The Mafia Boss

I found a pretty cool simulation Mafia game which you can find by clicking on the icon. This is a free web based Massive Multiplayer Online Game, based on the Real Mafia Life so called "La Cosa Nostra".

You wanna be a real Mafia Don like Al Capone, John Gotti or Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo and have all the little mafiosos "Kiss Your Ring ... or Die"?

Enter the The Mafia Boss World, where you will become a boss of a crime gang. You have the choice to collect money from your casinos, whorehouses, loan sharks and gambling dens. You could also produce drugs, liquor and Counterfeit money. You will use bribes, and minor crimes during your daily routine. You will embark in street wars against other gangsters for control. You can bring your gang forth to join a Crime Family with a well structured hierarchy or even form your own Crime Family. The options are endless under a proven business logic with extra scope for illegal businesses and use your legal businesses to clear out the money.

When first starting out, building a strong crew is the best way to go. Keep your happiness levels up, or else your units will start to leave you. Buy liquor and have coke for your operatives; defensive units need guns, weed and liquor. Assure that they are enough defensive units to protect your operatives. If all else fails to keep your operatives happy raise the payroll, see what makes each group happy. Glocks are the best for a starter, when you can afford it go straight up to AK's. Cars can make a difference while doing a drive-by or being attacked. Best car to get, of course, is the S-CLass Limo but if u cant afford it go with the next best for you. The last thing to remember is try everything in the game!! If you don't like the city you're in, leave! If you aren't making enough money try other ways to get money (attack someone in your range) but this is the real Mafia World "an eye for an eye, an arm, and a leg"

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Reward Offered in Search for Mob Fugitives

Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced today that a reward of up to $20,000 is being offered for information leading to the location and arrest of suspected "Chicago Outfit" members JOSEPH "The Clown" LOMBARDO and FRANK "The German" SCHWEIHS.

Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Frank "The German" Schweihs

Both LOMBARDO and SCHWEIHS have been the subject of an international manhunt since April 25th of this year, after being charged along with 12 other individuals by a Federal Grand Jury in Chicago with numerous violations of federal criminal law, including involvement in as many as 18 previously unsolved murders.

LOMBARDO, whose last known address was on Chicago's near west side, is described as a white/male, 76 years of age, 5'7" tall, 185 pounds, medium build, with black hair and brown eyes with glasses.

SCHWEIHS, whose last known address was in Dania, Florida, is described as a white/male, 75 years of age, 6' tall, 180 pounds, medium build, with gray hair and brown eyes and walks with a slight limp.

In announcing this reward, Mr. Grant said " In many of the investigations that the FBI conducts, we rely heavily on the assistance of the public. We're hoping that by offering a reward the public's attention will once again be focused on this investigation and will generate tips that could lead to the arrest of one or both of these fugitives."

Both men should be considered armed and dangerous. Anyone having any information as to the whereabouts of either LOMBARDO or SCHWEIHS is asked to call the Chicago FBI at (312) 431-1333 or their local police department.

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Prison Inmate, Charles Miceli, Says He Has Information on Mob Crimes

Yet another unsolicited, handwritten letter relating to a major mob case has been sent to U.S. District Judge James Zagel.

This time, Florida inmate Charles Miceli is the author, and he complains the feds have ignored his overtures to provide information about reputed organized crime figures. Miceli -- who said he has no reason to lie because he's going to be released from prison in a few years even without his cooperation -- indicated that reputed mob boss Joey "The Clown" Lombardo is innocent of a murder he's been accused of. And Miceli suggests other reputed hoodlums, including John DiFronzo, should be investigated.

Miceli said in the letter, a copy of which also was mailed to the Chicago Sun-Times and U.S. attorney's office, that FBI agents have refused to interview him despite his claims to have valuable knowledge of mob activities. "It's not right to arrest Mr. Lombardo for things that other people did and it's equally wrong to let really guilty people go free and laugh at the system," Miceli wrote.

Lombardo and other alleged mob figures were charged in a sweeping federal indictment this spring that aims to solve 18 mob hits. Lombardo is on the lam but previously wrote Zagel, who's handling the case, in an unsuccessful attempt to set conditions for coming in from hiding. Miceli reportedly is serving time in Florida on state theft charges.

As the letter came to light, questions surfaced over Miceli's reliability, with sources saying federal investigators have grave concerns about Miceli sending agents on wild goose chases.

However, Chicago ATF agent John N. Rotunno once wrote a letter on Miceli's behalf to Judge Mark Shames in Clearwater, Fla., asking for "Any consideration you could afford him" in another, unrelated court matter.

Rotunno wrote that Miceli had been on the mark in detailing violent crime incidents and had intimate contacts with high-ranking individuals in organized crime. But in 2001, Miceli took ATF agents on a fruitless search for murder victims or weapons in wooded areas near River Grove and River Forest. He's given other unreliable tips to other agencies as well, sources said.

Miceli sent similar letters and additional correspondence to Lombardo's attorney, Rick Halprin, who plans to turn over the information in a court hearing before Zagel today. Halprin will ask the court to appoint a federal public defender to represent Miceli.

Thanks to Natasha Korecki and Carol Marin.

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Loan shark's tale in federal court has literary ring

What does Geoffrey Chaucer have in common with the Chicago Outfit's Frank Calabrese Sr.?

Don't worry, you are not having an English Lit nightmare. There are no "Loan Shark's Tales" in Chaucer. I hate to say it, but Calabrese and other members of the Chinatown Crew probably found something threatening in "The Canterbury Tales."

The Chinatown guys probably enjoyed a much later period, with all the wanton sex, food orgies, violence and corruption to be found in Henry Fielding, a writer who would have understood Chicago. Fielding (1707-1754) was a British writer, playwright and journalist, founder of the English Realistic school in literature with Samuel Richardson. Fielding's career as a dramatist has been shadowed by his career as a novelist. His aim as a novelist was to write comic epic poems in prose - he once described himself as "great, tattered bard." Fielding's sharp burlesques satirizing the government gained the attention of the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole and Fielding's career in theater was ended by Theatrical Licensing Act - directed primarily at him. Between the years 1729 and 1737 Fielding wrote 25 plays but he acclaimed critical notice with his novels. The best known are THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING (1749), in which the tangled comedies of coincidence are offset by the neat, architectonic structure of the story, and THE HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURES OF JOSEPH ANDREWS (1742), a parody of Richardson's Pamela (1740)

Yet there might be a "Billy Dauber Tale" in federal court someday--about the icy hit man and his mouthy wife Charlotte. They were chopped to pieces by shotguns during a car chase in Will County years ago. Chaucer's pilgrims would have been horrified by the carnage. (Rumors suggest that Albert Tocco, then the head the Mob's Southland activities, was angered that Dauber had started a freelance string of chop shops and ordered the gruesome hit which occured during a daylight attack.)

Dr. Milt Rosenberg, the cultured and brilliant host of WGN-AM's "Extension 720" radio panel show, read Chaucer on the 50,000 watt station, as a few of us sat with him to talk about the Outfit and its relationship to Chicago politics. I'm a big fan of Rosenberg's program. One evening he'll have professors reading "The Iliad" in the ancient tongue, the next he'll moderate brawling foreign policy experts arguing Iraq policy. Naturally, to open our discussion on the Outfit, he read from "The Canterbury Tales":

"Murder will out, we see it every day. Murder's so hateful and abominable To God, Who is so just and reasonable, That He'll not suffer that it hidden be; Though it may skulk a year, or two, or three, Murder will out ..."

Milt smiled. His message was artfully put as always--this one being that murder is so objectionable that the Almighty causes it to be discovered.

Perhaps the Almighty causes murder to be discovered in English literature, but not in Chicago. There have been more than 1,100 Outfit hits and, until recently, only a little more than a dozen have been solved. That is, not until Frank's brother, Nick Calabrese decided to tell the FBI tales that led to Operation Family Secrets, the indictments of several mob bosses, including the fugitive Joe "the Clown" Lombardo in 18 Outfit murders.

The legendary WBBM-TV crime reporter John "Bulldog" Drummond, the Chicago Crime Commission's Tom Fitzpatrick and yours truly took interesting telephone calls from Milt's listeners.

One caller shocked me by insisting that a now-defunct suburban restaurant was an Outfit hangout--and that the bartenders were deadly--and I was too stunned to mention that it was once owned by a late relative who made great rice pudding.

Another caller said he'd call me later about serving as jury foreman in the Albert Tocco trial. Others asked about the relationship between the Outfit and City Hall, or wondered about relatives who'd been killed.

One who tried phoning in was the daughter of Sam "Momo" Giancana. Antoinette Giancana called me the next day. The author of "Mafia Princess: Growing Up in Sam Giancana's Family" was furious. "I like Milt's show and I know you and I know Drummond so I thought I'd call in and we could gab a bit on the air about the old days," Antoinette Giancana told me the next day. "But they wouldn't connect me. They said, `Sam Giancana's daughter? Oh yeah. OK.' Then the phone clicked off. Oh, I'm so angry! You know how angry I am? I'm angry!"

Antoinette? Please don't take it out on Milt. I enjoyed his Chaucer reading so much that I invited him to accompany Drummond and me to federal court on Friday. We were to watch Frank Calabrese answer charges of murder conspiracy and racketeering.

"I'm sorry," Milt said, "but I have another engagement." Too bad, Milt. You missed it.

In U.S. District Judge James Zagel's courtroom, Frank Calabrese Sr. pleaded not guilty. But he didn't look like himself. For one thing, the convicted Outfit loan shark remains a prisoner, and was in an orange prison jumpsuit. He wasn't wearing the uniform of the Chinatown Crew--black T-shirt, porkpie hat and smirk.

So he didn't seem like a guy who'd sneak up behind you at a bar and make a friendly gesture to remind you to pay your debts--say, stabbing his cigarette out into your bare forearm, or squeezing your head in a car door.

