Mota saw Feroce as a “big believer” in self-promotion, according to court documents, and Mota followed suit, deliberately building his image as a big shot. When Alex and Ani acquired the marketing firm in 2012, renaming it Seven Swords, Mota suddenly had a new title - vice president of business development at Seven Swords - as well as a mentor in Feroce.įeroce, Mota once wrote, taught him “that businesses grow in proportion to the intellectual refinement and spiritual development of their principals.” Mota met Feroce more than a decade ago when the jewelry company was beginning its stratospheric rise and Mota was working at a small marketing company that had Alex and Ani as a client. Feroce did not respond to the Globe’s request for comment. In many ways, Feroce, who now lives in Puerto Rico and is currently the second-biggest tax scofflaw in Rhode Island, gave Mota his start. If there’s one person Mota admires as much as Tony Soprano, it’s Giovanni Feroce, Mota’s mentor and former CEO of Alex and Ani. “The truth about who and what we could be, if only given the opportunity.” “Mob stories dispel myths and show the truth,” Mota said in July 2021, at a mob-movie convention he hosted in Atlantic City. Gandolfini’s smirk fills a wall in another room, next to a floor-to-ceiling mural of Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” A well-known image from “The Sopranos” of Tony Soprano with the show’s race horse, Pie-O-My, has Mota instead of the late actor James Gandolfini holding the reins. In a poster on the blood-red wall by his desk, Mota is pictured at a casino table amid Hollywood actors famous for portraying gangsters. Am I gonna be successful? One thousand percent.” “Now, do I have thoughts of grandeur? Absolutely. People should be grateful for the opportunity to do business with him, he added. They don’t see the lost time with my children. It’s actually insulting,” Mota said in an interview in October, his voice rising. “How did I make it in life so far and I didn’t pay people? It’s just asinine. At other times, he insists that the accusations against him about nonpayment are not true. He told the Globe that he doesn’t owe anyone anything - and, if he does, he’ll pay them when he feels like it. Now, after years of fast-talking and whirling from one deal to the next, Mota may finally be facing consequences: A judge in Providence County Superior Court is threatening to throw him in jail for blowing off payment agreements in one case. “They like to pretend that they’re tough guys.” Mota and his business partners “tend to think ‘The Sopranos’ is a documentary and not a drama,” said New Yorker Bernadette Giacomazzo, whose father, Giuseppe Giacomazzo, was involved with the infamous Marseilles Mafia. 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. He obsesses over Tony Soprano, yet some fellow fans of the HBO mob series say he overcharged them and promised them perks they could not access, and he has been accused of not compensating vendors and actors from “The Sopranos” who were involved in his conventions. Mota is being chased for money from Rhode Island to New Jersey. The Globe investigation found that Mota is being sued by creditors and vendors in 10 lawsuits totaling more than $500,000 and has left furious investors and vendors in multiple states, according to interviews, court documents, and hundreds of other records, including e-mails and text messages. Many people who have dealt with Mota say the same. “Don’t trust him,” said Rhode Island filmmaker David Bettencourt, who worked directly with Mota at a marketing company that was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alex and Ani. His work at Alex and Ani has been exaggerated - the company’s founder told the Globe he never served as its vice president. Mota’s doctorate comes from a diploma mill that provides honorary degrees for a price, the Globe’s research found.
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