Feds Raid House of Frank Calabrese Sr. - Discover Hidden Recording Devices, Tapes, Notes, Cash, & Jewelry

Federal agents say they discovered potentially incriminating tapes and notes -- along with almost $730,000 in cash and about 1,000 pieces of apparently stolen jewelry -- stashed behind a large family portrait during a search of the family home of convicted mob hit man Frank Calabrese Sr.

Authorities said they found recordings of what they believe could be "criminal conversations" that Calabrese taped with mob associates years ago.

They seized several recording devices, such as suction-cup microphones used to tap into telephone conversations, and 10 to 15 used microcassettes -- one of which appears to bear the last name of a convicted Outfit member, agents said.

There also were "handwritten notes and ledgers" that could be records of extortion and gambling activities, authorities said.

In addition, authorities discovered seven loaded firearms they believe had been used in criminal activity because they were wrapped so no fingerprints would be left on them.

In a court filing this afternoon, federal authorities said they want to seize the property to satisfy some $27 million that Calabrese was ordered to pay in forfeiture and restitution following his conviction for a series of gangland slayings and sentence of life imprisonment.

Calabrese's lawyer Joe Lopez said he was surprised to hear about the search at his client's home on Tuesday. He said Calabrese's wife and their two sons, one of whom is in college most of the year, live in the home.

He said the home had been searched on other occasions over the years by the FBI and said he was surprised the items were not uncovered in the past. "Now that this is coming up it leads one to wonder what is really going on in this case,'' said Lopez. "I was surprised, I think everyone was surprised who heard of this."

He said he did not know if family members knew about the items found in the home because he has not had a chance to speak to Calabrese's wife or his client. He said Calabrese does not have access to telephones and is "kept under lock and key."

He said that among the items that were found at the home was at least one recording that he believed was made in 1998 after Calabrese was in custody. He said that Calabrese was in brief custody in 1995 and was released on bond, and then surrendered himself to authorities in 1997 and was in federal custody in Michigan. "He's been in custody since 1997," said Lopez. "I have no idea what those recordings are. For all I know it's Frank Sinatra singing."

He said that the money is going to the government because the government went into the home to search for any assets that would go to the government as part of Calabrese's outstanding forfeiture order. "There is no recourse. The money belongs to them. They can seize assets to satisfy judgment just like any other judgment creditor,'' said Lopez.

Calabrese, 71, was one of the five Outfit associates convicted in the landmark Family Secrets trial that riveted Chicago for weeks with its lurid testimony about 18 decades-old gangland slayings.

The code name for the federal investigation came from the secret, unprecedented cooperation provided against Chicago mob bosses by Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, and his son, Frank Jr. Their testimony peeled back layers of Outfit history as they detailed hits, bombings, extortions and other mayhem by the mob's 26th Street crew.

When he was sentenced to life in prison a year ago, Calabrese denied he was a feared mob hit man responsible for more than a dozen gangland slayings. "I'm not no big shot," said Calabrese, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with a strap holding his glasses on his mostly bald head. "I'm not nothing but a human being, and when you cut my hand, I bleed like everybody else."

A federal judge didn't buy it. Saying he had no doubt Calabrese was responsible for "appalling acts," U.S. District Judge James Zagel sentenced him to life in prison at a hearing marked by emotional testimony from victims' relatives and a heated exchange with his own son.

Another of Calabrese's sons, Kurt, stepped to a lectern to tell Zagel that his father beat him throughout his life. "In short, my father was never a father," said the younger Calabrese, describing him instead as an enforcer who hurled insults as regularly as he threw punches, ashtrays, tools or whatever else was within reach when his temper exploded.

The son asked his father whether he might want to apologize for his conduct. "You better apologize for the lies you're telling," the father barked back in the crowded courtroom. "You were treated like a king for all the things I've done for you."

"You never hit me and never beat me up?" Kurt Calabrese answered incredulously before glaring at his father and stepping from the courtroom a moment later.

