Julian Crowley
Scary tattooed Yakuza Godfather Susumu Ishii was a member of a manned suicide torpedo unit during World War II. However, after making it through the war alive, he fought his way into a new position as a gangster (sadly, one of the only jobs with long-term prospects as bad as his previous one) and worked his way up the career ladder in the Inagawa-kai gang.
He made his estimated billion-and-a-half dollars primarily through loans, banking deals and real estate scams, but lost most of it when Japan’s bubble economy burst at the end of the 1980s.
The gangster was so popular that when he died in 1991, his funeral was attended by over 5,000 people. How many bosses, mob or not, can say that?
