Chicago Mob 360

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Think some of these storys were written by Aesops ???

Living the high life without getting caught

TV mobster Tony Soprano runs the Bada Bing strip club and a garbage hauling firm.
Real-life mobster Tony Centracchio, who died last year while facing charges he oversaw a video gambling empire, was slightly more diversified.

Over the years, Centracchio, who lived in Oak Brook, owned a jewelry shop, a carpet store and an abortion clinic, sources say.

Why the different businesses?

To hide the ill-gotten cash.

Successful mobsters such as Centracchio need legitimate ways to explain the good life they're living. The kind of life that includes nice houses, fancy cars, big vacations, private schools for the kids. Centracchio oversaw an illegal video gambling operation that pulled in more than $22 million over two decades, the feds say, and he could hardly just throw all that money into a savings account. The Internal Revenue Service, if not the folks next door, might ask questions.

Legitimate businesses provide a quiet way for mobsters to hide money, make more money (a good restaurant will turn a profit for a devil as readily as for an angel) and, when opportunity calls, blend the legit with the illegit. Centracchio's jewelry store sold legally purchased jewelry as well as the stolen stuff, authorities said.

In all, the Chicago Outfit rakes in an estimated $100 million in pure profit each year, law enforcement sources say, and while that's nowhere near what Al Capone took in--more than $1 billion a year in today's dollars--it's a hefty amount that has to be put somewhere.

John "No Nose" DiFronzo, for instance, put some of his money into a car dealership, authorities said.

As for Capone, he spread his wealth around. The bill for his suites at the Metropole Hotel in the 1920s ran him $1,500 a day, according to one biography. He burnished his public image by feeding thousands of people through soup kitchens. When it came to spending his loot, he was flashy. Which may have been his downfall. When Capone was finally sent to prison, it was not for bootlegging, but income tax evasion.

Chicago's street gangs, as described last April in the first installment of the Chicago Sun-Times Crime Inc. series, follow in Capone's spirit. Flooded with cash from illegal drug sales, street gang leaders have invested in ostentatious suburban homes, private jets and vanity motion pictures about their lives.

But the Chicago mob, often called the Outfit, will have little of that. It prefers a lower profile, the better to stay out of jail.

Chicago mobsters buy car dealerships and limousine companies.

They start up construction companies, private investigation firms and car washes.

They buy strip clubs, dirty bookstores and restaurants.

They start trucking companies--a natural for them, given their long ties to the Teamsters union.

And, in one of the mob's more extravagant moments, it even bought a golf course in Wisconsin, with dreams of opening a casino. That particular mob dream was behind an insurance scam that on Friday brought down Cicero Town President Betty Loren- Maltese and six others. A jury brought in a verdict of guilty against the seven.


Muscling in
While the mob simply buys its way into many businesses, it strong-arms its way into others.
About 10 years ago, for example, the owner of a west suburban pest control company racked up a $6,000 gambling debt. The businessman, hooked on video poker, couldn't pay it back, so he took out a juice loan from a man who worked for Centracchio, former Stone Park chief of detectives Thomas Tucker, court documents show.

Tucker, ironically, also was responsible for overseeing the very video poker machines the man blew his money on.

For the juice loan, the businessman had to pay $300 in interest.

Not per year or per month. Per week.

At one point, the business owner told Tucker he couldn't pay back the money, so Tucker gave him a five-month reprieve--with a price.

Tucker and two other men demanded to buy into the man's business for a low price, then eventually bought him out altogether for a pittance. The onetime business owner wound up working for them.

Once a wise mobster owns a business, however, he tries to pretend he doesn't own it, usually by putting it in the name of someone he trusts. That way, if the feds haul him in and convict him of a crime, the business is safe from being seized by the government, or at least safer than if it were in his name.

The late mob boss Sam Carlisi and top mobster James Marcello, who is now in prison, bought real estate through a former Chicago cop, William Galioto, who is Marcello's brother-in-law, to hide their ownership, the feds believe.

Galioto's name came to light most prominently in 1995 when Mayor Daley scotched a low-interest city loan to him and his partners to build a West Side movie studio. Galioto has denied any wrongdoing.


Cicero Laundromat
But for a really vivid picture of how the mob launders money, one needs to look no further than Loren-Maltese, alleged Cicero mob chief Michael Spano Sr. and a handful of their pals, who were found guilty Friday of running an insurance scam that siphoned more than $12 million out of the town.
Two of the key players were Spano and his business partner, John LaGiglio. They ran a trucking firm and knew zip about insurance.