In another dramatic courtroom scene, Charlene Moravecek, widow of murder victim Paul Haggerty, yelled at Calabrese for cutting Haggerty's throat and stuffing him in a trunk. Her husband had no connection to the mob, she told Calabrese. "You murdered the wrong person," she said. "That shows how smart you all are."

"God will bless you for what you say," Calabrese replied calmly from the defense table.

"Don't you mock me, ever," Moravecek responded through tears.

In September 2007, the same jury that convicted Calabrese of racketeering conspiracy held him responsible for seven murders: the 1980 shotgun killings of hit man and informant William Dauber and his wife, Charlotte; the 1981 car bombing of trucking executive Michael Cagnoni; and the slayings of hit man John Fecarotta, Outfit associate Michael Albergo, and bar owner Richard Ortiz and his friend Arthur Morawski.

Zagel, using a lower standard of proof than the jury, held Calabrese responsible for six additional murders, including Haggerty's, making him eligible for life imprisonment.

Nicholas Calabrese had testified in gripping detail about how brother Frank beat and strangled many of his victims with a rope before cutting their throats to ensure they were dead. Zagel said it was that family betrayal that stuck with him as he presided over the trial.

"I've never seen a case in which a brother and a son -- and counting today, two sons -- testified against a father," the veteran judge said. "I just want to say that your crimes are unspeakable," Zagel said later.

Allowed to address Zagel before he was sentenced, Calabrese rambled for half an hour about how his family had conspired to steal from him and then falsely blamed him for mob crimes to keep him behind bars. He called his brother a wannabe gangster who collected for Outfit bookmakers. Calabrese didn't deny being a loan shark, but he said his organization never resorted to violence to collect debts.

Cagnoni's widow as well as relatives of Morawski and Ortiz testified about dealing with decades of grief over the violent deaths of their loved ones.

Richard Ortiz's son, Tony, said he was 12 when his father was shot in a car outside his Cicero bar. Ortiz said he ran to the spot where the killing had occurred.

"I remember the crunching of the broken glass under my feet," said Ortiz, who recalled that his father's trademark cigar was still lying on the ground.

"I picked it up and held onto it, knowing it was all I had left of him."

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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Mobsters in South Florida Use New Ways to Face New Rivals

Ever since the ruthless Chicago mobster Al Capone bought a mansion on Miami's Palm Island in 1928, South Florida has been a destination for organized crime figures who want to relax and do a little business.

The rackets have evolved over the years — loan-sharking, extortion and gambling have largely given way to stock scams, money laundering and white-collar fraud — and the Italians and Jews of yore have been joined by rival contingents from Russia, Israel and South America. But the culture of greed and violence has remained a constant.

Mobsters generally prefer to keep a low profile here, but La Costa Nostra — "this thing of ours" — is once more in the headlines, this time connected with Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein.

Upon his return from Morocco last November, Rothstein reportedly went to work for the FBI, even as agents were dismantling his $1.2 billion investment fraud.

Roberto Settineri, the alleged Sicilian mobster whom Rothstein is credited with bringing down this month, appears to have the same short fuse and propensity for violence, according to a Miami Beach police report, that has marked mob behavior for a century.

As Settineri lunched at Soprano Cafe on Lincoln Road in January, he got into a heated argument with a security guard, stood up, and pulled back his leather jacket to reveal a black semi-automatic pistol.

"I will put this gun in your f------ mouth now. I know where you live. I'll go to your f------ house and kill you and your family," Settineri told the guard, according to his arrest report.

The pending aggravated assault charge against Settineri, 41, is the least of his concerns. Federal prosecutors allege he was a key intermediary between a crime family in Sicily and the Gambino crime family in New York City.

Settineri and two of his reported associates — security firm operators Daniel Dromerhauser, of Miami, and Enrique Ros, of Pembroke Pines — were indicted March 10 on federal charges of money laundering and obstruction of justice for reportedly shredding two boxes of documents at Rothstein's request and laundering $79,000 for him.

The Mafia's traditions in South Florida date to the 1930s gambling heydays in Broward, when Meyer Lansky and his associates came south to claim a piece of the action in dozens of "carpet joints" — classy casinos that operated around Hallandale under the beneficial eye of a crooked sheriff.

"It goes back to the 1920s and Al Capone. Capone had a house on Palm Island … and that was his alibi for the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre," said Richard Mangan, a 24-year Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

"Back in the 1940s and 1950s, Hallandale was Las Vegas Southeast," said Mangan, who now teaches a class called "Organized Crime and the Business of Drugs" at Florida Atlantic University's School of Criminology. "Clubs like La Boheme were operating. A made [formally inducted] mob member named Anthony "Tony" Plates would set up shop in the Diplomat Hotel during the winters, plying politicians with booze and hookers."

The gambling generated so much cash that the gangsters suppressed their violent natures.

"The Mafia had an understanding that there would be no killings in Broward County because it was such a lucrative business," said Robert Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University Law School and a gambling-law expert.

By the early 1950s, government scrutiny forced the mobsters out of their illegal casinos but not the county. They still had their hands in local dog and horse tracks and jai lai frontons, as well as in shakedown schemes. They expanded their gambling ventures to Cuba under the tutelage of Lansky, who lived for years in a canal home in Sunny Isles, a popular mob neighborhood.

"Many of the mob people — Chicago, New Orleans, New York — would come down here because they owned casinos in Havana, and [Cuban leader Fulgencio] Batista was more than happy to take bribes," Mangan said.

Hundreds of them made Broward their second or retirement home.

New York's five organized crime consortiums — the Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Colombo and Lucchese families — have always considered Florida to be "open," with no one family claiming exclusive rights to operate in the Sunshine State. "This is open territory for anyone with the mob for whatever they want to do," said Nick Navarro, a 30-year law enforcement official who was Broward's sheriff from 1984 to 1993. "It's a beautiful part of the country and this is where they like to come down."

With the dramatic expansion of air conditioning in the 1950s and cheap jet flights, Florida had a commercial building boom over the next decades, drawing more mobsters.

"The Mafia has long been involved in the rigging of construction contracts," Jarvis said.

By 1968, a state crime commission concluded, "South Florida, especially Dade and Broward counties, has become a haven for many known Mafia figures and associates, though their activities know no local boundaries within the state."

In more recent years, "The Teflon Don," Gambino boss John Gotti, maintained a residence in Fort Lauderdale. So did Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, the brutal head of a Mafia family operating in Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

Underbosses, consiglieres and soldiers from all the families are well represented, from Palm Beach Gardens to the Keys.

They still get involved in gambling, loan sharking, strip clubs, prostitution, drug dealing and extortion, but have gravitated toward more sophisticated crimes — such as stock and Medicare fraud — that don't carry the same risks.

They have faced increased competition from Israeli organized crime and Russian mobsters.

"The biggest change has been the Russian mafia," Mangan said. "The Russians started moving in after the fall of communism. They primarily set up in South Beach. They started opening banks in Antigua and Aruba."

Federal prosecutors roll out indictments against the Italian Mafia every year, charging everything from murder to money laundering, but younger Mafiosi come up the ranks to fill the voids left by the prison sentences and old-age deaths of top family members.

"It's a funny thing — it's always said that the Mafia has been destroyed and all the old chieftains are dead or in jail; but every time you turn around, there is a story about the Mafia," Jarvis said.

"To the extent that the Mafia exists anywhere, it would have its hand in South Florida because it still has all the attributes that made it so attractive in the 1930s — warm weather, a lot of wealth, a lot of opportunity. Why wouldn't the Mafia be here? Everyone else wants to be in South Florida."

Thanks to Jon Burnstein and Peter Franceschina

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Can Civil Racketeering Lawsuits Cripple the Chicago Political Machine and Others?

The $108 million judgment against former East Chicago mayor Robert Pastrick in Indiana's landmark racketeering lawsuit could be the start of a trend, says Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey.

