On July 22, 1934—75 years ago today—Bureau agents put an end to John Dillinger’s reign of crime when he was shot and killed near the Biograph Theater in Chicago. Dillinger’s story has been told and retold ever since—including in a recent Hollywood movie. Along the way, fact and fiction have often been blended together. Here, from the FBI's perspective, are the top ten myths surrounding Dillinger and the facts as we know them.
Myth #10: Dillinger was a “Robin Hood” type criminal, a romantic outlaw.
Dillinger certainly had charm and charisma, but he was no champion of the poor or harmless thief—he was a hardened and vicious criminal. Dillinger stormed police stations in search of weapons and bulletproof vests. He robbed banks and stole cars. He shot at police officers (and may have killed one) and regularly used innocent bystanders as human shields to escape the law. Worse yet, he stood by as his ruthless gang members shot and killed people, including law enforcement officials. And what of his ill-gotten gains? They were used to line his own pockets and those of his partners in crime, not those of impoverished Americans in the midst of the Great Depression.
Myth #9: Dillinger was not carrying a gun the night he was killed.
Dillinger did have a gun on him—a .380 Colt automatic with the serial number scratched out. He reached for that gun when Bureau agents cornered him that fateful night. Not taking any chances, agents shot him before he had the chance to open fire.
Myth #8: John Dillinger was not killed at the Biograph Theater, a stand-in was.
If this sounds like a conspiracy theory, that’s because it is. Claims that a man resembling Dillinger was actually killed have been advanced with only circumstantial evidence. On the other hand, a wealth of information supports Dillinger’s demise. Special Agents M. Chaffetz and Earle Richmond, for example, took two sets of fingerprints from the body outside the Biograph Theater, and both were a positive match. Another set taken during the autopsy were also a match.
Myth #7: The FBI beat up Evelyn Frechette after her arrest.
Not so. Evelyn “Billie” Frechette—Dillinger’s one time girlfriend—was captured on April 9, 1934 and detained in our Chicago Field Office. She was interrogated about Dillinger around the clock for two days under hot lights. She refused to cooperate and was transferred to St. Paul to stand trail for harboring Dillinger. While her interrogation wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, at no time did agents attack or strike her. Frechette and her lawyer claimed we did during the trail—most likely to win sympathy.
Myth #6: The FBI took physical specimens from Dillinger’s corpse.
There is no evidence suggesting that the Bureau kept “souvenirs” from Dillinger’s body or in any way desecrated his remains. According to media reports, however, the local coroner later admitted taking pieces of Dillinger’s brain to examine.
Myth #5: East Chicago, Indiana Police killed Dillinger, not FBI agents.
While East Chicago Police officers were instrumental in helping the Bureau track down Dillinger the night he died, they were not in a position to shoot him. According to the drawn-up plans of the takedown and individual testimony, all of these officers were too far away to have an unobstructed shot. The closest—Captain Timothy O’Neil—was stationed across the street; his line of fire would have been blocked by special agents and civilians. In the end, it was Bureau agents who shot and killed Dillinger. Claims that someone else pulled the trigger came much later.
Myth #4: J. Edgar Hoover hired a bunch of killers to go after Dillinger.
Capturing John Dillinger was certainly the Bureau’s top priority in the summer of 1934, but we did not take a “dead or alive” approach as evidenced in our records and in later agent recollections. After the failed raid at Little Bohemia, we did hire several exceptional lawmen with firearms experience and steady gun-hands during times of danger, but only one ended up firing on Dillinger. The idea was to bring in professionals to help mentor less experienced agents, not to get Dillinger at all costs.
Myth #3: Chicago Special Agent in Charge Melvin Purvis single-handedly brought down Dillinger.
Purvis was a key figure, but he definitely did not shoot Dillinger (as some press accounts claimed) and his role in the final days of the case has often been overstated. After the Little Bohemia incident, Director J. Edgar Hoover appointed Inspector and Special Agent Samuel Cowley to oversee what had become a multi-state search. Cowley operated independently, but largely out of our Chicago office. FBI records suggest that he and Purvis worked together on the Dillinger investigation, but Cowley was clearly in charge until the end.
Myth #2: A “lady in a red dress” betrayed Dillinger.
Actually, it was a lady in an orange skirt and white blouse named Anna (Ana) Sage. Sage—a Romanian who was friends with Dillinger’s girlfriend at the time, Polly Hamilton—came up with the idea of turning in the fugitive after she was invited to go to the movies with the couple. She contacted the East Chicago, Indiana Police Department, who passed her on to Purvis. While Sage hoped that the FBI might help her avoid deportation, she also wanted the $5,000 reward. She told Purvis she would be attending a movie with Dillinger and Hamilton at the Biograph and would wear an orange skirt to set her apart from the crowd. (The red dress was an invention of the media—red tends to be a more alluring color and apparently sounded better in a headline.) After Dillinger’s death, Sage was paid the reward, but the FBI was not able to influence her deportation proceedings, and she was sent back to Romania.
