The Chicago Crime Commission is Fighting to Survive

There is turmoil at the top of the Chicago Crime Commission, the nation's oldest organization of citizen crime fighters.

After leading the fight against a Rosemont casino and a high-level role in the Operation Family Secrets mob trial, the Chicago Crime Commission last week closed its doors and moved out of its long time headquarters in the Loop. A spokesperson says they are waiting for new office space to open. But the recently departed president says the commission was out of money late last year and couldn't make payroll.

"We simply were out of money at the time that I decided I had to resign," said James Wagner, Former crime commission president.

Decorated former FBI agent Jim Wagner left the crime commission last October without public explanation. Now, he tells the I-Team they were teetering on collapse. "I believed it was when I resigned, I was not at all confident that they would be able to continue," said Wagner.

It was thriving 90 years ago, along with the mob. The crime commission received its charter and was run by civic and business leaders. Prohibition triggered a gangland war, led by notorious hoodlum Al Capone. The crime commission began a decades-long fight against the outfit and the public corruption that fuels it.

"To come to its demise is very sad for me," said Robert Fuesel, former crime commissioner.

Former IRS investigator Bob Fuesel ran the commission 15 years ago. He says he accepted a $930,000 donation from the estate of a late board member. "That money is now all gone. People came in and started with high salaries and hired people that weren't needed," said Fuesel.

By last fall, the organization was in dire shape. "We didn't have what you would call a staff," said Wagner.

The latest public filings show the commission spends more than it brings in.

After Wagner, business magnate J.R. Davis took over what's left as chairman, board member and president. "He has no law enforcement experience and he is holding three positions, being a one man office...It's just a sham operation, there is nothing going on over there," said Wagner.

In an email, Davis cited the commission's "very formidable financial position" but said it's not "in the best interest of law enforcement to outline specific financial details of the commission."

"My concern is that all power is vested in one individual and I'm not sure that's a healthy situation for any independent not for profit to operate in that fashion," said Wagner.

State records reveal that a former crime commission employee is under investigation for alleged theft of funds.

The case was referred to the FBI and on Wednesday a bureau official says the matter is pending.

Despite the turmoil, a crime commission spokesperson contends they are not out of business and promises new innovative programs that address gang violence and public corruption as well as new members of their leadership team.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

Tweet

John Favara, Former Neighbor of John Gotti, Murdered and Dumped into Acid According to Federal Informant

The corpse of John Gotti's Howard Beach neighbor - murdered after he accidentally killed the gangster's 12-year-old son in a traffic accident - was dissolved in a barrel of acid, an informant says.

John Favara's grisly fate is disclosed in court papers filed Tuesday in the upcoming racketeering trial of reputed Gambino soldier Charles (Charlie Canig) Carneglia.

He has long been suspected of getting rid of Favara's body after the father of two was shot in March 1980 on orders of the late Gambino crime boss. Favara's body has never been found.

Carneglia told a Gambino family associate, who is a government witness, that he disposed of the body by putting it in a barrel of acid, Assistant Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Roger Burlingame said.

The associate is not identified in the court papers, but sources told the Daily News it is Kevin McMahon, a mob wanna-be close to Carneglia.

Young Frankie Gotti was riding McMahon's minibike when the mob scion was fatally struck on 86th St. by Favara, who was briefly blinded by the setting sun as he drove home from work.

Prosecutors say Carneglia "protected" McMahon from retaliation by the Dapper Don for lending his son the minibike and - in a bizarre twist - McMahon is the one ratting him out.

No one could save Favara. He found the word Murderer scrawled on his auto and was attacked with a bat by Gotti's wife, Victoria, but failed to heed repeated warnings to move out of the area, sources said.

Several weeks after the tragic accident, Favara was abducted outside the Castro Convertible warehouse where he worked in New Hyde Park, L.I.. Cops identified his killers as Gambino members John Carneglia, Charles' brother, Gene Gotti, Wilfred (Willie Boy) Johnson, Anthony Rampino and Richard (Redbird) Gomes.

Favara was forced into a van, sources said, and shot in the legs. He was taken to another location in Brooklyn where he was killed and stuffed into a 55-gallon drum, sources said.

"In a later discussion concerning his expertise at disposing of bodies for the Gambino family, which included a discussion of a book (Charles Carneglia) was reading on dismemberment, (Carneglia) informed another Gambino family associate that acid was the best method to use to avoid detection," Burlingame wrote.

