To Chicago Syndicate:
In 2002, Gregory Scarpa Jr signed a book contract with former federal agent Rodney Stich, after which Scarpa provided Stich with information about the murders perpetrated by FBI supervisory agent DeVecchio. Also providing Stich with information about DeVecchio was former FBI agent and highly decorated Vietnam War veteran Richard Taus who worked under DeVecchio and who discovered corruption associated with the White House, the arming and funding of Iraq during the 1980s, and the involvement of a CIA proprietary in the New York Area.
About this time, the House judiciary committee was conducting hearings into the murders involving FBI agents in the Boston office involving Whitey Bulger. Having this information, I contacted members of the congressional committee investigating the FBI conduct, informing them that I was a former federal agent and that I was in contact with a former Mafia member and a former FBI agent and had insider information about murders involving an FBI agent in the New York office, and if they would contact me I would put them in contact with these sources.
Despite the gravity of these matters, not a single recipient of those letters contacted me. Several years later, a Brooklyn district attorney filed murder charges against DeVecchio that could have been filed years earlier if members of Congress had not covered up.
In an attempt to circumvent the cover-ups on this matter, I published a non-profit book called FBI, CIA, the Mob, and Treachery.
Among the internet sites that address this matter are the following examples:
* www.defraudingamerica.com/FBI_murderous_culture.html
* www.defraudingamerica.com/fallen_heroes.html
* www.defraudingamerica.com/fbi_justice_department_corruption.html
Of possible interest to you were my letters in 2002 to members of the House Judiciary Committee trying to put them in contact with my two sources, the former FBI agent who worked under DeVecchio, and Gregory Scarpa, Jr., who send me letters describing the murders in which he and his father were involved with DeVecchio. The letters are located at the following web site: www.defraudingamerica.com/letter_list_congress.html.
At that site, look at the letters in 2002 and 2003, for the people to whom I sent letters offering to provide the names of my two contacts.
Although this indifference, or aiding in cover-ups of criminal activities, is serious, it is only one instance where over a period of many years, starting while I was a key federal aviation safety agent, I sought to report hardcore corruption that was causing or enabling a steady series of air tragedies and other tragedies to occur. I learned about these matters either from my official duties, or from the dozens of insiders who came to me over a period of years after reading my books or hearing me on radio and TV.
We have a culture where no one does a damn thing unless it personally affects them.
Rodney Stich
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Earlier Attempts to Report Lin DeVecchio's Alleged Crimes
Posting an email that we received from former FAA agent, Rodney Stich. Mr. Stich was an air safety inspector-investigator with the FAA and is now an author and activist against corruption in government.
Giuliani Jokes About Mob Hit Talk
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani joked Thursday about reports that New York's five Mafia families discussed, but decided against, killing him in 1986 when he was a mob-busting federal prosecutor.
"That was one vote I won, I guess," Giuliani said Thursday on Mike Gallagher's syndicated radio show.
Giuliani said there have been other contracts for his life, including an $800,000 hit when he was first U.S. attorney. "After 5 1/2 years of being U.S. attorney, they put out another contract to kill me, another group, for only $400,000," Giuliani said. "So I thought, my goodness, my value. If I were a company, my market cap would have been cut in half."
Giuliani told reporters later in Washington he didn't worry much about contracts on his life. "I don't know, go ask the mob, how do I know if the mob really tried to whack me?" Giuliani said, laughing. He added that he knew of two or three plots to kill him but didn't remember the one that emerged this week.
"So there was more than one, but the FBI did a really good job of getting them resolved," he said. "I always felt it was my obligation to kind of put that out of my mind and just do my job."
Before Giuliani became New York mayor, he had a track record of high-profile mob prosecutions. In 1986, Giuliani indicted the heads of the five families. The mobsters purportedly discussed the hit that year.
The details about the plot which never took shape were given to ex-FBI agent Roy Lindley DeVecchio by the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo-turned-informant, according to the testimony of FBI agent William Bolinder during a murder trial in New York.
In testimony Wednesday, Bolinder said that DeVecchio's 1987 debriefing report stated Scarpa told him the late Gambino crime boss John Gotti was for ordering the hit, and had the support of the leader of the Colombo crime family.
However, Bolinder said, the heads of the Bonanno, Lucchese and Genovese groups were against the idea, and it never materialized.