Myth #1: Dillinger died expressing his love for Billie Frechette.
Popular culture likes to play up the “eternal romance” between Dillinger and Frechette, but evidence shows that they were in love only a short time. After Frechette was captured, Dillinger looked elsewhere for romance. He found it with Polly Hamilton—the woman he took to the movies the night he was killed. When he was shot, Dillinger had on him a gold ring inscribed with the words, “With all my love, Polly,” as well as a pocket watch that contained a picture of her. Dillinger is thought by some to have whispered something about Billie Frechette as he lay on the sidewalk dying. Several eyewitnesses said they saw Dillinger’s lips moving moments before he died, but no one was close enough to hear if he was whispering or simply exhaling for the last time.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Dead Mob Hit Man, Larry Neumann, Declared "Prime Suspect" in Double-Murder at McHenry County Bar
The baby-sitter, it turns out, got it right.
The McHenry County sheriff's office has concluded that a now-dead mob hit man named Larry Neumann, in all likelihood, killed two people in 1981 in the small town of Lakemoor -- a long-cold case that was reopened last summer on the basis of a tip from Holly Hager, who baby-sat for the children of one of the pair back then.
Authorities now say Neumann is the "prime suspect" in the double-murder -- and that no charges will be filed because he's dead.
"I knew from the start that's what it was," Hager, now 42, said of their conclusion.
On June 2, 1981, the bodies of 37-year-old bar owner Ron Scharff and 30-year-old Patricia Freeman were found, shot to death, in the back of Scharff's bar, the PM Pub, named for his sons Paul and Michael.
Hager's father Jim had been Scharff's best friend, and she baby-sat for Scharff's boys.
Last summer, on a car trip to Arkansas, Hager was talking with her father, and he mentioned Neumann, once a feared enforcer for the Chicago Outfit.
When she got back home, Hager searched for Neumann's name on the Internet. It turned up on a serial-killer site. And Neumann, she learned, was from McHenry County. What convinced her this was no coincidence was the 2007 autobiography of Frank Cullotta, "Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness," a mob burglar and hit man-turned-government informant. In it, he wrote about Neumann killing two people in 1981 at a McHenry County bar.
Hager told authorities, and they reopened the case.
Neumann had been a part of Cullotta's Las Vegas burglary crew, working for Outfit boss Tony "The Ant" Spilotro. Cullotta said Neumann was mad that Scharf had kicked his ex-wife out of the bar, drove to McHenry County and shot Scharff. Freeman, a divorced mother of two, died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was her first night working at the bar to supplement what she made as a school bus driver.
Hager's tip wasn't the first time Neumann was implicated in the killings. Cullotta said he told McHenry County authorities the same story in 1982, when he became one of the government's best witnesses against his old organized-crime brethren.
"I did what I had to do at the beginning," Cullotta said by phone. But the chief investigator for McHenry County at the time, according to the just-concluded sheriff's report, questioned Cullotta's credibility.
"I think the investigation should have taken care of this back in '82, '83, and nothing happened," Paul Scharff, who was 10 when his father was killed, said by phone from Texas, where he lives.
After spending nearly 1,300 hours on the renewed investigation, the investigators now have concluded: "Frank Cullotta provided information that was credible and accurate."
Neumann died in prison in 2007 at 79. He spent the last 23 years of his life locked up for killing a jeweler.
Paul Scharff said he believes charges could have been brought against others who had information at the time about the murders. Still, he's glad to know who the killer was, even if it's too late to make a case in court.
"The families and friends of Ron Scharff and Patricia Freeman didn't forget about them," Scharff said. "We find some peace in that."
Thanks to NewsRadio780
The McHenry County sheriff's office has concluded that a now-dead mob hit man named Larry Neumann, in all likelihood, killed two people in 1981 in the small town of Lakemoor -- a long-cold case that was reopened last summer on the basis of a tip from Holly Hager, who baby-sat for the children of one of the pair back then.
Authorities now say Neumann is the "prime suspect" in the double-murder -- and that no charges will be filed because he's dead.
"I knew from the start that's what it was," Hager, now 42, said of their conclusion.
On June 2, 1981, the bodies of 37-year-old bar owner Ron Scharff and 30-year-old Patricia Freeman were found, shot to death, in the back of Scharff's bar, the PM Pub, named for his sons Paul and Michael.
Hager's father Jim had been Scharff's best friend, and she baby-sat for Scharff's boys.
Last summer, on a car trip to Arkansas, Hager was talking with her father, and he mentioned Neumann, once a feared enforcer for the Chicago Outfit.
When she got back home, Hager searched for Neumann's name on the Internet. It turned up on a serial-killer site. And Neumann, she learned, was from McHenry County. What convinced her this was no coincidence was the 2007 autobiography of Frank Cullotta, "Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster and Government Witness," a mob burglar and hit man-turned-government informant. In it, he wrote about Neumann killing two people in 1981 at a McHenry County bar.
Hager told authorities, and they reopened the case.
Neumann had been a part of Cullotta's Las Vegas burglary crew, working for Outfit boss Tony "The Ant" Spilotro. Cullotta said Neumann was mad that Scharf had kicked his ex-wife out of the bar, drove to McHenry County and shot Scharff. Freeman, a divorced mother of two, died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was her first night working at the bar to supplement what she made as a school bus driver.
Hager's tip wasn't the first time Neumann was implicated in the killings. Cullotta said he told McHenry County authorities the same story in 1982, when he became one of the government's best witnesses against his old organized-crime brethren.
"I did what I had to do at the beginning," Cullotta said by phone. But the chief investigator for McHenry County at the time, according to the just-concluded sheriff's report, questioned Cullotta's credibility.
"I think the investigation should have taken care of this back in '82, '83, and nothing happened," Paul Scharff, who was 10 when his father was killed, said by phone from Texas, where he lives.
After spending nearly 1,300 hours on the renewed investigation, the investigators now have concluded: "Frank Cullotta provided information that was credible and accurate."
Neumann died in prison in 2007 at 79. He spent the last 23 years of his life locked up for killing a jeweler.
Paul Scharff said he believes charges could have been brought against others who had information at the time about the murders. Still, he's glad to know who the killer was, even if it's too late to make a case in court.
"The families and friends of Ron Scharff and Patricia Freeman didn't forget about them," Scharff said. "We find some peace in that."
Thanks to NewsRadio780
Monday, July 20, 2009
Last Reputed Member of the Black Mafia Family Captured
Investigators said Friday that the last known member of the Black Mafia Family who was still at large was captured.
On Thursday, U.S. Marshals arrested Vernon Marcus Coleman, aka Jason Stevenson Parkinson and ‘WU’, at an apartment in north Atlanta.
According to investigators, Coleman had been on the run for two years. An arrest warrant was issued for Coleman July 10, 2007 for possession with the intent to distribute cocaine. Coleman was wanted in Douglas County for failure to appear for traffic offenses.
Coleman is an alleged member of the crime ring known as the Black Mafia Family or BMF. Coleman is also a rapper who goes by the name WU and is associated with The Life Records, The Illustrious (ILL) Family, and B-EZ Entertainment.
The Black Mafia Family is considered an organized crime drug trafficking organization with a history of violent crime. Many of its members have been arrested while in possession of firearms and drugs.
Thanks to Leigha Baughan
On Thursday, U.S. Marshals arrested Vernon Marcus Coleman, aka Jason Stevenson Parkinson and ‘WU’, at an apartment in north Atlanta.
According to investigators, Coleman had been on the run for two years. An arrest warrant was issued for Coleman July 10, 2007 for possession with the intent to distribute cocaine. Coleman was wanted in Douglas County for failure to appear for traffic offenses.
Coleman is an alleged member of the crime ring known as the Black Mafia Family or BMF. Coleman is also a rapper who goes by the name WU and is associated with The Life Records, The Illustrious (ILL) Family, and B-EZ Entertainment.
The Black Mafia Family is considered an organized crime drug trafficking organization with a history of violent crime. Many of its members have been arrested while in possession of firearms and drugs.
Thanks to Leigha Baughan
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Apple's iPod Connected to Mafia Activities?
A new lawsuit from a Beverly Hills, Calif., man alleges that Apple conspired with the Italian mafia to secretly track him, transmit threatening messages to his iPod, and insert the word "herpes" into the song "Still Tippin'" by Mike Jones.
Not just his iPod, Gregory McKenna is convinced that many things in his life were bugged, including his bedroom, living room, upstairs bathroom and Toyota Camry. McKenna alleges in his lawsuit that two iPods he owned – an iPod shuffle bought on eBay and an iPod mini purchased in an Apple Store – were affixed with receivers that allowed the Mafia to transmit threats to him.
McKenna believes that these well-coordinated "threats" from Apple and the mafia were accompanied by an uncanny sense of rhythm: Recordings of mafia members saying "I'm going to kill him" supposedly played in unison with a song on the man's iPod mini in 2008.
"The recording of death threats and other evidence," the suit reads, "prove that APPLE INC. conspired with the Mafia and other Defendants to manufacture, distribute, and sell illegally bugged iPods and other electronic equipment to Plaintiff to perpetuate the stalking, extortion, and torture."
Filed Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Missouri, the 124-page complaint lists Apple among a host of other defendants, including the St. Louis County Police Department, a local auto mechanic, and "unknown agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Perhaps the most outlandish Apple-related tale in the lengthy suit is a supposed subliminal message heard in the song "Still Tippin'" by rapper Mike Jones. McKenna alleges the word "herpes" was implanted into the song "to humiliate, degrade, and cause emotional stress."
In the version of the song McKenna claims he heard, the modified lyrics were: "Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four vogues, HERPES. Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four vogues. Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four vogues, AHH."
The suit alleges he heard the modified version of the song on his Apple iBook G4 computer, Apple PowerBook G4, Apple iPods, and in three different vehicles, including his mother's Honda Accord.
The bizarre tale begins in 2000, when McKenna claims he was threatened by the Italian mafia at a Missouri night club. The suit alleges that the mafia tried to force the accuser into becoming a New York City fashion model.
"We're going to kill you if you don't model for us in New York," the suit says McKenna was told.
"Media sources report that the modeling industry has an infamous "shadow Mafia" that forces models to work for pay after fraudulently putting them into excessive debt, coerces them into the illegal sex trade, and then disposes of them," the suit reads.
The man claims he attempted to call the St. Louis County Police numerous times, but they would not respond to his pleas. His intricate tale includes numerous unnamed FBI agents, a plethora of hidden illegal recording devices, and constant references to "stalking, extortion and torture."
A high-profile, publicly traded company, Apple is hit with many lawsuits, sometimes from accusers who likely suffer from mental disorders. In 2007, a known frivolous suit filer claimed that Steve Jobs had employed O.J. Simpson as a hitman for the last two decades.
Thanks to Neil Hughes
Not just his iPod, Gregory McKenna is convinced that many things in his life were bugged, including his bedroom, living room, upstairs bathroom and Toyota Camry. McKenna alleges in his lawsuit that two iPods he owned – an iPod shuffle bought on eBay and an iPod mini purchased in an Apple Store – were affixed with receivers that allowed the Mafia to transmit threats to him.
McKenna believes that these well-coordinated "threats" from Apple and the mafia were accompanied by an uncanny sense of rhythm: Recordings of mafia members saying "I'm going to kill him" supposedly played in unison with a song on the man's iPod mini in 2008.
"The recording of death threats and other evidence," the suit reads, "prove that APPLE INC. conspired with the Mafia and other Defendants to manufacture, distribute, and sell illegally bugged iPods and other electronic equipment to Plaintiff to perpetuate the stalking, extortion, and torture."
Filed Wednesday in a U.S. District Court in Missouri, the 124-page complaint lists Apple among a host of other defendants, including the St. Louis County Police Department, a local auto mechanic, and "unknown agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Perhaps the most outlandish Apple-related tale in the lengthy suit is a supposed subliminal message heard in the song "Still Tippin'" by rapper Mike Jones. McKenna alleges the word "herpes" was implanted into the song "to humiliate, degrade, and cause emotional stress."
In the version of the song McKenna claims he heard, the modified lyrics were: "Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four vogues, HERPES. Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four vogues. Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four vogues, AHH."
The suit alleges he heard the modified version of the song on his Apple iBook G4 computer, Apple PowerBook G4, Apple iPods, and in three different vehicles, including his mother's Honda Accord.
The bizarre tale begins in 2000, when McKenna claims he was threatened by the Italian mafia at a Missouri night club. The suit alleges that the mafia tried to force the accuser into becoming a New York City fashion model.
"We're going to kill you if you don't model for us in New York," the suit says McKenna was told.
"Media sources report that the modeling industry has an infamous "shadow Mafia" that forces models to work for pay after fraudulently putting them into excessive debt, coerces them into the illegal sex trade, and then disposes of them," the suit reads.
The man claims he attempted to call the St. Louis County Police numerous times, but they would not respond to his pleas. His intricate tale includes numerous unnamed FBI agents, a plethora of hidden illegal recording devices, and constant references to "stalking, extortion and torture."
A high-profile, publicly traded company, Apple is hit with many lawsuits, sometimes from accusers who likely suffer from mental disorders. In 2007, a known frivolous suit filer claimed that Steve Jobs had employed O.J. Simpson as a hitman for the last two decades.
Thanks to Neil Hughes
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Cook County Commissioner, John Daley, Named in FBI File of Chicago Mob Boss
Giancana's FBI file has some rather interesting information. We'll quote to you: FBI Headquarters File Number 92-3171-2602 Samuel M. Giancana, Top Hoodlum Program - Anti Racketeering. