There's never been a lack of colorful rogues coming out of Providence, Rhode Island. Think Buddy Cianci: the Providence mayor, radio talk show host, red sauce maker, reimaginer of downtown Providence, felon who spent time in federal prison for racketeering...
But Buddy's shuffled off this mortal coil, and now there's Michael Mota, who was profiled in a recent Boston Globe article. He hasn't been elected to anything in Rhode Island politics - at least not yet - nor has he been convicted to anything - at least not yet - but his story is an order of magnitude more complex to understand when compared to Buddy's colorful, roguish meander through life. And he is nowhere near as lovable as Buddy Cianci once appeared to be, at least from the distance of a state away.
Still, Mr. Mota is quite a character. And I had to read through the article twice (and visit his entry on LinkedIn) before I got the plot. Sort of.
For starter's, he's CEO of Skyline at Waterplace, a fancy event site in Providence. And CEO of Virtual Cons, "a global event & entertainment platform made for celebrities and their fans providing access and delivering engaging one-of-a-kind experiences." Often having to do with mobsters. (Mota worships at The Sopranos' altar.)
According to himself - and who would know better? - he's a big crypto guy. And a music guy.
If there's anything big happening in Providence, Mota is in on it. Or so he says. He's always on speed-brag about his accomplishments at Skyline and his mob-guy conventions, about all the celebs he knows. He's supposedly producing a movie about John Gotti, starring Armand Assante. He (Mota, not Gotti or Assante) was a VP of Alex and Ani, the once high-flying local jewelry company. He wants you to know about his doctorate - he likes to refer to himself as Dr. Mota. And:
He says unnamed overseas investors and others want to sink millions into his plans “because I am a smart guy, just so you know.” (Source: Boston Globe)
But this wannabe wise guy may not be as smart - and as clearly not as successful - as he'd like to think he is.
Skyline is way in arrears of the rent it owes the city of Providence. A holding company he runs is "defunct", it's value "worthless."
Mota’s doctorate comes from a diploma mill that provides honorary degrees for a price, the Globe’s research found. His work at Alex and Ani has been exaggerated — the company’s founder told the Globe he never served as its vice president.
And it isn't just the City of Providence that Mota's stiffing. He has creditors, investors, and vendors, stretching from Rhode Island to (ominously, if you've ever watched The Sopranos) New Jersey. He had actors from that show come to his mob-related conventions, and hasn't paid them.
He has also made promises he hasn’t yet kept to the family of an actual mobster, John Gotti, whose “real story” he has promised to tell in a new movie, “Gotti 2.” And he’s angered other people with serious connections.
Hmmmmm. One thing to stiff a lesser-Sopranos actor who only played a made man. Quite another to mess with someone associated with the Gottis, even if John Gotti is long gone.
I'm especially interested in Mota's aptly named Virtual Cons company. (The "cons" stands for convention, but it sure has a double meaning in Mota's case.)
Anyway, Virtual Cons doesn't seem to have done much since it's high point in 2021, when it hosted, among other events, "The Gangster & The Gentleman Cigar Dinner" and "An Evening at Tony's." This event took Sopranos' fans to the house where Tony and Carm lived to sup on food that Carm might have cooked in her kitchen there, if she'd been a real person. Some of the actors from the show were in attendance, including Aida Turturro, who played Tony's sister Janice. Wonder if she got paid...
And I wonder why these events seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth after 2021. Maybe there's not as much demand for mob-related whatevers as Mota thought there would be.
Virtual Cons wasn't just about those cigar-smoked events. You could also get into their Virtual Cons crypto. (Talk about an unfortunate - or just plain honest - name for crypto. The tokens, by the way, have Mota's image engraved on them.)
2021 was also Virtual Cons' year for entry into the music biz. There, the first - and it appears only - music foray for the new music division was the record "La Thong" by Sisqo and JD Pantoja. How did I miss that one?
Anyway, it looks like Mota's cons - virtual and IRL - may be catching up with him:
A judge in Providence County Superior Court is threatening to throw him in jail for blowing off payment agreements in one case. His own lawyer told the judge on Feb. 21 that Mota should file for bankruptcy.Mota isn't having any of it.
He told the Globe that he doesn’t owe anyone anything — and, if he does, he’ll pay them when he feels like it. At other times, he insists that the accusations against him about nonpayment are not true.How did he make it in life so far if he didn't pay people? Huh? Is Mota not familiar with Donald J. Trump?
“How did I make it in life so far and I didn’t pay people? It’s just asinine. It’s actually insulting,” Mota said in an interview in October, his voice rising. “They don’t see the hours of work. They don’t see the lost time with my children. They don’t see the struggles.”
People should be grateful for the opportunity to do business with him, he added. “Now, do I have thoughts of grandeur? Absolutely. Am I gonna be successful? One thousand percent.”
Whatever else happens to him, he's still got his fancy house, a former Patriots' cheerleader for his wife, and all sorts of Sopranos and mob-adjacent memorabilia.
One is a Mota-version of a portrait of Tony Soprano (in Napoleonic rig) with his beloved but doomed racehorse, Pie-O-My. For this one, Mota had his face photoshopped on that of James Gandolfini (a.k.a., Tony Soprano).
Self-promoting con men aren't exclusive to Providence, Rhode Island. Self-promoting con men are something of a hallmark of American history.
Didn't Connecticut native P.T. Barnum tell us way back in the way back that "there's a sucker born every minute." And that was when the U.S. population was around 25 million. Today, it's over 330 million, so we're probably up to 13 a minute by now.
It will come as no surprise that Mota idolizes both Trump and Elon Musk. And feels similarly persecuted:
“I have a target on my back because I’m an entrepreneur doing a lot of things. People are always gonna come after me. People always come after folks that are doing something,” Mota told the Globe back in October. “If you’re doing nothing, then obviously no one’s gonna come after you.”
It'll be interesting to see whether Mota (or Trump and/or Musk, for the matter) ever does get his day of reckoning for putting the cons in Virtual Cons, and in everything else he's ever been involved with. But it's also interesting that, alongside his homages to Tony Soprano and The Godfather, Mota displays a picture of himself taken with the Dalai Lama.
That Dalai Lama...
Wonder if he ever ran into Buddy Cianci?
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