Decades:Lira, Lies and Franklin National

 As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass-walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does.

In the early 1970s, Franklin National Bank looked like the future of American finance. Its CEO, Harold Gleason, traded a quiet Long Island thrift for a lavish Park Avenue headquarters, convinced he could transform it into an international powerhouse. His secret weapon: Michele Sindona, the Vatican’s banker with mob ties and a taste for high-stakes foreign exchange bets.

This episode unpacks how Gleason’s ambition and Sindona’s schemes turned a conservative regional bank into a fragile giant—and how the façade collapsed in what was, at the time, the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Host Cherise Lloyd peels back the layers of glamor, denial, and deception that made Franklin’s rise so dazzling—and its fall so inevitable.

🔊 Listen for:

• The Park Avenue move that symbolized Franklin’s “big-league” ambitions
• How Sindona’s currency gambles and hidden embezzlement bled the bank dry
• Why cultural swagger, from The Godfather to Wall Street fantasies, blinded regulators and investors alike

Sources:

St. Peter's Banker: Michele Sindona, Louigi DiFonzo, Power on Earth, Nick Tosches, and NYtimes Archives, as well as others

 As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does. As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does.

Overleveraged, Overconfident brings you the hubris, the hidden deals, and the lessons every ambitious professional should steal—minus the meltdown.

This episode was researched and written by Cherise Lloyd. Some music was created by using UDO. You can find show notes, transcripts, and sources at www.overleveragedoverconfident.com. Follow us on Instagram at Overleveraged Overconfident. Support the show on Patreon and help us keep deep-diving into those spectacular financial fails.. Overleveraged Overconfident is part of Seven Seven Spider, which specializes in deep dive research and financial storytelling. All research uses publicly available sources, so no confidential or regulatory information, just my keen sense of spotting nonsense.

Transcript

Anchor: 0:00

Kels was questioned today by the FBI about his mysterious disappearance and reappearance yesterday in New York only a few years ago. Sandona was an immensely wealthy and powerful man with contacts among the most powerful people in the world. Then his empire started to fall apart. He was invited for a multi-million dollar bank floor. James Walker has moved. Kels is in an 11th floor suite here at Doctors Hospital in M. For the past two months, Sonsona has been missing. His family says he's been kidnapped, but authorities aren't so sure. Sandona was born in Sicily where authorities say he reportedly developed strong ties to the mafia. Perhaps S'S biggest play occurred here in this building that used to be owned by the Franklin National Bank. In 1974, Franklin National went bankrupt. It was the biggest bank failure in the nation's history. Send was charged with embezzling $45 million from the bank. Stockholders. But last August, a month before Sedona was to stand trial, he disappeared. He walked out of the Pierre Hotel where he was staying, turned down Fifth Avenue in Vanish. Yesterday, after he turned up at the hospital, his wife and son again insisted he had been kidnapped or he would not have returned. Why?

Nico Sindona: 0:55

Why did he come back then? Tell me, prove it to, if he escaped, why all of a sudden he came back? Couldn't. He just escaped to Southern American country without tradition and stay there all his life? James? Walker. A, B, C. News, New York.

Cherise 2: 1:07

Michaela, Sedona, Italian Banker, money Launder. Vatican financier alleged. CIA asset was eventually convicted in the US for 68 counts of fraud, misappropriation of bank funds and perjury to understand how he made the evening news after claiming he had been kidnapped, blindfolded, and shot in the leg and then mysterious. Released in Hell's Kitchen. You need to go back to when he was a charming foreign investor who slipped quietly into the heart of American banking through a troubled New York institution called Franklin National Bank. Franklin had once been a picture of post-war suburban respectability, solid deposits, white column branches, and well fed loan officers in gray suits. Then with Harold Gleason at the helm, a PR man turned bank and. Executive with a For the Spotlight, it would soon be clear that opening Franklin's doors to Sedona meant letting in far more than foreign capital. Let's rewind. The early 1970s, a world already primed for an Italian saga like France for Coppola's. Freshly released The Godfather. For ambition, foreign exchange markets, and all American Greed collided to set the stage for a spectacular collapse. Welcome to Over leveraged overconfident from Seven Seven Spider. I'm Cherise with my background in central banking and capital markets. I'll be your guide for season two. As we dive into six decades of American financial hubris. We'll watch the same old play unfold. Hide the losses, budge the numbers, and believe your own story until the money dries up. We'll go from the smoky back rooms of the 1970s to today's glass walled FinTech empires, because the rules may change, but the game never does. This is episode one, Lira Lies and Franklin National.

Cherise 2: 3:08

w Here's the thing about stories like Mha Sedona and Harold Gleason's. After the headlines fade and the prison sentences are served, after the regulatory reports are filed and the congressional hearings wrap up, you were left wandering where the performance ended and the truth began because Franklin National wasn't just a story about WARN exchange bets gone wrong, or mob money finding its way into an FDIC insured vaults, or even about two ambitious men who confused leverage with intelligence. It was about what happens when respectability decides it needs dangerous money and dangerous money decides it needs respectability and like All marriages of convenience. This one ended up in predictable scandal, predictable carnage, ruin, and enough smoke to choke a Park Avenue boardroom. Many sources were used in my research and refer to two books. Profiling Mikhail Sedona, power On Earth by Nick Touche. St. Peter's Banker by Luigi DiFonzo and the extensive archive of the New York Times sources are in the show notes. Next up, we'll move into the 1980s Oklahoma City, where a small bank attached to a shopping mall caused billions of losses to some of the biggest banks in the decade. So join me for beep and monkey brains and the A KC hustle.