Extortion, conspiracies, and courtroom battles: Steven Seagal’s long-running feud with the mafia
On the surface, Steven Seagal is a figure of fun, the star of various low-quality action movies with a funny name and a funny ponytail. In reality, though, there is nothing funny about him. He is the recipient of numerous sexual assault claims, the earliest of which date back to 1991. He’s also a public supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, at one point serving as the country’s special envoy to the United States. He has given his backing to Russia during their war with Ukraine and was even granted Russian citizenship in 2016.
That’s not the only dark cloud to have hung over the Under Seige actor, either. In 1990, Seagal struck up a working relationship with producer Julius R Nasso, who helped make his film Marked for Death. The pair worked together for the next decade, forming their own production company and getting another six Seagal projects off the ground. However, when this partnership broke down, things took an unexpected turn.
Nasso believed that Seagal owed him money, $3million, to be precise. Instead of using the legal system to pursue his grievance, the producer went down a wholly different route; he allegedly hired a mafia family to threaten his ex-business partner. Anthony Ciccone, the revered member of the Gambino clan of New York mobsters, is claimed to have paid Seagal a visit on the set of his film Exit Wounds in 2000. In 2001, the gang threatened to kill the actor if he didn’t pay the money Nasso thought he was owed, sparking a legal battle straight out of a Martin Scorsese film.
Two years after Ciccone’s first alleged interaction with Seagal, Nasso finally filed a lawsuit against the star, this time for a whopping $60m for his refusal to see through a four-picture agreement. Seagal immediately fired back, accusing Nasso of extortion. This resulted in Ciccone going on trial in 2003 and getting convicted. A few months later, Nasso confessed to his wrongdoings, and in 2004, he was sentenced to one year and one day behind bars.
This seems quite lenient for a man who admitted to hiring the mob to threaten his ex-best friend, but this ruling took into account Nasso’s battles with depression and his lack of previous convictions. His lawyer, Robert Hantman, told the court that his client’s actions were “an aberrant incident that is unlikely to happen again and totally out of character for somebody who is otherwise a well-respected and successful businessman”, as reported by The Guardian. In the end, Nasso only served ten months of sentence, getting out in June 2005.
Even after his jail time, Nasso still wasn’t done with Seagal. In 2008, the two settled out of court over the issue of the $60m suit against the actor. Nasso told Staten Island Advance that he was “relieved after six years of civil litigation that Steven and I have cleared up our misunderstandings, reached an amicable resolution and settled our differences.” Neither side was inclined to comment on the value of the settlement, but according to the Los Angeles Times, it was a figure in the region of $500,000.
Sometimes, Hollywood is just as mad as it is portrayed in fiction. For most people, getting extorted by gangsters hired by your former friend and business partner would be enough controversy to last a lifetime, but for Steven Seagal, it is but a drop in the ocean.