Instead, Calabrese was the picture of a timid old man in an orange jumpsuit, whining about ailments. "I've only got 10 percent of my pituitary gland," Calabrese told Zagel, who has probably heard every excuse, even the pituitary gland. "... I'm on nine medications ... It's a very serious thing. "And, plus a septic in my nose for which I have to take a nasal spray," Calabrese said, hands folded behind him, trigger fingers free to wiggle, sadly.

It's too bad Milt didn't hear a Chicago tough guy complain about his sinus cavity. It's not fiction. Even Fielding, a judge who could have thrived in Cook County, couldn't make this stuff up.

Thanks to John Kass (Bold comments have been added)

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Casino hearing expected to call reputed mobster

Reputed Chicago Outfit boss John "No Nose" DiFronzo and his brother, Peter DiFronzo, will be among those called to testify at a state hearing on whether to revoke the state gambling license once destined for Rosemont, Illinois Gaming Board sources said Thursday.

Robert Cooley--the corrupt lawyer turned government informant who testified in mob cases involving the nexus between the Outfit and politicians--is also expected to be called as a witness. Cooley is the author of the book "When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down."

The new head of the Gaming Board said he's looking forward to the hearing but isn't talking about who will testify. "I'd rather not comment on that, because I think it's up to the lawyers to conduct the case as they see it," Chairman Aaron Jaffe told me in a telephone interview. "But I will promise you this. It will be very interesting."

What he didn't say is important here. He didn't say they weren't going to subpoena the tough guys. He didn't say that the DiFronzos and others would not be called. He could have. But he didn't.

Gov. Rod "The Unreformer" Blagojevich appointed Jaffe with the understanding that the Gaming Board was to become independent again. That's nice, since Blagojevich tried to gut the board by denying it a full set of independent investigators.

Jaffe said that to make the board truly independent, though, the governor and the legislature must allow gambling officials to hire more investigators to be led by chief investigator Jim Wagner, the retired chief of the FBI's Organized Crime task force in Chicago. Wagner helped train several current FBI agents who brought the Operation Family Secrets case, with 18 previously unsolved mob murders, to indictment last week.

The Rosemont casino license has been a political Gordian knot. Republican powerhouses have pushed it as a favor to Rosemont Mayor Donald Stephens and his ally, the indicted former Gov. George "Safe Roads" Ryan.

Last year, past board chairman Elzie Higginbottom, a longtime ally of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, led a controversial pro-Rosemont ruling. He and other board members dismissed the concerns of Gaming Board staff that Rosemont was mobbed up and approved a plan to steer a license to a new casino in Stephens' town.

One of those pro-Rosemont board members appointed by Blagojevich was Bill Fanning. After the Rosemont vote, Fanning privately told his colleagues he had neglected to inform them that he had once been related by a past marriage to reputed Outfit boss Joe "The Builder" Andriacchi. Then Fanning resigned. There was little official comment about the development. Fanning did tell colleagues, though, that he had rarely spoken to Andriacchi and hadn't seen him in years.

What surprised me was that Blagojevich hadn't asked Fanning--before appointing him--whether he knew any tough guys. But now Blagojevich says independent is a good thing. Good luck, Mr. Jaffe.

Rosemont was once the headquarters of Outfit boss Sam "Momo" Giancana. According to Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and other law enforcement authorities, Rosemont has been mobbed up.

Mayor Stephens, who will also be called to testify, vigorously disputes this characterization and has released the findings of an investigation he commissioned that said he's never been "connected to or associated with" the Chicago Outfit.

So I mentioned to Jaffe that he might consider calling another witness--Antoinette Giancana, daughter of the murdered Sam Giancana.

Several years ago, as Stephens was railing that his was not an Outfit town, I had breakfast with the gracious Antoinette and she remembered the days when Stephens eagerly hung out with her father at the Thunderbolt motel in the 1960s. Stephens disputes this. Obviously, a hearing would be quite interesting. "We were very friendly and casual and we all had a good time at the pool," she said. "My father's friends were there too. They had their board meetings in the banquet room. And Don was at the motel too, of course."

I asked her if it was true that the daughters of Outfit bosses teased the young and anxious Stephens by ordering him to fetch them towels at poolside. Did you ever say: Hey Don, get me a towel!? "Wait a minute!" Antoinette Giancana said. "I'd never shout, `Don, go get me a towel!' That would be rude. I was ladylike. You would say, `Don? Would you please get me a towel?'"

Recently, Jaffe appointed the distinguished jurist and former congressman Abner Mikva to preside over the hearing on the Rosemont license revocation. Jaffe said he expects Mikva to set a date for the hearing sometime next week. And Mikva has said he doesn't expect the hearing to drag on forever.

With all that's going on--Operation Family Secrets, City Hall corruption cases and Unreformer Blagojevich's problems--it'd be nice to spend time near a pool. Don, would you please bring me a towel?

Thanks to John Kass

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