren't in the union yet, they got prevailing wage.

So, yeah, there was so many ways of bringing in the money that was coming in.

My father, when Tony Carroll took over 1943, he said, let's expand the business.

So that's when mob people from Minneapolis, from Des Moines, from Milwaukee, from St.

Louis, from Omaha, Nebraska, and in 1957, Los Angeles, all reported to the outfit, paying at least 30% of their revenues to the outfit.

And it was kind of interesting because when I was working in that Lucchese crime families, the restaurant was called the Suite, was owned by Henry Hill.

That's where I met the real Tommy, Tommy Disimone, who was very, very psychotic.

And right off the bat, he's, you know, he's talking to me, he says about mob life, about this.

And, you know, he's not real friendly to me.

And, you know, I'm a college student at Long Island University.

And I said to him, you got a couple of uncles working for Los Angeles mob, don't you?

He says, yeah, how do you know him?

I says, why don't you call up your father, your uncle, and just tell him that you met a guy whose father was high ranking in the outfit.

See what he tells you, okay?

So he says, can I use.

I'll use your name.

He said.

I said, absolutely.

Use my name.

Come on.

The son.

So the next time I'm back in at the restaurant a couple days later, Tommy Disimoni comes Up to meets us.

My uncle said, whatever the guy from the Outfit wants, you do.

Don't start with them.

Don't start with them.

Because everyone knew the Outfit.

Once they got control of something, they didn't play around with anybody.

Las Vegas and Florida was always open.

Any mob family could do their enterprise in those in those states.

Those were open.

And my father's approach was build hotels as quickly as possible.

And we're going to get the foothold in Las Vegas.

And mob families would always know one thing.

Vegas belonged to the Outfit.

And it really did.

It really did.

So they took over Las Vegas.

How did the mob influence studios in Hollywood and beyond that?

Because they had control of the unions.

When the union started in the 1930s, the outfit ran a slate.

My father was young.

He was in his twenties then.

He was a manager for Paul Rico.

Okay, at that point, because Rico was taking over.

Because if you ever want a good trivia question to catch someone, stump them.

Say, who was convicted.

With Al Capone, it was Frank nitty.

He got 18 months.

Al Capone got 11 years.

And Paul.

Paul Rico was an underboss, okay?

Which is on the same level as a consigliere, if you were to look on an organization chart.

And he was running the operation while, you know, Frank Nitty, who my father called Nutty Nitty, was away.

And my father said to me, says, you know, they're starting these unions in Hollywood.

Let's get a foothold in there.

Let's control them.

So Paul Rica says, well, how?

What are we going to do?

And my father said, look, we'll run a slate of our own.

Slate in the unions when they have the elections, and we'll get control.

And that's what happened.

They got control so they could dictate who got parts.

Let us say, who would advance.

Yeah, they controlled it.

And, you know, that's what the 1943, what they called it, the Hollywood Case, was about.

Because they were shaking down Jack Warner, who owned Warner Productions.

And the reason they're doing this is because they want to control who gets the parts in the movies.

And also who.

Who would be involved in the movies.

In other words, they would take someone say, well, you make this one a person, a star.

You do this, you do that, they'd have control.

And of course, the, say, the people that work behind the scenes, the grips and all these other people who do setups of, you know, the operation of, like, say, a hotel room using a hotel room, they bring in the furniture and that type of thing.

They were all Unionized.

If they didn't show up for work, that meant your movie couldn't get made.

And these guys like Jack Warner and David golden and Golden Mayer, they had taken out bank loans, they had money on the street and now they're going to have to pay interest on a loan and they can't even get the movie done.

So, yeah, the control is very, very tight.

Very, very tight because of that.

So as we know, John Gotti had got the name Teflon Don because they said nothing ever stuck to him until it did.

So, you know, as you know, he went to jail for life.

He died in prison.

But your father was in the mob over 55 years and he never served a day in jail.

How did he do that?

Yeah, first of all, because at restaurants he wouldn't say a word because he was always concerned.

Under the table was a bug that somebody was listening to the conversation.

So he would sit there with other mobsters, but he wouldn't really talk.

But my father used churches, okay, Catholic churches, used Jewish synagogues.

He used Catholic cemeteries, Jewish cemeteries he work in like the park district, all the park districts had field houses.

He would meet with people and talk with people in areas that, to be honest with you, the FBI didn't know this was going on.

And say, for example, in a Catholic church, they would allow him to use the phone, okay?

And there was at least five churches that in the church basement was a very long freezer.

Not high, tall, but wide.

And that would be if a guy got, was given his receipt that night.

The body would be taken to the church or put it in a body bag, put in the freezer.

And the next morning guys would come to the church and take it out of the freezer.

So of course, the priests never let anybody go downstairs.

They don't want anyone to know what was going on.

And my father would say, give the priest five dollar donation.

You know when he'd use church.

Or else if the priest was a drinker, that's when he'd get him, say, Johnny Walker Red or Dwyer's or Jack Daniels.

And so he would use places that were not thought of as places like restaurants, bars, to avoid anything that the gnos of government would have any feeling.

Well, we got to put a bug in there.

We got to do this, we got to do this, that electronically.

And when I met with, in October of 2016 at a restaurant with 22 retired FBI agents in it, I, a wife of one of them called me and I said, look, if they sign my book, I will come and Give me a free lunch.

I'll come and speak to them.

And I did.

They came with their wives, and practically all the agents would stand up and say, your father never fit the mold of wise guys.

That's why we had a hard time, because my father sometimes would tell a young agent, you know, it's very nice to meet you, but I'll be around after you retire.

And when an agent would retire, my father would send a retirement card and say, thank you so much.

Nice meeting you.

Enjoy your retirement.

I'm still here.

So it was hard for them to get a handle on him.

What he could do, what he was doing, where he was doing it.

And because of the money he was bringing from Las Vegas, the people like, you know, Paul Rica, Tony Accardo, Sam Giancana, Joey Iupa, the guys he reported to on top, let's say the upper management, they gave my father a lot of leeway, and a lot of guys resented that.

It was a lot of, you know, hatred against my father.

So a lot of times I'd be with my father, and he'd have a.32 on a holster, okay, expecting me.

If there's going to be a problem, I'm going to hit them first before they hit me.

Because these guys, like I say, they didn't like my father, especially when he met Sam Giancana, how that occurred.

So.

But he was bringing in the money.

He had good plans.

He had a good drug plan that they didn't listen to, and they apologized later.

And the drug plan, like he'd always tell me, he knew about what Mayor Lansky was doing in Havana after World War II, when Batista was in power before Castro, which in Havana was really like a mini Las Vegas.

And he'd always say to me, the best plans are the ones you steal from somebody else.

And at that time, the reason he was going to use women as mules in the drug trafficking, because Virginia Hill, who was Bugsy Siegel's girlfriend, who set up the murder, she was bringing back heroin from Mexico to the outfits.

Tony Accardo.

So my father just expanded, you know, the plan.

But they, you know, maybe it'll work, maybe it wouldn't.

It was like Las Vegas when he met with Paul Rica and Sam Giancana, Antonio Cardo presented his plan.

Paul Rica, who his.

He would always say, make it go away.

Make it go away.

If there was a problem, if you want someone killed, make it go away.

He just sat there.

Sam Gene kind of says, well, I don't.

We'll have to see.

Tony is A flash in the pan.

Las Vegas is never going to work.

How are you going to make it work?

We're going to not make any money.

It's.

It's just not.

It's that flash in the pan and then it could be gone.

And my father would say, tony, this is how we'll make money.

We're going to take all the illegal money from Chicago.

The gambling money, the extortion money, you know, any.

Any illegal money that the Alfred was bringing in and take it to Las Vegas, buy chips, cash the chips in, and bring the dirty money back clean.

When Tony Accardo heard that, he said, do the plan.

You got the order.

Do the plan.

So that's how that started.

So, yeah, that's why the outfit in mob life, when you mentioned Chicago, even today, while they don't have a representative physically from Chicago, the Genovese family represents Chicago today on the mob commission.

Though the mob commission is not like it was.

You know, they'll have captains and under bosses meet.

They don't have actual guys meet.

