A former Mafia soldier has admitted orchestrating the nationwide collapse of country-themed restaurants, including eight in Florida, one of them in Gainesville.
Frank Capri told a federal judge in Arizona that he intentionally caused the failure of Rascal Flatts and Toby Keith-branded restaurants in a scam that began in 2011.
Among those were Rascal Flatts projects that fell apart in Gainesville and Orlando, and three others planned in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Tampa.
They also included a Toby Keith restaurant in Orlando that closed a few months after opening in 2015 and projects in Lakeland and Jacksonville that never materialized.
Capri, who said at one point he was pocketing as much as $250,000 a week, pleaded guilty on Aug. 10 to one count each of conspiracy and tax evasion.
Speaking via telephone to a near-empty courtroom, Capri agreed to repay up to $18 million that he swindled out of developers between 2011 and 2015.
“Guilty,” Capri said as U.S. Judge Magistrate John Boyle read the charges. “Guilty.”
His admission follows six years of reporting by The Arizona Republic, which identified Capri as a former “made man” in New York’s notorious Lucchese crime family.
Capri got a new identity in the Federal Witness Protection Program when he agreed to testify about the mob in 1993 and later moved to Arizona.
The Republic laid out how Capri used his new identity to lure developers into paying him upfront fees to build…