But that didn't stop them from starting up Specialty Risk Consultants, an insurance company that had one big customer, the Town of Cicero.

LaGiglio had dreams of going after the insurance business of other trucking firms, strip clubs and bars owned by his buddies, but the Town of Cicero was the only client necessary, authorities said. The town kept paying and paying, no questions asked.

LaGiglio didn't actually own Specialty Risk Consultants, not officially. The IRS was on his tail for back taxes, and if it became known that he owned a profitable insurance business--bam, here comes the IRS with its hand out.

So LaGiglio's parents owned the business, at least on paper, the feds say.

To run the business, LaGiglio hired a guy named Frank Taylor, who knew insurance and, more importantly, was a crook himself.

Over the years, Taylor has had a hand in everything from pornography to financial fraud.

But Taylor had his own tax problems, making it difficult for him or LaGiglio to be seen getting salaries.

So they played the name game again, the feds say, this time setting up a company called Plaza Partners.

The "partners" in Plaza Partners were the wives of LaGiglio and Taylor.

Every week, giving some reason, Specialty Risk Consultants would shift cash to Plaza Partners, prosecutors say.

Then the wives would collect their weekly paychecks from Plaza Partners and hand the money right back to their husbands, the feds say.

Plaza Partners wasn't the only shell company set up to hide the money being stolen from Cicero.

There was also Specialty Leasing Inc.

It was a car leasing company.

A special one.

Customers--some of the defendants and their families and friends--set their own payments, with Cadillacs being the favorite vehicle.

And there was Specialty Financing, a loan company.

A special one.

Here's how it worked, according to the feds:

No collateral?

No problem!

You don't want to pay all the loan back? No problem!

Spano's son-in-law got a $40,000 loan.

Didn't pay all of it back.

The brother of top mobster Marcello, Michael, got a $16,000 loan for a boat.

Didn't pay all of it back.

In all, nearly $2 million of Cicero's money went to Specialty Finance, IRS investigators estimate.

And millions of dollars more were funneled through various other shell companies, making it possible for Spano to buy a Wisconsin vacation home, for the LaGiglios to buy an Indiana horse farm, and for that purchase of the Wisconsin golf course, the feds allege.

Attorneys for the alleged key players have disputed the prosecutors' version.

Loren-Maltese didn't know about any theft from the town, her attorney says. And where was the bribe to her to allow such thievery?

Other defense lawyers have emphasized that key government witnesses have cut deals for reduced sentences or lied under oath before.


Moldy money
One of the oddest cases of mob money laundering involved a friend of Spano's, loan shark James Inendino.
Inendino goes by the nickname "Jimmy I," which stands for his last name, and for ice pick, which he reportedly once used on a man's eye.

In the early 1990s, according to court documents, Inendino helped launder millions of dollars in cash belonging to the late Outfit boss Anthony Accardo.

Why so much cash?

Accardo, who was once Al Capone's bodyguard, had stashed it in his River Forest house, apparently for decades.

Some of the money was so old--dating back to the Capone era--that the mobsters apparently feared it might no longer be accepted as legal currency. (2002)
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Big Mob Hits


Big Jim Colosimo -- killed in his own cafe at 22nd and Wabash Avenue on May 11, 1920. Colosimo was then the top mob boss of Chicago. His death, believed ordered by underlings Al Capone and Johnny Torrio, Colosimo's nephew, made way for Capone's rise as Chicago's number one mobster. Colosimo ha dbrought Torrio and Capone to Chicago from New York. The FBI believes Colosimo was set up for the murder by a friend and guard, Big Jim O'Leary, with help from Torrio. O'Leary is the son of the Mrs. O'Leary whose cow is believed to have knocked down a lantern that started the famous Chicago Fire many years before. Colosimo was waiting at his restaurant with O'Leary alegedly preparing for a business meeting. The unknown gunman, believed to be Capone, fired two shots from behind a glass-paneled telephone booth, hitting Colosimo in the head once. See Genesis of Organized Crime in Chicago.

Dion "Deanie" O'Bannion -- The North Chicago gang boss was murdered in October, 1926 outside Holy name Cathedral, 735 N. States Street.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre -- Seven members of the Bugs Moran gang were gunned down allegedly by members of the Capone Gang. Capone was vacationing in Florida when the gunmen, preceded by three men dressed in Chicago Police Uniform, lined up the seven victims against the wall of this garage at 2122 N. Clark Street on Feb. 14, 1929. As the police stepped back, the two gunmen walked from behind and unloaded their machine guns into the backs of the unsuspecting Moran gang members. One of the men was the car mechanic employed at the garage. Capone's real target was George "Bugs" Moran, who happened upon the garage late, as the killers, wearing police uniforms, walked into the garage. Six of the victims died immediately, a seventh, Frank Gusenberg, lived for a few hours, declaring on his dying breath, "Coppers done it."

Jake Lingle -- He was a mob controlled reporter who worked at the Chicago Tribune, shot dead on June 9, 1930 in the Illinois Central Station at Randolph and Michigan Avenue. Lingle was owned by Chicago's Al Capone, working openly on his payroll while working for the Tribune. Lingle had once bragged, "I fixed the price of beer in this town!" Capone could put up with Lingle's boasts and flamboyance, but not his treachery. Lingle had taken $50,000 from Capone to influence a dog track operation, but never delivered. Capone had given Lingle a diamond studded belt buckle he was wearing when he body was found. Said Capone, "Jake was a dear friend of mine."

Machine Gun Jack McGurn -- He was Capone's chief hitman, one of two people identified as a triggerman in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. He was gunned down himself at a bowling alley in February 13, 1936 on Milwaukee Avenue. Although he had once built a career as a nightclub owner and one of Capone's toughest killers, McGurn found himself penniless and abandoned. Although many suspected the hit was ordered by Capone, who felt McGurn had become a liability, the two killers are believed to have beenr emnants of the old Moran gang, who placed a comic Valentine in the victim's left hand that read: "You've lost your job; You've lost your dough; Your jewels and handsome houses. But things could be worse,y ou know. You haven't lost your trousers."

Richard Cain -- He served dual roles as an informant for the FBI and as a corrupt Chicago Cop working for the mob. He was killed in a sandwich shop at 1117 W. grand Avenue., on Dec. 20, 1973. A pair of unknown assailants had walked into the sandwich shop and blew away Cain's face in a hail of gunfire. A third gunman was stationed outside the shop communicating with a walkie talkie on guard for a potential surprise police bust.

Sam Giancana -- Certainly not the highest ranking member of the mob killed by his own mob family. But Giancana, who ran Chicago for years until his relations with a famous Vegas showgirl made him into a liability for the mob, was the highest ranking Chicago mobster murdered, killed in the basement of his home in Oak Park on June 19, 1975, most likely by someone he had known and had trusted as a close friend. Giancana had been exiled by the US government to a South American republic and had just returned to the states. Giancana had invited his killer into his home. He was murdered as he was frying sausage and preparing dinner for himself and his guest.

Allen Dorfman -- A crooked insurance executive, he was gunned down by his mob associates as he walked to his car outside a Lincolnwood hotel parking lot on Jan. 21, 1983. The mob was fearfull that Dorfman, sought as a witness by an FBI grand jury probe of organized crime and mob infiltration of Las Vegas, would "beef."

Anthony and Michael Spilotro -- Tony "The Ant" Spilotro was the mob's man in Las Vegas. His and the body of his brother Michael were found buried in a cornfield in Indiana on June 23, 1986. Spilotro's hit was reputedly ordered by Ferriola during a meeting at the Czech Restaurant that included Ernest Rocco Infelise and other mob leaders. The Chicago Laborers District Council Trusteeship Hearings transcripts revealed that Albert Tocco and Dominic Palermo of Laborers local 5 in Chicago Heights, (McGough's local) was in on the hit, depicted gruesomely in the movie "Casino". Tocco's wife "Betty" had to pick him up near the crime scene at a public phone booth. He had to use the phone to call her for a ride home after his accomplices left him in the corn field when they fled the burial scene. See Agent Pecoraro testimony in Chicago Laborers District Council Trusteeship hearings. With friends like that, who needs enemies. "Betty", a reliable informant, later led FBI agents to the phone booth and related what she was told happened.
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Another Farce...What kind of Justice When You are Convicted on the Words of a Low Life


3 guilty of murder in Chicago mob trial

James Marcello, reputed head of the Chicago Outfit, was convicted Thursday of ordering the killing of the head of the Las Vegas Mafia and his brother.

The jury in the federal Family Secrets Trial found another defendant, Frank Calabrese, guilty of a total of seven murders, while Joey "The Clown" Lombardo was convicted of one, The Chicago Tribune reported. Jurors deadlocked on the murder charge against a fourth defendant, Paul "the Indian" Schiro, as well as six additional homicide charges against Calabrese and one against Marcello.