But there still is a mob commission and Chicago is represented.

And they haven't had anybody there.

Oh, I guess, I don't know, maybe 30 years or more.

Maybe even more than that.

But they've always been representative because everyone knew with the Outfit, you don't rile them up.

You don't start with them because they could put more guns on.

That's what my father said.

The reason they leave us alone and don't try and take over our business operations in Las Vegas or anyplace else is that we can put more guns on the street than they can.

You always say, scott, remember this.

If a guy could put more guns on the street than you, don't start with them, because you're not going to win that war.

Wow.

So I've been told that you have insights on the Kennedy assassination and other controversial events and historical figures.

Do you think that the Kennedy assassination had anything to do with mob?

Oh, yes.

Absolutely.

Absolutely it did, because it was all about Cal Neva.

Cal Neva was a casino on the border of California, Nevada.

It was actually a skiing resort.

Okay.

They would get maybe close to 200 inches, sometimes more of snow and everything.

And Joseph P.

Kennedy, the father, knew the owner at that time, and he used to take the children out there for skiing.

So John and Robert Kennedy, who hated to be called Bobby, I'll tell you that he hated that.

He said, I'm not a kid.

He'd always introduced himself as Bob Kennedy, okay?

Phony, big phony.

And they knew about Cal Neva.

They knew about it.

And it's a long, long story of how it started between them.

But everything started from Caleb.

And I'll tell you this.

Once John Kennedy became president and Robert Kennedy became Attorney General, nothing was done that was agreed upon.

It was like the, we didn't exist.

Thank you for helping us get elected.

Because they, they wanted, they wanted Sam Giancana and his friends, meaning union people, to support him in the 1960 election.

And it's a very, very long story.

You would, you would need a couple years to get the whole story.

But it started that way and it went bad that way because Robert Kennedy right away was developing strike forces to go after the mob.

We're going to break them, he would say, we're going to break them.

But when, when the mob, when they needed the mob to help John Kennedy get elected.

Oh, yeah, we'll do this, we'll do that, we'll, we'll make the two lane highway in near Calneva into a six lane highway.

Oh, yeah, the airport, which, the airport was in South Lake Tahoe, was big enough maybe just for corporate jets.

It couldn't take general planes landing there.

The runways weren't big enough.

If you had a corporate jet, you could land there.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Robert Kennedy said, yeah, yeah, we're going to, we're going to build a regular airport.

Put in the, the, the correct lanes, the size.

Yeah, you'll be able to bring in, you know, regular airplanes like you could bring in in any major city, any airport, you know, today.

No.

Did any of that take place?

No.

So that it got real, real vicious.

Especially with Frank Sinatra, who put in for the license and it takes a year because you needed a legit guy.

That's why when my father built the seven hotels, seven casinos, it's not like the movie Casino, not at all.

Not even close to what really happened because he needed regular business people to get the license.

But he would always tell him, he'd always say, you bring in hotel people because they were going to run the hotel and the outfit was the consultants for the casino.

That's a long story.

But yeah, that's where Marilyn Monroe got involved.

That's another story of how she got involved.

Shirley McLean was there.

Yeah, that's a long story.

But it went bad, Went bad because of Robert Kennedy.

So it's often been said for years that everybody's felt like Lee Harvey Oswald did not actually commit the murder, but he was the fall guy.

Do you agree with that?

Well, I'm not Saying he was.

He was the fall guy.

It's a very possibility.

What I'll tell you is this, the initial report by the FBI, they said that was the first initial ballistics report.

And all the documents have been, you know, like, frozen.

Okay.

They're not.

The public can't see them.

There's no way.

Donald Trump said, yeah, he was going to open it up.

He never did that.

So no one has ever seen the final ballistic report.

But the FBI at that time said, we have all the bullets from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle.

Now, if there was a second shooter, which a lot of people claim, oh, there was a second shooter.

Where are the bullets?

Okay.

Because they didn't know that Lee, that the rifle Lee Harvey Oswald had, what type of rifle it was, and that Jack Ruby, who had lived in the neighborhood and left Chicago in 1949, knew my father.

