Farese started out as a small-time hood from Boston, with a string of arrests dating back to the early 1960s. But by the mid-1970s, he was one of Fort Lauderdale's most prosperous dope-smuggling mafioso. In 1973, Farese was charged with possessing a stolen painting and convicted of interstate transportation of forged securities.He served the last 10 months of a 10-year sentence at a prison camp in Pensacola where he befriended the late Nicholas Forlano, a made member of the Colombo family and one of New York's biggest loansharks.