Civil racketeering lawsuits could be used to win massive settlements from crooked politicians and to cripple political machines, much in the way the racketeering cases have been used to break up mob organizations and corrupt unions, said Blakey, who helped write the federal racketeering law and drafted the state's lawsuit against Pastrick.

The case was a first, Blakey said, but it should not be the last of its kind.

"It took 40 years for anybody to bring this kind of suit, but it finally happened," Blakey said. "Now we have a precedent. If you steal it, you have to give it back."

That precedent could easily be applied to former Illinois governors George Ryan or Rod Blagojevich, Blakey said. Or to incumbent East Chicago Mayor George Pabey, who was indicted in February by federal prosecutors who allege he had city workers renovate a home he owns in Gary.

"This establishes the principal of liability. It can be used in every other situation," Blakey said. "Why hasn't the attorney general in Illinois gone after George Ryan? I don't know."

A spokesman for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan did not return a call from the Post-Tribune.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organization statute, or RICO, was the foundation of the civil lawsuit against Pastrick and co-defendants James Fife III and Frank Kollintzas. It was created in the 1970s to prosecute complex organized criminal enterprises.

A civil lawsuit such as the East Chicago RICO case won't end in jail time for a defendant, but it does allow the plaintiff -- a city, county or state -- to recover damages equal to three times the amount stolen or misused.

"This is exactly what RICO was intended to do," Blakey said. "There are still political machines in lots of cities."

One advantage a civil prosecution has over a criminal one is that a lower burden of proof is required in a civil case. In criminal cases, a jury must find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But civil cases require a lower standard of guilt, and that a preponderance of evidence shows the defendant did what is alleged.

Tried on the criminal charge of murder in criminal court, O.J. Simpson was acquitted. Facing a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court, he was found liable and ordered to pay $35 million to the families of his victims.

Valparaiso attorney Bryan Truitt, whose clients include public corruption defendants Robert Cantrell, Roosevelt Powell and former Pastrick administration official Ed Maldonado, said he supports civil lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutions. "But I don't think you're going to see the government getting paid these massive judgment amounts," said Truitt, who said Maldonado settled out of the Pastrick RICO case without paying part of the $108 million because he already was ordered to pay $24 million in restitution from his criminal conviction.

"Going to any great expense by the government to get a huge judgment no one is going to pay would be pointless," Truitt said. "But they're going to be better able to pay if they're not in jail."

Thanks to Andy Grimm

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Russian Mafia Expands to 300,000 Members

After avoiding any use of the term “Russian mafia” in the last few years, law enforcement personnel in Europe and elsewhere are now speaking about it again, noting that it includes “up to 300,000 people” and dominates the criminal world in many countries around the world, according to a Moscow investigative journalist.

In “Versia,” Ruslan Gorevoy says that law enforcement personnel in many countries -- including Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, France, Mexico, “and even the US” -- have been surprised by how “confidently” criminal groups consisting of people from the former USSR now dominate their national criminal worlds.

Indeed, the “Versiya” reporter continues, the Russian groups, which include “up to 300,000 of our compatriots,” have succeeded in pushing aside local groups and establishing their own “spheres of influence” to the point that they no longer need to “clarify relations with the help of arms.”

Gorevoy describes some of the most notorious cases involving Russian organized criminal groups abroad before using interviews with Russian officials to suggest some more general conclusions. He recalls the discovery that drug traffickers were using submarines to move their product from South America to Mexico.

These submarines, he points out, “were purchased as scrap metal” from a Ukrainian firm that was involved in decommissioning Soviet diesel subs, then repapered in the Romania city of Konstanza before sailing across the Atlantic. While they were ultimately discovered, it is impossible to say how many tons of drugs they carried or even what the situation is today.

The US navy, he notes, has taken great pride in reporting its interdiction efforts in this regard, but knowing” the abilities of Russian criminal groups, Gorvey continues, “it is possible” that such vessels may still be playing a role. The tone of his article suggests that he personally would not bet against these groups.

