Hired Truck probers: Cop, felon traded favors

Friends of ours: Sam "Blackie" Pesoli, Nick LoCoco

A high-ranking Chicago cop and a criminal traded favors all the time, federal prosecutors say.
The cop would ask for a break on construction work on his home.
The criminal would ask for a break on someone's DUI.
The cop would ask for help raising money for a policemen's fund.
The criminal would ask for a background check on a friend's employee.

Such was the routine, prosecutors say, between O'Hare Police Cmdr. Michael Acosta and John Boyle, a convicted felon and city worker, as the FBI secretly listened in on Boyle's cell phone in 2004 as part of the Hired Truck investigation. Boyle has since gone to prison for demanding bribes from trucking and construction companies in the city's Hired Truck Program.

Acosta, 59, is going on trial later this month for allegedly stealing $4,000 from a police fund set up to recognize excellent officers. He is also charged with lying to FBI agents about his relationship to Boyle and the favors he had done for him. Acosta, who retired from the Police Department in January last year, faced losing his job if top police brass knew he was violating a key police rule by associating with a known felon. Boyle had been convicted of stealing millions of dollars in money from the Illinois tollway.

Despite their close relationship, Boyle would gripe when Acosta got pushy, according to a new prosecution filing in the Acosta case. In one secretly recorded conversation, Boyle is talking to Vito Pesoli, at the time an assistant commissioner in the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation and a political operative. It's the first time prosecutors have mentioned Pesoli's name in the Hired Truck case.

Pesoli, 51, retired six months ago and went to work for his friend, trucking magnate Michael Tadin, whose business, Marina Cartage, has received work from Streets and Sanitation. Pesoli is not charged with any wrongdoing. He did not return phone messages Wednesday, including one left with his wife, Terri, who works for Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd).

In the discussion between Boyle and Pesoli, both men complain that Acosta wants an unspecified favor taken care of at the last minute.

"Commander Acosta called me this morning," Boyle says.
"Yeah, well, he's a little late, and I told him," Pesoli replies.
Later in the call, Pesoli says, "I told him, I said, 'This is the day before.' "
Then Boyle says: "I told him the same thing. Vito, we're on the same page."
Boyle continues: "And [Acosta] tells me, 'When guys get locked up for DUI, you call me the same time it happens and get him out.'"

Prosecutors want to play this conversation between Boyle and Pesoli to show at trial the close relationship between Boyle and Acosta. Pesoli also happens to be a nephew of a former Chicago cop with reputed mob ties, Sam "Blackie" Pesoli, who was sentenced in 1993 to nearly a year in prison for lying to a grand jury.

Acosta had a relationship with another city worker charged in the Hired Truck investigation. Nick LoCoco was a mob bookmaker who controlled what hired trucks got business in the city's Department of Transportation. He was charged in the scandal in 2004 but died in a horse-riding accident before going to trial.

When federal agents arrested LoCoco, he had two business cards on him from Acosta. On the back of one card was Acosta's cell phone number, court records show. On the back of the other was a handwritten message: "Please call me if I can help this individual, good friend," signed Commander M.J. Acosta, followed by a pager number.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir and Tim Novak

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Mobster Breaks Mafia Code

Friends of ours: Victor Riccitelli, Gambino Crime family, John Gotti

A US mobster who wanted so badly to keep his recorded conversations with an FBI informant secret, broke the mob's honour code and admitted his Mafia membership rather than have prosecutors play the tapes in court.

For the first time since Victor Riccitelli and more than a dozen others were indicted in a landmark Mafia case in 2004, prosecutors recently offered the first clues as to why he was so insistent the tapes remain sealed: In them, he revealed the Gambino crime family hierarchy, placing ranks with names and explaining the upper echelon of one of the United States' most notorious crime syndicates.

Riccitelli, in conversations with a Stamford, Connecticut, strip club owner working with the FBI, also described his Mafia induction ceremony, the secret ritual in which members swear a lifelong allegiance to the crime family. "He said that a picture of a saint was placed in his hands and burned, and that he dumped the ashes in a dish," prosecutors wrote in a memo to US District Judge Janet Bond Arterton.

Riccitelli was scheduled to be sentenced for racketeering today but his case was delayed until January 20. He faces six to eight years in prison and prosecutors want that tacked onto the end of his 13-year sentence for cocaine distribution - all but ensuring that Riccitelli, 72 and a cancer patient, will die in prison. Defence attorney John Einhorn did not return a message seeking a response to the prosecution memo.

The Gambino crime family, once led by John Gotti, runs Connecticut gambling businesses that include sports betting, poker machines and the numbers racket, prosecutors said. "The defendant is an incorrigible and possibly violent criminal whose life is marked by one constant: a never ending search for fresh opportunity to enrich himself illegally," prosecutors wrote.

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Top Ten Ways To Make The Godfather More Appealing To Teenagers

Somewhat dated, but thanks to the reader who sent this Top 10 from David Letterman

10. Marlon Brando gets two-foot tall sidekick, Mini-Vito
9. Enemies now killed by the explosive flavor of snapping into a Slim Jim
8. Three words: no Jar Jar
7. Sonny Corleone ambushed at tollbooth by foul-mouthed South Park character
6. Corpses of victims get dumped in Dawson's Creek
5. Theme song by Ricky Martin, "Livin' La Cosa Nostra"
4. Instead of organized crime, family now makes money by selling term papers
3. Change title from "The Godfather" to "The Puff Daddy"
2. Goodbye severed horse head, hello severed Backstreet Boy head!
1. New title: "I Still Know Who You Whacked Last Summer"

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Mob Contract Under Review at UIC

Friends of ours: John "No Nose" DiFronzo, Peter DiFronzo

University of Illinois at Chicago administrators are taking a fresh look at a longtime snowplowing contract their institution has held with a construction firm that authorities say is controlled by two "made" members of the Chicago mob. The company, D&P Construction, has been paid nearly $500,000 by the public university during the past two years. D&P was widely publicized as linked to organized crime in 2001, when the Illinois Gaming Board took issue with it hauling trash from the site of what was supposed to become a Rosemont casino.

A recent report by a board hearing officer cited an internal FBI memo from 2003 that stated that D&P "obtained contracts through illegal payoffs or intimidation," though UIC officials said they've never witnessed such acts since the firm began plowing snow at their Near West Side campus in the late 1990s.

D&P, on paper is run by Josephine DiFronzo, whose name appears on the recently extended contract that D&P holds with UIC. But authorities contend the firm is "controlled" by her husband, Peter, and his brother, John. Law enforcement documents identify John "No Nose" DiFronzo, 76, as one of the three top organized crime leaders in the city. Peter DiFronzo, 72, allegedly is his chief lieutenant.

Thomas Hardy, communications chief for all University of Illinois campuses, said the D&P contract is now under review after inquiries by the Chicago Sun-Times. University officials initially told the newspaper they saw no reason to review the contract, but Hardy said Sunday that the university's vice chancellor for administrative services, Joseph Muscarella, will oversee a review that's set to begin this week. "We are reviewing the contract to ensure all procedures were followed properly and that the contractor remains a qualified bidder under state law," Hardy said. "You've raised a lot of questions, so we want to get to the bottom of it."

Josephine and Peter DiFronzo did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

The university paid D&P $203,574 in its 2004-2005 budget year and $267,740 in 2003-2004 to augment its own in-house snow-removing crews. In addition, UIC paid D&P about $10,000 each of those years to deliver mulch to the campus.

D&P is known more as a top waste-hauler in the Chicago area than for plowing snow. UIC officials asked six companies to bid on the snowplowing contract in 2002, but only D&P submitted a bid. (This is a common technique that was used in the past by the Mob. They would divide the work up among themselves first and then only the choosen company would bid on the contract.)

Thanks to Chris Fusco.

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Junior to Face Jury Solo

Friends of ours: John Gotti Jr., Michael Yannotti, John Gotti

When John Gotti Jr. goes on trial again in February, he'll face the jury alone. A federal judge yesterday acquitted Gotti co-defendant Michael Yannotti on charges he participated in a botched kidnapping plot against radio host Curtis Sliwa in 1992. A jury previously acquitted Yannotti of attempted murder for allegedly shooting Sliwa as he and another Gambino posing as a cabby tried to snatch him in a yellow taxi.

In a 26-page written opinion, Manhattan Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin sided with defense lawyer Diarmuid White, finding that Yannotti could not be retried on the remaining charge based on technical legal grounds stemming from the jury's vote. Yannotti will instead proceed directly to sentencing as the jury convicted him of additional racketeering conspiracy charges that could land him behind bars for 20 years.

Gotti, the 41-year-old son of the late Gambino boss John "Dapper Don" Gotti, still stands accused of ordering and orchestrating the kidnapping of Sliwa after the jury delivered a hung verdict on that charge.

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