My father got him a job on, say, South State street, which is in downtown Chicago, near the south end of the Loop, as downtown is called because of the train.

The elevated train runs around the Loop, so it's referred, you know, downtown's refer to some loop.

It got him his first job with, you know, a strip club that was run by a guy who was close to Tony Accardo, a guy named High Shout Levin, whose voice was very booming, like a, you know, Rush Limbaugh type of voice.

And so, yeah, he knew and he called my father, but my father didn't know why he wanted a rifle with a scope.

He never told him.

He says, just, he said, I can't buy it in Dallas because that's the first place if something goes wrong, they'll be checking.

But he didn't say what he was going to do with it.

So my father went down to Klein Sporting Goods store in downtown Chicago.

It cost $12.99.

He paid cash, and he gave the Jack Ruby's address and was mailed right to Ruby.

So when the FBI was able to track down where the gun was bought and they went to Chicago, Klein's, you know, sporting goods store, no one could remember who came in because the receipt just showed the address.

Yeah.

So there's, you know, I'm not saying there wasn't a second shooter, but where's the proof?

I mean, Kennedy had problems with the CIA, had a lot of problems with a lot of people.

But where is the proof of where is the second bullet?

Okay.

And like I said, without seeing a final ballistics report, initial claim was, well, we have all the bullets from this rifle.

So there's, you know, like I said, I'm not saying that Har.

Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't just a patsy, let us say, okay, fall guy, because he belonged to that right wing organization that Jack Ruby was running out of Dallas.

But I'm not saying that either because there was so many enemies that Kennedy had at that point that there might have been other influences at the time.

So what made you decide in the end overall not to go into the life?

Happened in my senior year of high school.

I decided that what I had seen, which I was a hardened veteran by 17 years old, okay?

And I said to myself, that's not really what I want to do with my life.

So I talked to my mother and I said, you know, dad and I, we've never talked about if I'm going to go into life or not.

And I had gotten the application for a junior college in Chicago.

And in those days junior colleges was tuition free.

You had to pay for your books, but the tuitions were actually free.

And I said to her, I'm going to further my education.

I want to go to a junior college because I don't know what I really want to do.

So why would I want to waste money going to a four year school if I chose something I didn't like?

So I said, I'll go, you know, at least a couple years, try and get an associate's degree and see what I might be interested to pursue.

I said, but I don't know how dad's going to take it or is he going to like it.

What is he going to say?

My mother said, just tell him, just tell him.

So he came home.

My father used to work straight jobs.

He did not work any mob related jobs, any, no show jobs, any government type of jobs, everything.

And the reason that was because he wanted to get a W2 and show legit income, okay?

Because he knew he was audited by the IRS criminal division.

But there was nothing they could see other than a W2 and maybe a little interest on a bank account with his.

My mother's name was on the account, not his.

So there wasn't anything they could pin him on because his lawyer, his criminal lawyer was a gentleman by the name of Julius Lucius Eccles, kind of a well known criminal defense lawyer in Chicago.

And he would always say, and I mentioned this in the book and I, I associated with a fictitious name of Ira, an accountant.

But Mr.

Echols would always say, pay your taxes.

He said, I, if a human being is on the stand, I can take apart their story, I can pick it apart.

But he said, a document I can't cross examine.

And I think that always played my father's mind.

That's why he worked regular jobs.

But when the FBI would come to talk to him, he got fired the same day.

Okay, so it was very difficult.

And my mother had to go back to work because we had.

We were getting kicked out of places and we didn't have.

Couldn't pay the rent.

And it was, you know, very, very difficult.

So when I went to.

So I talked with my father, I said, dad, look, I'm not going to go into life as a participant.

I'll just stay as an observer.

I want to go to junior college.

I named the junior college was Wilbur Wright Junior College, which is still in existence.

And he looked at me, said, scott, look, the worst thing a parent can do is to force their kid, whether Matt, girl or boy, into something they don't want to do because the kid's going to come back 30 years later and said, you forced me into this.

You forced me into it.

If you want to continue your education and go into some field, I'm 150% behind you, you go ahead, make it happen.

But he says, by you not being in the life, that doesn't bother me.

And he would say, remember, what did I tell you?