"That was one vote I won, I guess," Giuliani said Thursday on Mike Gallagher's syndicated radio show.
Giuliani said there have been other contracts for his life, including an $800,000 hit when he was first U.S. attorney. "After 5 1/2 years of being U.S. attorney, they put out another contract to kill me, another group, for only $400,000," Giuliani said. "So I thought, my goodness, my value. If I were a company, my market cap would have been cut in half."
Giuliani told reporters later in Washington he didn't worry much about contracts on his life. "I don't know, go ask the mob, how do I know if the mob really tried to whack me?" Giuliani said, laughing. He added that he knew of two or three plots to kill him but didn't remember the one that emerged this week.
"So there was more than one, but the FBI did a really good job of getting them resolved," he said. "I always felt it was my obligation to kind of put that out of my mind and just do my job."
Before Giuliani became New York mayor, he had a track record of high-profile mob prosecutions. In 1986, Giuliani indicted the heads of the five families. The mobsters purportedly discussed the hit that year.
The details about the plot which never took shape were given to ex-FBI agent Roy Lindley DeVecchio by the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo-turned-informant, according to the testimony of FBI agent William Bolinder during a murder trial in New York.
In testimony Wednesday, Bolinder said that DeVecchio's 1987 debriefing report stated Scarpa told him the late Gambino crime boss John Gotti was for ordering the hit, and had the support of the leader of the Colombo crime family.
However, Bolinder said, the heads of the Bonanno, Lucchese and Genovese groups were against the idea, and it never materialized.
Sweet Deals, Chicago Style
I wish I had somebody like Bridgeport developers Thomas DiPiazza and Richard Ferro to advise me on real estate matters. Then again, maybe I need the person who advises them.
DiPiazza and Ferro are the guys who paid $50,000 for a heavily polluted, essentially vacant parcel of land along the Chicago River in 1998 -- at almost exactly the same time that somebody at City Hall came to the conclusion the site would make a swell location for a city park.
Immediately thereafter, the city began taking steps to acquire the property, never quite getting the job done until six years later, when it paid the two men $1.2 million to take this same heavily polluted, vacant parcel off their hands.
I don't know about you, but I never do as well with my real estate investments.
My wife and I always joke that we buy high and sell low, which isn't entirely true, but our timing does tend to be a little off. We'll see an opportunity, but we don't take the chance until the price is out of reach, or we'll sell a house just before the market shoots sky high.
That's why I'm in awe of guys like DiPiazza and Ferro, who could do their own infomercials if they weren't camera shy, as Bridgeport businessmen tend to be.
Insider deal?
DiPiazza is definitely an interesting character. He used to be a city sewer department worker before he got in a jam in the late 1980s for being at the racetrack on city time. He seems to have quite an interest in racehorses. Until just a few years ago, he owned a horse named Medlin Road in partnership with Nick "The Stick" LoCoco, the mob bookie who ran the city's Hired Truck program in the Department of Transportation before he was charged in the federal probe.
As most of you recall, LoCoco never stood trial because he tragically died in December 2004 when, as fate would have it, he fell off a horse in what authorities said was a riding accident.
DiPiazza and Ferro may have known a little bit about the Hired Truck program themselves, as some of the trucking companies in the program rented space from them to park their trucks. But mostly, they have proved their expertise in real estate, becoming prominent players in Bridgeport during Mayor Daley's nearly two decades in office.
Their influence was perhaps not widely known, however, until another developer, Thomas Snitzer, filed a lawsuit earlier this year alleging that Tim Degnan, Daley's former patronage chief and longtime friend, tried to force Snitzer to take on his pal DiPiazza as a partner -- as the price of doing business in Bridgeport. Instead, Snitzer gave DiPiazza a $1.3 million consulting contract.
It was in that same suit that Snitzer alleged DiPiazza was acting on inside information in 1998 when he and Ferro bought the land at the mouth of Bubbly Creek, which the city later purchased from them. Coincidence?
City officials scoff at the suggestion of insider dealings, noting that the decision to locate a park at the site -- actually an expansion of the new Canal Origins Park on the other side of Bubbly Creek -- grew out of a public planning process for the Chicago River undertaken in late 1997 and published in April 1998.
I don't see the one ruling out the other, and if I had subpoena power, I'd want to call in some people to answer questions.