In Spain, the “Versiya” journalist continues, Russian criminal groups control 90 percent of the drugs and illegal arms flows and have been involved in the murder of Paddy Doyle, a leading Irish criminal who was operating there. His death and the ensuing trial led to the publication of numerous articles about Russian organized crime.

Russian officials have been dismissive of much of that coverage. Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of the Duma’s legal affairs committee, told Gorevoy that “certain groups may have an ethnic character [there], but this still does not provide the foundation for claims about the presence of a specific national mafia of this or that country.”

Poland, Gorevoy continues, was “the first country of Europe into which organized crime from Russia began to penetrate,” pushing out, together with criminals from Ukraine and Belarus Romanian and Albanian criminal organizations that had dominated the situation there before the Russians arrived.

The Polish police have not been able to “liquidate” Russian organized crime, and “according to certain data, at the present time,” there are as many as 20,000 Russian criminals operating in that country, making it, in numerical terms at least, “the largest Russian criminal diaspora in the world.”

But it would be a mistake to focus only on Poland or Eastern European countries like Romania and Hungary, where the Russian criminal presence is large. Over the last decade, the Russian mafia has reached around the world, including Australia where it has been involved in electronic crime, Singapore, London and various countries in the Western hemisphere.

Interpol, the international police agency, does not maintain the kind of files which allow for an even approximate assessment of the number of Russian criminals operating abroad. But last year, the National Prosecutor of Italy concluded that there are “up to 300,000” criminals from Russia operating in other countries.

One of the largest or at least most profitable activities of Russian criminals abroad, the Italians said, is money laundering, with the Russian mafia “laundering” funds in the US, in the Marianas, and Guam. In addition, they added, Russian criminals are charging Mexican drug lords 30 percent for laundering drug profits from sales in the US.

In Italy itself, prosecutors reported, “representatives of the Russian mafia in 2008 formed an alliance with local [criminal groups, including the Cosa Nostra]” and took under joint control “practically 100 percent of the agricultural enterprises of Italy and at the same time practically all shippers, both international and domestic.

The German newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” reports, citing sources official and otherwise, that there are approximately 160,000 Russian criminals in Europe, compared to 70,000 of Italian origin, 40,000 of American background, and 37,000 from Asian countries. The Russians have corrupted at least some officials in order to cover their tracks, the paper said

The Munich paper’s Rudolph Himelli said that “Russian mafiosi are better organized and permit themselves to commit the boldest crimes, remaining in practice unpunished,” crimes that are “of a completely different order of magnitude than those committed by Turkish immigrants or criminals from countries in Eastern Europe,” including illegal arms sales to Libya and Iraq.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and vice speaker of the Russian Duma, says that none of this information justifies any suggestion that there is a Russian mafia operating abroad let alone implying that Moscow is somehow responsible for it.

“Yes,” Zhirinovsky acknowledges, “people from the republics of the former USSR really occupy an important position in the international criminal community, and in recent years this position can even be called a dominant one. But here is one ‘but’: many of these people already have been living abroad for a long time” and have exchanged Russian passports for foreign ones.

Consequently, he continues, they are now “more the representatives of Western and not our culture.” Indeed, the LDPR leader insists, “the fact that these people left Russia may testify only that our law enforcement organs do not allow them to make their way” in their homeland, while the police in other countries are not as successful.

That argument may convince some Russians or provide a justification to some in the West who would like to ignore this issue, but Gorevoy’s article suggests that Zhirinovsky’s claims will not be persuasive to justice officials in Europe or elsewhere who on a daily basis have to combat a larger and more active Russian mafia.

Thanks to Paul Goble

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Convicted Mob Bookie, Carl Dote, Obtains Liquor License for His Restaurants Despite Felony Record

When convicted mob bookmaker Carl Dote was interviewed on the popular WTTW-Channel 11 show "Check, Please!" about Danny's, the restaurant he runs in Melrose Park, there were a few things he made clear:

• The Italian food there -- with specialties like neckbones and tripe and fried meatball sandwiches -- is delicious.
• The price is right.
• And Dote owns the place.

