Michael Carucci
Michael Carucci
Title: Executive Vice President, The Carucci Group
Age: 58
Experience: 32 years
Michael Carucci has had a long and storied career in Boston’s ultra-luxury real estate market, and he said he’ll never retire. He’s had a lot of success and taken his share of shots on his way from growing up in public housing in Somerville to his home overlooking Boston’s Public Gardens in the Four Seasons. Today, he and his team broker fewer than 25 deals a year, but they’re all multimillion-dollar properties. His 10-year battle with the Department of Justice left him with thick skin, but he’s still emotional when talking about the impact it had on his family.
Q: What was your first job in real estate?
A: My first job was with Century 21 Commonwealth on Newbury Street. I was working there for a couple of months and didn’t sell anything. Finally, my first client comes around. He was only here for a weekend and he wanted to spend $500,000.
An architect named Zena Nemetz had a series of five buildings on Commonwealth Avenue that she combined into 43 units and they had just come on the market. She had four full-time sales agents working for her. I made an appointment to bring my client in on a Saturday and we picked a unit out. We walked into the beautiful sales office to make an offer and the broker greeted us and told us the marketing director wasn’t in on Saturday and his policy was that no offers would be accepted when he wasn’t in. I asked her if there was someone else I could talk to. Fortunately, Zena was in her office and the agent went down there and said, “Zena, there’s a gentleman upstairs who wants to make an offer and he won’t leave.”
She came up and 15 minutes later we had a deal. As we left, she asked me to call her in the morning. I call her the next day and she offers me a job on the spot, no questions asked. Remember, I still hadn’t made a sale yet and she offered me $50,000 a year plus a 1 percent commission on all sales. She said she liked the way I worked. I told her I’d have to give my boss two weeks’ notice, but when I did, he fired me on the spot. I showed up at Zena’s a week later expecting to report to the marketing director, but when they showed me my office, I found out I was the marketing director. I hadn’t even had a closing yet! We sold it out and seven or eight months later, I was approached to help the Catholic Church develop the Paul Revere condominiums in the North End.
Q: You became infamous by helping mobster Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi buy real estate in the ’90s. How did that effect you?
A: If I knew then what I know now, I’d never have gotten involved with him. There were rumors he was connected with organized crime. I have culpability. I could have chosen not to do business with him and I didn’t, but I never thought I was breaking the law. I thought the worst that would ever happen to me would be getting called in front of a grand jury. Stephen even said to me, “Look, everything I do gets looked at. If you’re doing anything on the side, stop or don’t do business with me because you’re going to get caught.”
Then he asked me to recommend a good real estate attorney and I recommended Tony Summers of Summers and Summers, one of the most prominent real estate attorneys on Newbury Street. I said “Tony, the guy is being completely up front with me. He wants to buy property in his own name. There’s no Cayman Islands corporation. Is it OK?” He said, “Not only is it OK, I’ll represent him.”
Everyone was signing off on this thing, so why not do it? When we went out, it was to the theater. He and Jim Bulger were disciplined. Had they decided to go into a legitimate business, they’d have done very well. They’re not stupid people. They were real estate junkies. Our dinner conversation was about real estate or politics; it certainly wasn’t about who they’d killed or the bookies they were shaking down. That’s not what the relationship was.
By the way, none of those deals were cash. Not only did he get mortgages, he bought properties in his own name. It was all in the public record. He could not have been any more overt. I never had to call a witness because the government couldn’t even prove that the money he used to buy this real estate was illegal. It all got thrown out.
Very few people go to trial with 103 counts against them. Most people settle. Think about it mathematically. The government has a 97 percent conviction rate. My minimum sentence was seven years on any count. Plus, they charged me with RICO, which had a 20-year sentence. It’s so ironic. I get indicted for willful blindness and right after that Bulger and Flemmi come out and say they worked for the FBI for 15 years. So, I can’t sell them real estate, but the FBI can give them a license to kill?
It took a toll on my kids. Other children stopped playing with them at school. I had to move from Lynnfield to Harwich. It was horrible. It certainly didn’t help my marriage. I spent 10 years and [over $1.1 million] defending myself before my name was cleared.
I was able to work during that time, but it was hard. We had a very robust market and I had some very loyal clients who stayed with me.
Q: What happened once you were cleared in 2004?
A: My first knee-jerk reaction was to open several new offices and I went into a costly bankruptcy. I did it because I was insecure. You get indicted and you’re on the front page, but when you’re acquitted, you’re on the back page. I wanted to send a message, but I went about it the wrong way. The guy I sold property to was a killer. I did business with him and I’m not proud of it. You can’t change that. What’s changed now is enough time has gone by. You don’t just get acquitted after all those years and you wake up the next day and it’s over. I look at things differently, like the two things we all take for granted: our health and our freedom.
Would I have been so driven and hell-bent on honing my craft if I hadn’t gone through all that? I don’t know. I work hard at being lucky. The Sotheby’s merger a year and a half ago was a big deal. After the litigation I still ran a very good company, but there was always that lingering cloud over me. That merger completely put to bed anything that might have been lingering out there. Not only that, but they made me an executive vice president. I’m the highest ranking officer in the company who is actually in the field. I’m thankful. Now, I have a responsibility to make sure I deliver what I say I’m going to do. I’ve got the top team in New England and we’re not slowing down.
Carucci’s Five Favorite Books:
- The Bible
- “Give and Take,” by Adam Grant
- “The Four Agreements,” by Ruiz Don Miguel
- “The Icarus Deception,” by Seth Godin
- “The Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell
