How did Michael make so much money exaclty?

How did Michael accumulate so much money while staying out of drugs at the same time? Drugs can be very profitable and it seems as though he found businesses that replaced the profits of drugs and made him richer than any drug kingpin. Vito was also very wealthy of course but Michael took it to another level.

I thought Vito agreed to start selling drugs and allow the other bosses access to his judges at that big "Appalachian" style meeting.

I thought everything he promised was a ploy to earn their trust so michael could wipe them out. Could be incorrect, but I think they stood their ground when it came to drugs as they were very much opposed to them.

This is a good question.

Vito's wealth came from gambling and unions. Michael at the end of GF pulled up stakes and moved to Nevada, presumably to focus exclusively on legal gambling by owning or controlling casinos. He denied ownership during his Senate testimony, but as Geary said to him earlier, "You own or control three hotels" and was trying to get into a fourth. They would have provided him with enough wealth (especially if he was skimming the profits) to set him up in that Tahoe estate. I'm also guessing that since Pentangeli (and Clemenza befor him) were caporegimes in New York under Michael, he was receiving tribute from their NY operations. That money could have been very substantial since Michael had whacked the heads of the other families in 1955, thus weakening competition in NY.

The mystery is how he got so fabulously wealthy by 1979, at the beginning of III. He had a foundation that was able to give $100 million in charity to Sicily, and he was able to lend the Vatican Bank $600 million--even after "he sold the casinos," as Dominick Abbandando told the press (and as we know from II, never got Roth's Havana holdings).

Vito never was into drug dealing--he reluctantly agreed to provide police and political protection to the other families who were dealing drugs. He got a "fee" for providing those services from the other Dons, but since he agreed to do it from a position of weakness, the fees probably didn't amount to much. I can't see Michael connected to the drugs business in any way because it was too dangerous to his attempts to appear "legitimate."

Thank you. I think I read that Michael realized when he took over that the family had significant real estate holdings as well as investments in firms on Wall Street. Maybe he made the bulk of his cash from that as well as his casinos, hotels etc. But you are correct, he was giving away a lot of money. But they never go into too much detail about it. I’m sure he was already an extremely rich man by the time Godfather 2 came along, but around 20 years later he is a bonafide mogul with enough cash to buy the real estate company of the Vatican.

It's always helpful for Board members to read the novel. It can help to fill in some of the film's gaps.

From the novel:

"He [Michael] was amazed at how wealthy and powerful the Corleone family truly was. It owned tremendously valuable real estate in midtown New York, whole office buildings. It owned, through fronts, partnerships in two Wall Street brokerages house, pieces of banks on Long Island, partnerships in some garment center firms ...." Of course, that was in the latter 40s. The value of those assets would only increase tremendously through the decades. Also, Michael would have acquired additional assets

At the Senate hearings, Michael admitted to owning IBM and ITT stock. It's probable that he had more extensive equity holdings. I think we are all familiar with the IBM story of prosperity; ITT had a gigantic international presence in an array of business especially communications of all kind. So, just those two stocks would have brought the Corleones plenty of revenue. If one of the Dons admitted to receiving $50 million as a return on his casinos investment, I can imagine what the Corleones received. Add to that the illegal earnings from illegal activities (all tax free) and you can begin to understand the extent of Corleone wealth.

Very extensive breakdown. I can see how Michael made his fortune without drugs and legitimized his businesses. Didn’t Bonnano try to do something similar to Michael as far as eliminating his competition so he could take everything?

Of course, The Godfather Trilogy I assume refers to the movie, so we're in the movie's universe here. And, the Godfather book universe and Godfather movie universe are not necessarily the same. Take Fredo for instance, who isn't nearly as "stunad" in the book as he is in the film. They made him weaker in the movie to to play off of Michael's strengths. Old showbiz trick.

That being said, I agree with Olivant that the book can fill in gaps that the movie doesn't completely address.

In the late 40s, was there a mafia family in New York that was setup for success the way the Corleone’s were when Michael had taken over? Of course we didn’t see an individual boss or a crime family blossom into what Michael and the Corleone family became in Godfather 3, but I would guess that there were some bosses and families that were on that trajectory.

I read it and I still don't believe it!

Believe what exactly?

I think Michael obviously had more money than Vito, but never had the respect that Vito had.

I believe in creating the Corleones Puzo combined Costello's power and influence with the father/son dynamic of the Bonannos. So, the Luciano family was certainly set up for such a transition in terms of money and power, however, neither Lucky or Frank intended to pass leadership off to a blood relative. That has Bonanno written all over it. Didn't the Bonannos also have a lot of power in the 1940s? I just doubt the kind of power that Costello had with his connections to judges and what not.

I concur. Had the Gambino’s or Genovese’s wiped out the rest of the 5 families like Michael did, then their power probably would have matched the Corleone’s. Probably would’ve been able to go legitimate with hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars like Michael down the road as well.

Actually, in the 1940s probably any family that was strategic enough to pull off the elimination of their enemies like Michael in Godfather 1 would have been in the same position as the Corleones