"I'm the owner," Dote said in the unedited version of the interview, adding that his wife, Paula, was the co-owner.

Then, when he and his wife opened a second Italian restaurant, called Cuzzin's, in Des Plaines, city officials welcomed the Dotes, calling them "co-owners." But when it came to the forms needed to get a liquor license, Dote -- a twice-convicted felon for illegal gambling -- isn't listed as owner. In fact, his name is nowhere to be found.

Felons typically can't obtain a liquor license. But officials in Melrose Park and in Des Plaines, which hopes to be home to a new casino, don't appear to be overly troubled.

"Quite honestly, if you're asking me if it bothers me, it doesn't," says Melrose Park Mayor Ron Serpico.

It does bother James Wagner, a retired FBI supervisor who's an authority on organized crime.

"I cannot believe they are giving these people liquor licenses," says Wagner, who was the case agent overseeing a 1994 case involving Dote, his brother Anthony, Elmwood Park crew leader Marco Damico and the crew's multimillion-dollar gambling operation.

The Illinois Liquor Control Commission, when informed of the "Check, Please!" interview, said it would open an investigation.

The issue of who can get a liquor license in Illinois is expected to be in the forefront in coming months, as state regulators craft rules on now-legalized video poker. Establishments with liquor licenses are eligible for the lucrative machines. Law enforcement officials say the state needs to hire enough investigators to look into whether what the paperwork says is actually true.

Dote, 61, shakes his head when asked about the possibility of video poker machines at the two restaurants. "No, no, no," he says.

Dote says he has nothing to do any more with bookmaking or any sort of gambling, much less with organized crime, after being convicted in a 2000 bookmaking case and sentenced to more than two years in prison. Dote was a fairly low-level player in both federal cases he was charged in, records show.

"That was the end of my career," Dote says of his 2000 arrest. "When people try to bring up my past, I resent it."

As for the restaurants, he says, "I am perceived as the owner of both of the restaurants. I know I am."

But he says he's not, that he's just the guy who promotes the business, buys the food and chats up the customers.

Restaurant owner? "I can't even scramble eggs," says Dote, who leaves the cooking to his wife, whose work at Danny's prompted Chicago Sun-Times restaurant critic Pat Bruno to rave in a 2008 review: "If I could, I would eat at Danny's . . . four times a week."

So if he's not the owner, how come he went on TV and said he is?

Dote says he might say he's the owner because "it's easier" when he's promoting the place.

"People don't want to deal with managers," he says. "They want to deal with the owner."

In Melrose Park, the name on the liquor license for the restaurant is Linda Scavo, who's married to the suburb's retired police chief, Vito Scavo. Last month, Vito Scavo was sentenced to six years in prison for muscling local businesses, including the now-closed Kiddieland, to hire his private security business.

Dote says it's actually the Scavos who own the place, even though Dote said in the "Check, Please!" interview with his wife: "You know, we decided, when we bought Danny's a couple years ago, that we were going to keep prices very reasonable."

In Des Plaines, the name on the liquor license is that of Dote's wife, Paula. He says she's the sole owner.

Dote acknowledges he signed the lease for Cuzzin's and also a personal guaranty on the place. But he says he did so at the request of the building's owner.

Des Plaines Mayor Marty Moylan says "proper procedures" were followed in granting the liquor license. But the city forwarded a recent citizen's complaint about the process to the Illinois attorney general's office, Moylan says.

In Melrose Park, the mayor says Dote's name isn't on the liquor license, so there's no problem.

Besides, Serpico says, "If Jan Schakowsky's husband got a second chance, Carl Dote deserves a second chance," referring to the Evanston congresswoman whose husband, Robert Creamer, pleaded guilty in 2006 to check kiting.

"I guess, at the end of the day, Carl will be judged on how good his food is," says Serpico.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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