You're going to see everything and then make your own decision.

This is your decision.

I support it.

And that's.

That's how it started.

That's how I didn't go in.

Well, no matter how anybody feels about the mob or maybe what your dad have done, I will commend him for that.

I have followed some other mob children, and it seems like that they felt like they had to go that direction because of who their father was.

So I do commend your father for not forcing you to go into the life.

Do you ever regret not going in?

Are you still happy that you didn't?

No, no.

See, the difference between myself and other mock children is they would ask me, is my father in the Mafia or something?

My father would always tell him, talk to your father.

The thing was, they never saw it.

It was never talked about until much later on in their life.

You know, late teens ought to say, or if the FBI came to talk to them.

But they never knew what mob life was.

They only knew it from maybe if they saw a movie or something.

They had no idea I knew what mob life was about.

Okay?

So that was, you know, that was quite a big difference for these.

And I felt for the kids because they didn't know what they were getting into.

They might thought, oh, it's going to be like a television show or a movie.

No, it's not like that at all.

But I was way past that already up, you know, way, way past it.

So it was difficult for them.

And they would ask me about it and I say, well, talk to your father or talk to your uncle who's ever in the life.

Because they didn't talk about it at all.

And they were being told, your dad's away at college or he's got an out of town job, you know, so it was.

It was hard for them.

But no, it was.

It wasn't hard at all really to make that decision because, see, I always knew what the consequences were.

I knew what the bad was.

My father would always say, you're going to meet more good people in your life than bad people, but you have to know what the bad people are.

And he said, the day they take down Cook County Jail, then you'll know everybody's good.

That's not going to happen.

But his whole approach was, I want you to do it on your own and not come back to me 30 years later and said, you forced me as what happened, like you say with other kids.

I knew that then all of a sudden, they're getting arrested, they're getting sentenced, they're going away.

They're not going to be with their wife and kids.

Yeah.

And the problem is, since they didn't know, they didn't have any skills when they got out of prison, over 90% of them, maybe higher, they went back to the life.

They were back to the life because they couldn't do anything.

And so I knew getting a college education would definitely help me in my life.

And I studied journalism and, you know, that's what I really wanted to do.

Be a writer at that point.

Regretting it?

No, because I know what happens now.

There is a lot of books and a lot of movies that have been written and produced about the mob life.

What do the best books and movies get wrong about the life?

Well, they make it look kind of like it's glamorous.

Okay.

Like, you know, or else it's seen from a different perspective.

Everyone's getting killed or everyone's getting beat, but they don't talk about really what happens, what things happen.

For example, in my book Inside, one of the things I had to do, as you read the book, is, was when I was 12 years old, I'm with a juice collector and we're going to some guy's house.

He wasn't There, but his wife was there, and she was pregnant, very obviously pregnant.

What physically really happened to her?

Because if I really put down what really physically happened to her, it would probably make a lot of people nauseous, okay?

So I.

I didn't put that in.

I know a lot of people are pet owners, okay?

They own dogs, cats, you know, So I didn't put in what I saw done to dogs, okay?

The viciousness done to dogs.

I mean, these were guys, you know, they owe money, and.

And wise guys would say, well, we're going to force them.

And they see the dog in the backyard, and they come back with some meat, put rat poison in other poison, and.

And so dog would eat it, and then he would die.

And then they would come in, you know, at that time or at a later time, they would use a tranquilizing gun on a dog.

So he'd go to sleep, and then they come in with an ax and start chopping the dog up in pieces.

So I'm not going to put that in the book because it would get people, again, probably very nauseous.

What was happening to a dog?

It was just a dog, okay?

The dog wasn't in the life, but yet his owner happened to be a gambler or was involved.

So, yeah, there was a lot of things in, you know, and it's mainly because a lot of people, they.

They don't know people are the screenwriters.

Like the movie the Irishman.

I was supposed to talk about that, and that's when COVID 19, hit at a restaurant.

I was supposed to speak about it.

Yeah, that's not how it really was.

Okay?

But they would see it as that, and they would think, oh, this is how it is.

Because people like Martin Scorsese, not, he's done great work and everything, but he doesn't really know things from the inside.