Carneglia, 62, who is charged with five murders, including the fatal shooting of a hero court officer scheduled to testify against him, asked McMahon to help him move barrels of acid stored in his basement.

Former Bonanno crime boss Joseph Massino told the feds he thought Favara's remains were buried in a mob graveyard on the Brooklyn-Queens border. The feds believe the barrel was tossed into the ocean, sources said.

Thanks to John Marzulli

Tweet

Family Secrets Mob Trial Sentencing Dates Set

A federal judge has set sentencing dates for five men convicted in September 2007 at Chicago's Operation Family Secrets mob trial.

They were convicted of a decades-long conspiracy that allegedly included loan sharking, squeezing victims for "street taxes" and a series of mob murders.

Judge James Zagel on Tuesday set the sentencings of Paul Schiro and Anthony Doyle for Jan. 26, Frank Calabrese on Jan. 28, Joseph Lombardo for Feb. 2 and James Marcello on Feb. 5.

Zagel set Feb. 23 for sentencing Calabrese's brother, Nicholas, an admitted hit man who became the government's star witness.

Tweet

Junior Gotti Requests to be Freed on Bail

Mob heir John A. "Junior" Gotti should be freed on bail while he awaits trial on racketeering charges, his lawyers argued Monday.

Gotti's lawyers said in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that their client should be freed because he has always complied with bail conditions, there is strong evidence he is no longer connected to organized crime and he is not a risk to flee.

The lawyers said he also should benefit from the fact prosecutors made inaccurate claims regarding his possible danger to the community before three other Manhattan racketeering trials, which ended in hung juries.

"In this case, as in the previous three trials, the government will undoubtedly struggle to cobble together some attenuated theory with which it will attempt to defeat Gotti's defense that he withdrew from the charged conspiracy and renounced his former life of crime," the lawyers said.

Gotti's lawyers said new evidence gathered by prosecutors through cooperating witnesses in the last two years has shown members of organized crime no longer consider Gotti among their ranks.

The court papers also noted that the government in February 2008 did not include Gotti when it indicted 62 people accused of being members and associates of the Gambino family, which was headed by his father, John Gotti, before he was convicted of racketeering. The elder Gotti died in prison while serving a life sentence.

The younger Gotti was arrested last year on an indictment brought against him in Tampa, Fla. A judge there found the charges in the case similar to those he had faced in the three New York racketeering trials and transferred the case to Manhattan. Gotti has not yet been moved to New York.

Gotti's lawyers described as "nonsensical" the government's argument that he should not get bail because a conviction could result in a life sentence. "He has a proven record of standing to face whatever fight is before him," they said.

Prosecutors declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the defense submission.

Thanks to Larry Neumeister

Tweet

Did America's First - A Fictitious Book about the Mob in Chicago, Helping Put a President into the White House, Predict the Election of Barack Obama?

The author of "America's First" has contacted us and provided a comparison between his book and the recent election of Barack Obama as President. He points out several similarities between the work of fiction and real life events. Since there is a Chicago Mob element in the comparisons, take a look and judge for yourself.

Back in the year 2000, a very interesting book was published and introduced at the American Book Expo in Chicago (at the McCormack Place convention center), at a time when 99 percent of the country had never heard of Barack Obama.

America's First is a fictional story of a U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois, who is sworn in as America's first black president on December 7, 2005, after the stability of the United States government is rocked to its very foundation.

This book is heavy reading that will shock today's readers on how similar this political thriller of fiction has so many similarities to today's current events.

TAKE A LOOK AT THESE FACTS vs. FICTION and their similarities between the author's work and the current events of today….

FACT vs. FICTION

FACT: America's First debuts in 2000, at the American Book Expo conference, held in Chicago, Illinois at the McCormack Place convention center.

FACT: George W. Bush is sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001.

FICTION: Senator Calvin Smart is an African-American senator, representing the state of Illinois before being sworn in as president in America's First, which was first published in the year 2000.

FACT: In November 2004, Barack Obama wins the office of U.S. Senator, and becomes the only African-American senator in the nation. He is also a U.S. Senator representing the state of Illinois.

FICTION: Both of Calvin Smart's parents are deceased in America's First, and Smart was raised by his grandfather.