One of the things to focus on is how the city decided to pay so much for a property for which it originally received an appraisal of $220,000 in 1998.
Even four years later, city planning officials thought they would obtain the land at the relative bargain of $520,000 because of the pollution problems.
As Planning's Kathleen Dickhut wrote in a Dec. 12, 2002, letter to the state Department of Natural Resources (which committed $385,900 to the project):
"Due to the condition of the property, we are optimistic that the owners will be willing to sell the property without the need for condemnation. A private entity purchasing the property will not have the advantage of working with Peoples Gas on the cleanup and therefore not likely be in a position to offer the owners fair market value for their properties."
Instead, the city arranged to force Peoples Gas to clean up the site, then paid DiPiazza and Ferro a higher value of $1.2 million as if the land was already suitable for residential development.
If they do get DiPiazza under oath, I wonder if the feds could ask him a question for me: What does he think about real estate values in the U.P.? Or would that be outside his area of expertise?
Thanks to Mark Brown
DiPiazza and Ferro are the guys who paid $50,000 for a heavily polluted, essentially vacant parcel of land along the Chicago River in 1998 -- at almost exactly the same time that somebody at City Hall came to the conclusion the site would make a swell location for a city park.
Immediately thereafter, the city began taking steps to acquire the property, never quite getting the job done until six years later, when it paid the two men $1.2 million to take this same heavily polluted, vacant parcel off their hands.
I don't know about you, but I never do as well with my real estate investments.
My wife and I always joke that we buy high and sell low, which isn't entirely true, but our timing does tend to be a little off. We'll see an opportunity, but we don't take the chance until the price is out of reach, or we'll sell a house just before the market shoots sky high.
That's why I'm in awe of guys like DiPiazza and Ferro, who could do their own infomercials if they weren't camera shy, as Bridgeport businessmen tend to be.
Insider deal?
DiPiazza is definitely an interesting character. He used to be a city sewer department worker before he got in a jam in the late 1980s for being at the racetrack on city time. He seems to have quite an interest in racehorses. Until just a few years ago, he owned a horse named Medlin Road in partnership with Nick "The Stick" LoCoco, the mob bookie who ran the city's Hired Truck program in the Department of Transportation before he was charged in the federal probe.
As most of you recall, LoCoco never stood trial because he tragically died in December 2004 when, as fate would have it, he fell off a horse in what authorities said was a riding accident.
DiPiazza and Ferro may have known a little bit about the Hired Truck program themselves, as some of the trucking companies in the program rented space from them to park their trucks. But mostly, they have proved their expertise in real estate, becoming prominent players in Bridgeport during Mayor Daley's nearly two decades in office.
Their influence was perhaps not widely known, however, until another developer, Thomas Snitzer, filed a lawsuit earlier this year alleging that Tim Degnan, Daley's former patronage chief and longtime friend, tried to force Snitzer to take on his pal DiPiazza as a partner -- as the price of doing business in Bridgeport. Instead, Snitzer gave DiPiazza a $1.3 million consulting contract.
It was in that same suit that Snitzer alleged DiPiazza was acting on inside information in 1998 when he and Ferro bought the land at the mouth of Bubbly Creek, which the city later purchased from them. Coincidence?
City officials scoff at the suggestion of insider dealings, noting that the decision to locate a park at the site -- actually an expansion of the new Canal Origins Park on the other side of Bubbly Creek -- grew out of a public planning process for the Chicago River undertaken in late 1997 and published in April 1998.
I don't see the one ruling out the other, and if I had subpoena power, I'd want to call in some people to answer questions.
One of the things to focus on is how the city decided to pay so much for a property for which it originally received an appraisal of $220,000 in 1998.
Even four years later, city planning officials thought they would obtain the land at the relative bargain of $520,000 because of the pollution problems.
As Planning's Kathleen Dickhut wrote in a Dec. 12, 2002, letter to the state Department of Natural Resources (which committed $385,900 to the project):
"Due to the condition of the property, we are optimistic that the owners will be willing to sell the property without the need for condemnation. A private entity purchasing the property will not have the advantage of working with Peoples Gas on the cleanup and therefore not likely be in a position to offer the owners fair market value for their properties."
Instead, the city arranged to force Peoples Gas to clean up the site, then paid DiPiazza and Ferro a higher value of $1.2 million as if the land was already suitable for residential development.
If they do get DiPiazza under oath, I wonder if the feds could ask him a question for me: What does he think about real estate values in the U.P.? Or would that be outside his area of expertise?
Thanks to Mark Brown
The Chumbolone Casino
So as I took last week off -- with some readers fearing I'd been chained in a City Hall dungeon for writing the words "Mayor Chucky" -- an amazing thing happened. (I took the week off after Kass did, which is why you are going to get a slew of articles today.)
Mayor Richard Daley agreed he'd like City Hall to own a gigantic casino, with all the contracts to be overseen by a special city gaming board hand-picked by the mayor himself. Please don't call it the City Hall Casino or the Daley Casino. That's rude. Call it the Chumbolone Casino.
A casino with all the contracts and jobs and deals hidden from public view should be named for all of us chumbolones who believe taxes will decrease if the casino is built.
So I'm calling on you, the readers of this column, to help the mayor by coming up with recommendations for the posts of Chumbolone Casino boss and on the Chumbolone Casino board.
The mayor has been under great stress, and nobody wants him to get angry and transform into the Mayor Chucky persona, which would terrify the Olympic selection committee. Let's help the mayor instead.
Send your Chumbolone Casino recommendations to me, and we'll present them to the mayor in a special ceremony to be held either at the Polish sausage stand on 31st Street, or at Tavern on Rush, whichever he prefers.
"Who'll handle the patronage at the mayor's casino?" asked a loyal reader who calls himself Leprechaun. "There will be jobs there, right?"
Robert Sorich. Who else?
Sorich, the mayor's former patronage boss, was convicted in federal court as part of a scheme that rigged city job applications to illegally build massive patronage armies for the mayor, in direct violation of a federal court order. Sorich is appealing his conviction on mail fraud, not racketeering, as I'd reported recently.
But who'll run the gambling? I've got just the guy behind the guy:
Rayjo.
Rayjo -- known formally as Raymond John Tominello -- comes from the mayor's neighborhood. Nobody calls him Raymond, or Ray. They call him Rayjo.
I have a suspicion that the mayor may know Rayjo, but I've been waiting for those tough TV reporters who like spanking the Urkel out of the hapless Todd Stroger to ask Daley if he knows Rayjo, or not.
Rayjo is eminently qualified. Consider his background.
Rayjo tutored under the famous Don "The Wizard of Odds" Angelini and Dominic Cortina, the Chicago Outfit's top bookies back in the 1980s, and he pleaded guilty to being one of their top lieutenants and went to prison for his crimes.
Before and after his release, Rayjo was in the real estate business with the mayor's second favorite developer, Thomas DiPiazza, on several deals in Bridgeport, and the sale of land to the Chicago Board of Education for almost a million dollars.
See? Rayjo and Tommy D. care about the school children.
And a few months ago, Rayjo was also mentioned in federal testimony in the Family Secrets trial. Chicago Outfit hit man-turned-government witness Nick Calabrese testified about a meeting to establish the pecking order in a Bridgeport gambling operation.
Calabrese said he met with several tough guys, including Outfit loan shark and former Chicago Police Officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle. Twan was convicted in Family Secrets for passing key information on an Outfit murder to Calabrese's brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., while the FBI was recording their conversations.
(Ironically, Twan invented the term "chumbolone," which he insisted means stupid idiot.)
At that meeting were Frank Sr., the late Outfit enforcer Ronnie Jarrett and Outfit figure Mario Dispensia. Oh, and one other guy.
Rayjo.
How's that for qualifications?
Like his buddy Tommy D., Rayjo also worked for the city, so he has a public service background too.
So Rayjo it is, for chief operating officer of the Chumbolone Casino.
Yet there are other important casino jobs, from scooping up the quarters in the slot machines, to running the VIP bottle service for high-rollers, even building the casino itself, and securing City Hall occupancy permits. And don't forget the Chumbolone Casino board. I'm sure you'll find responsible people. But don't ask Jim Wagner, president of the Chicago Crime Commission. He argues that, given City Hall's habit of playing footsie with the Outfit for the last century, a casino won't save taxpayers money.
"You'll end up having to pay a tax for all the corruption that will be brought into play, with the contracts, with the sweetheart deals, with the ghost employees and, history has shown, with the corruption of government and law enforcement," Wagner said.
Wagner spent decades with the FBI, hunting the Chicago Outfit. So, naturally, City Hall sniffs at his concerns.
So who will we put on the board? And who'll scoop up the quarters?
Please help the mayor help you.
Your baby needs a new pair of shoes.
Thanks to John Kass
Mayor Richard Daley agreed he'd like City Hall to own a gigantic casino, with all the contracts to be overseen by a special city gaming board hand-picked by the mayor himself. Please don't call it the City Hall Casino or the Daley Casino. That's rude. Call it the Chumbolone Casino.
A casino with all the contracts and jobs and deals hidden from public view should be named for all of us chumbolones who believe taxes will decrease if the casino is built.
So I'm calling on you, the readers of this column, to help the mayor by coming up with recommendations for the posts of Chumbolone Casino boss and on the Chumbolone Casino board.
The mayor has been under great stress, and nobody wants him to get angry and transform into the Mayor Chucky persona, which would terrify the Olympic selection committee. Let's help the mayor instead.
Send your Chumbolone Casino recommendations to me, and we'll present them to the mayor in a special ceremony to be held either at the Polish sausage stand on 31st Street, or at Tavern on Rush, whichever he prefers.
"Who'll handle the patronage at the mayor's casino?" asked a loyal reader who calls himself Leprechaun. "There will be jobs there, right?"
Robert Sorich. Who else?
Sorich, the mayor's former patronage boss, was convicted in federal court as part of a scheme that rigged city job applications to illegally build massive patronage armies for the mayor, in direct violation of a federal court order. Sorich is appealing his conviction on mail fraud, not racketeering, as I'd reported recently.
But who'll run the gambling? I've got just the guy behind the guy:
Rayjo.
Rayjo -- known formally as Raymond John Tominello -- comes from the mayor's neighborhood. Nobody calls him Raymond, or Ray. They call him Rayjo.
I have a suspicion that the mayor may know Rayjo, but I've been waiting for those tough TV reporters who like spanking the Urkel out of the hapless Todd Stroger to ask Daley if he knows Rayjo, or not.
Rayjo is eminently qualified. Consider his background.
Rayjo tutored under the famous Don "The Wizard of Odds" Angelini and Dominic Cortina, the Chicago Outfit's top bookies back in the 1980s, and he pleaded guilty to being one of their top lieutenants and went to prison for his crimes.
Before and after his release, Rayjo was in the real estate business with the mayor's second favorite developer, Thomas DiPiazza, on several deals in Bridgeport, and the sale of land to the Chicago Board of Education for almost a million dollars.
See? Rayjo and Tommy D. care about the school children.
And a few months ago, Rayjo was also mentioned in federal testimony in the Family Secrets trial. Chicago Outfit hit man-turned-government witness Nick Calabrese testified about a meeting to establish the pecking order in a Bridgeport gambling operation.
Calabrese said he met with several tough guys, including Outfit loan shark and former Chicago Police Officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle. Twan was convicted in Family Secrets for passing key information on an Outfit murder to Calabrese's brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., while the FBI was recording their conversations.
(Ironically, Twan invented the term "chumbolone," which he insisted means stupid idiot.)
At that meeting were Frank Sr., the late Outfit enforcer Ronnie Jarrett and Outfit figure Mario Dispensia. Oh, and one other guy.
Rayjo.
How's that for qualifications?
Like his buddy Tommy D., Rayjo also worked for the city, so he has a public service background too.
So Rayjo it is, for chief operating officer of the Chumbolone Casino.
Yet there are other important casino jobs, from scooping up the quarters in the slot machines, to running the VIP bottle service for high-rollers, even building the casino itself, and securing City Hall occupancy permits. And don't forget the Chumbolone Casino board. I'm sure you'll find responsible people. But don't ask Jim Wagner, president of the Chicago Crime Commission. He argues that, given City Hall's habit of playing footsie with the Outfit for the last century, a casino won't save taxpayers money.
"You'll end up having to pay a tax for all the corruption that will be brought into play, with the contracts, with the sweetheart deals, with the ghost employees and, history has shown, with the corruption of government and law enforcement," Wagner said.
Wagner spent decades with the FBI, hunting the Chicago Outfit. So, naturally, City Hall sniffs at his concerns.
So who will we put on the board? And who'll scoop up the quarters?
Please help the mayor help you.
Your baby needs a new pair of shoes.
Thanks to John Kass
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