He doesn't know.

He's only hearing it from somebody and whether that someone is just building themselves up to sound good.

You know, some people like to run their mouth, but like my father would say, sometimes with people what they know, you could put it in a thimble and have room.

And he would always tell me, with wise guys, always remember this, 90% is lies, 10% is BS.

So you check everything out.

He said, in fact, you check out, if mom says she loves you, you check it out.

And I would say, if my mother says she loves me, I can't accept it.

No, you check it out.

You always check out everything with guys, because guys are going to lie.

And that's what Happens when you see guys are technical advisors on movies, they're not telling the straight truth.

They're telling stuff to make themselves look good, make it look more glamorous.

Yeah, that's, that's what's going on.

Very few movies, very few books are really legitimate.

And the, and the reason inside is different from all these books because hosts asked me is because you're seeing it through the eyes of an eight year old chops.

Eight year old child.

You're seeing a child talk about it.

You're not seeing some 35, 45, 50 year old guy who's been in the life, you know, decades talking now about mob life.

You're seeing it through a child.

That's something that was basically unheard of, you know, in mob life.

It was all because of the Las Vegas money.

I knew it that you know, that's what it was all about.

So no, they really now don't get it right too much at all.

But people don't know, just like your work, they don't know the inner workings of what you do here on the show.

And they might think, oh, everything is great.

Well, you have some guests that are very good and then you have some guests that you say to yourself, boy, what a, what a bad evening.

How am I going to get this really out?

He was, didn't say a word.

He just sat there, you know.

Yeah, but people don't understand it because they're not living it.

You're living your job.

You know, what, what it's about.

And if somebody tried to tell make a movie of you and your job and you say wait a minute, that's not how it is, that's not how it works.

Okay.

That's not how the show is put together, how we get in contact with guests and how we work.

No, that's not right.

So that's why.

But the movies, you always have to remember to trying to make it for entertainment so people will come out and see.

I remember taking my father and mother 1972 for the Godfather and that's another story with Frank Sinatra, why he, he told Mario Puzo, you know, the author of the books the Godfather to choke on.

That's another's another long story why that occurred.

But when I got got out of the movie, I said, I said dad, what you think?

And he says it was a movie, it was a movie.

That's all he said.

It's all he said about it.

It was a movie.

Well, I'll tell you guys is listening.

Inside is an incredible book.

There's A lot of detail in there.

Scott holds nothing back.

He goes all in.

We're going to tell you how you can get that.

But everything we've talked about here today, and then some, is in this incredible book.

I have to ask you, though, now that you've written this book, you've said that the outfit still operates in some level.

Have you had any blowback from anyone in the outfit or anybody else that's currently in the mob from writing this book?

No.

No.

And there's maybe a couple.

Some.

Couple reasons.

Maybe a third reason.

First of all, I don't have any involvement with them.

They want to talk to me, you know, through the mob grapevine.

Just like your business, you have a grapevine.

You might hear about this host, that host.

There's mob grapevine.

And people are always getting in touch with me.

Not wise guys, but people who maybe know somebody.

They'll ask me a question about something.

And the reason these guys want to talk with me is I know things about them that go beyond the statute of limitation.

So I think you're an intelligent man, a very smart man.

I think you can understand what I'm talking about.

Absolutely.

So they want to be friendly with me to keep on the good side that I'm not going to rat them out.

I wouldn't rat anybody out, you know, but they want to stay on the good side.

And then I said the other reasons possibly why there'd be no blowback on it is either the few guys that are in prison or the other guys are either dead or they can't read.

So I'm not worried about that.

Tell us where we can get your incredible book.

I've read the reviews on this book before I read it.

You've got everybody coming out praising this book if it's not already.

It should be, I'm sure a number one bestseller.

Want to tell the audience where we can get a hold of your book and get a hold of you?

Okay.

My book is being sold on Amazon.

If you put in my first name, Scott S, C O T, T, middle initial M.

You have to put that in because there's other Scott Hoffman's who are writers.

And then my last name, Hoffman, H O F, F, M A N.

And the title.

Inside you will see the book.

It's sold as a paperback, which most people buy.