The second round of deliberations in the trial lasted for eight days. On Sept. 18, all four and former Chicago Police Officer Anthony Doyle were convicted of racketeering.

Marcello, Calabrese and Lombardo face life sentences.

Jurors found that Marcello was responsible for killing Anthony Spilotro. The Las Vegas mob boss and his brother were buried in a cornfield in Indiana.
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Flurry of convictions ?? On the Word of a Rat...

Another case of The "G" using a "RAT" FOR EVIDENCE........"UNFAIR AND FALSE JUSTICE


A federal jury found five aging men guilty Monday in a racketeering conspiracy that involved decades of extortion, loan sharking and murder aimed at rubbing out anyone who dared stand in the way of the ruthless Chicago mob.

The verdicts capped an extraordinary 10-week trial that laid bare some of the inner workings of The Outfit.

The prosecution's star witness was an admitted hit man who took the stand against his own brother to spell out the allegations, crime by crime. The jury heard about 18 unsolved killings, including the beating death and cornfield burial of Tony "The Ant" Spilotro, the mob's man in Las Vegas and the inspiration for Joe Pesci's character in the 1995 movie "Casino."

The jury deliberated for less than 20 hours. The defendants, all but one of whom already have spent years behind bars, simply looked on, pokerfaced, as the clerk read the verdicts.

It was a sweeping victory for prosecutors. The five men were found guilty of all counts, including racketeering conspiracy, bribery, illegal gambling and tax fraud.

Alleged mob boss James Marcello, 65; alleged mob capo Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 78; convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese Sr., 70; and convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70, could now face up to life in prison. The fifth man, retired Chicago police officer Anthony Doyle, 62, was the only one among the five not accused of taking part in at least one killing.

The trial focused on the killings, ordinarily among the deepest and most closely held secrets of the mob, whose members have sworn an oath of silence. Jurors will next be tasked with determining which men were responsible for each of the 18 deaths.

From the start, prosecutors asked the jurors to forget what they learned from "The Godfather" movies, but the testimony that followed was fit for a Hollywood script.

Witnesses described former friends being blindly lured to their deaths, the relentless squeezing of a mob bookie and a pizza restaurant operator for thousands of dollars in "street tax," and clandestine rituals where the new initiated "made guys" had their fingers cut and were required to take an oath while holding burning religious pictures.

The government's star witness was Nicholas Calabrese, an admitted hit man who cooperated with the government in hopes of avoiding a death sentence. He said his brother, Frank Calabrese, ran a loan sharking business and specialized in strangling victims with a rope, then cutting their throats to make certain that they were dead.

Frank Calabrese admitted in court that he associated with mobsters, but he denied being one himself.

Yet his brother described a 1983 killing in which the two blasted away on a Cicero street, killing two.

"In my mind, I knew I had to do this because if I didn't, my brother would have flattened me," Nicholas Calabrese testified. "I would have been left there."

Frank Calabrese's own son helped the FBI tape conversations with his father while both were serving time for a loan-sharking conviction. In court, the son translated for jurors: When his father tells him to "keep 10 boxes of Spam ham, 'He's telling me to keep $1,000 a month for myself,'" he said.

In Spilotro's case, witnesses testified that mob higher-ups were enraged at him for making side deals with the potential to attract federal investigators. It seemed he was also having a love affair with another mobster's wife.

Frank Calebrese's attorney, Joseph Lopez, had urged jurors not to trust his client's brother.

"He would shoot you in the head over cold ravioli," Lopez declared.

Lombardo also took the stand and admitted running what his attorney, Rick Halprin, called "the oldest and most reliable floating crap game on Grand Avenue." But he denied committing murder or being part of mob.

Lombardo is probably the best known defendant. After the indictment was unsealed, he went on the lam for eight months before finally being cornered by an FBI organized crime squad in an alley outside Chicago.

True to his nickname, "The Clown" later answered a judge who wanted to know why hadn't seen a doctor lately: "I was supposed to see him nine months ago, but I was — what do they call it? — I was unavailable."

Doyle, the retired police officer, was accused of leaking inside law enforcement information to the mob. During the trial, he dismissed tapes that the FBI made of him as he spoke with Calabrese in the visitors room at federal prison.

Prosecutor said it was mob code talk. Doyle said he couldn't understand what Calabrese was telling him and considered it "mind-boggling gibberish."

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