FACT: Both of Barack Obama's parents are deceased. Barack Obama was raised by his maternal grandparents, unbeknown to the author at the time of writing his novel.

FICTION: Calvin Smart is a loyal husband to his wife, Audrey Smart, who also bares a similar physical description to Michelle Obama, the real life wife of Barack Obama.

FACT: Barack Obama is a very articulate speaker and his physical description is almost identical to that of Calvin Smart's character. In addition, Obama holds an obscure public office in the year 2000. Therefore, the author has no reason to use him as a model for his book. It is a pure coincidence. Who would have thought back in 1996 when Obama was first elected as a state senator that he would run for Congress in 2000 and lose to Congressman Bobby Rush, let alone, one day run for President of the United States?

FICTION: Calvin Smart's opponent accuses him in a press conference of receiving money to finance his campaign from the Chicago mob. (pgs. 24-25 – America's First).

FACT: Barak Obama is linked to receiving campaign funds from Tony Resko, who has a long history of being a purported front for the Chicago mob. A modern day Sidney Korshak, as one reporter once described Resko.

America's First's also has interesting similar fiction concerning presidential issues that resemble George W. Bush's administration well before: a) Bush was sworn into office; and b) before 9/11 occurred.

FICTION: President Calvin Smart's first trip abroad since being sworn into office is to the central region of the Dominican Republic (pg. 98) to meet secretly with a Colombian cartel boss and members of the Commission of Families in a remote mountain called Pico Duarte (pg. 107). The purpose of the meeting? To discuss thwarting possible legislation over the legalization of drugs in the United States.

FACT: On January 30, 2001 (less than two weeks after President Bush is sworn into office) Mexican foreign minister, Jorge G. Castaneda was in Washington to prepare President Bush for his visit to Mexico in February 2001 (his first international trip abroad as president). Castaneda said in an interview in Washington that Mexico is very "sensitive" to the worries about the spread of the Colombian conflict into Mexico and that the United States should be too. The Bush administration inherits a multi-billion dollar "anti-drug offensive" plan from the Clinton administration that was suppose to help Colombia's government fight rebels from producing drugs.

FICTION: The United States is accused of assassinating Saddam Hussein's two sons in the fiction thriller America's First that was published well before they were killed by U.S. Troops in 2003. Saddam Hussein threatens retaliation later in the book.

FACT: Saddam Hussein's two sons were actually killed by U.S. Troops in the northern city of Mosul in the year 2003. Saddam Hussein later threatens retaliation against the U.S. after his two sons' dead bodies are plastered on the front pages of just about every major newspaper across the country.

FICTION: For nearly a quarter-of-a-century, Don Vincent (crime boss of the Giovinci family) sat as chairman of the Commission of Families (a board made up of crime bosses representing the twelve most powerful mafia families in America). Their survival and evasion of public scrutiny is based on the commission's motto: "Our destiny d epends upon our ability for our actions not to exist." (pg. 1)

FACT: It was revealed publicly for the first time and reported on February 9, 2001 in the Chicago Sun-Times that mobster John Gotti was queried by the feds about a "mob commission" that reportedly met in Florida. The commission reportedly attracted cartels from Cuba and Colombia, along with mobsters from Italy. (see Sneed's column on 2/9/01, printed in the Chicago Sun-Times).

FICTION: It was written in America's First back in the year 2000: "The Flamingo Country Club (located just off20the Florida straits, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean) was built on a small island. This tiny island was expropriated by the Commission of Families from the Fidel Castro regime right before Castro came into power over Cuba. The country club is the only place in the world where commission members feel comfortable talking when meeting their mutual associates from around the world or their contacts inside the CIA." (pg. 178 – America's First)

FICTION: President Calvin Smart gives a speech in which he states: "….because of my profound belief that our nation is faced with a challenging task to win this war against drugs…and because innocent children and honest Americans demand that we win this war…I feel deep down in my heart that legalizing drugs is the only way at this time to win this dreadful war. A war that has robbed honest Americans the right to achieve the American dream." (entire speech pgs. 273-274)

FACT: Syndicated columnist George Will writes in the Chicago Sun-Times on January 18, 2001: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield may be seeing the light about our losing fight in Colombia's drug war. Asked about the $1.6 billion spent so far undertaking to help fight the drug war in Colombia, Rumsfield said he had not formulated an opinion."

Tweet