It's also sold as Kindle.

I've had some sales of people who say are on a commuter train and want to read it.

I always, I remember a guy who bought the paperback book.

Oh, maybe close to two years after it came out in March of 2016.

And he said to me, Mr.

Hoffman, we're in a restaurant.

He says, Mr.

Hoffman, you know, I've never.

I haven't read a book in a long time.

I said, what's a long time?

He says, since I graduated high school 38 years ago.

I said, you haven't read a book in 38 years?

He said, yeah.

I said, I'll tell you what.

You buy the book, I'll sign the book.

Because he came into the restaurant.

I see him, if you don't like the book, I'll reimburse you the money of what it costs for the book.

He says, oh, great.

Okay.

So he.

He buys the book.

He gets the book on a Friday.

I see him on a Monday, and he says, I couldn't stop reading.

I couldn't put it down.

When you said, once you start reading this, he will have a hard time putting it down.

I thought you were giving me a snow job.

But you were right.

I kept going.

My wife wanted to go to a restaurant.

She wanted to go shopping.

He said, no, I'm reading the book.

So I said, well, I hope I didn't cause you any marital problems.

He says, otherwise, I'll have to have Big Louie and Guido have a talk with your wife, because they do make home visits.

They will come door to door, you know.

And he started laughing.

But you get that, because like I say, in my case, it's the perspective of a young person, but I'm going into a lot of stuff that people don't know, and they find it interesting.

They find it interesting.

So that's how you can get my book.

I'm not on social media, you know, I don't have.

I don't have a smartphone.

There's maybe a reason for that.

I have a flip top.

I don't know how to text, so I don't text.

So, yeah, I stay away from things that could be problems.

Well, I will tell you, thank you for putting it up on Kindle.

This is mine right here.

This is how I read.

I have a lot of books that I have to read, being part of my job.

I do have a hardcover and paperback books, but it's books that I've been grateful enough to get from authors like you that signed them for me.

But my preferred reading method is Kindle because I'm always on the go.

Audiobooks is always another big thing, too, because we get through the books quicker.

And the guy that you gave the book to is absolutely right.

It is absolutely a Page turner.

I had to actually force myself to go to bed.

I started reading the book at 9 o'clock one night and I looked up and it was 1am I had lost all track of time because the book is just that interesting.

So everybody needs to go out and get a copy of Inside.

We will drop the links down in the show notes of how you can do that.

So in closing, Scott, is there anything that you would like to say to your fans or readers out there that you'd like them to know?

There's one thing, David, for you and all the wonderful listeners that listen to your program.

When the clerk says, do you want a receipt?

Don't take it.

We will keep that in mind.

Scott, it has definitely been a pleasure having you on the show.

Very enlightening.

You taught me a couple of things today.

Being a true crime podcaster.

I felt like I had read everything and knew just about everything I needed to know about the mob until I met you and read your book.

So thank you for the great insight.

Anytime you wish to come back, you know how to get a hold of me, just let me know.

Thank you very much.

All right guys, that was the incredible Scott M.

Hoffman.

Again, you can get his book Inside right now at Amazon, paperback or even Kindle edition.

Do yourself a favor, go out and get yourself a copy of this book.

You will not be sorry.

Forget everything else that you probably read or heard about the mob.

This from somebody that was on the inside of that and there's a lot of things that he can teach you.

All right?

So once again, again, thank you for joining us.

I know you have many options in True Crime and Interview podcast.

I am grateful for the last two years you have chosen me and I hope that you are being good to yourself and to each other.

And always remember to always stay humbled.

An act of kindness can make someone's day.

A little love and compassion can go a long way.

And remember that there is an extraordinary person in all of us.

And I'll catch you guys on the next one.

Don't forget to rate, comment and subscribe.

Join us on social media.

One link to the link tree has it all.

Feel free to drop us a line@True Crimeandauthorsmail.com cover art and logo designed by Arslith.

Sound mixing and editing by David Mc Clam.

Intro script by Sophie Wilde and David McClam.

Theme music legendary by New Alchemist.

Introduction and ending credits by Jackie Voice.

See you next time on True Crime.

Authors and extraordinary people.