Ex-Colombo crime family capo reveals how gas tax scheme raked in millions of dollars weekly
Michael Franzese, a former capo of the Colombo crime family, discussed a gas tax scheme that generated millions weekly on Sean Hannity's podcast. He revealed that he personally made between $3 million and $4 million each week from the operation. The scheme involved collecting taxes without paying the government, while also lowering gas prices to attract customers.
- ▪Franzese claimed he brought in $2 million a week to his boss from the scheme.
- ▪The gas tax fraud operation was described as one of the largest racketeering operations in the country.
- ▪Franzese referred to his group as 'Robin Hoods' for lowering gas prices while pocketing tax money.
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| Original publisher | Fox News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.foxnews.com/media/ex-colombo-crime-family-capo-reveals-gas-tax-scheme-raked-millions-dollars-weekly |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 10:00:27 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T14:10:05.578Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T14:10:35.016Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | QB44VyyinNsQ |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Fox News Flash Ex-Colombo crime family capo reveals how gas tax scheme raked in millions of dollars weekly Franzese told Sean Hannity he personally pocketed $3M to $4M per week from the operation By Taylor Penley Fox News Published May 21, 2026 10:00am EDT Facebook Twitter Threads Flipboard Comments Print Email Add Fox News on Google close Video Former mobster spills on alleged heist: ‘More money than you’ve ever seen’ Former mobster Michael Franzese tells ‘Hang Out with Sean Hannity’ about an alleged scheme involving stolen tax money.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Fox News.
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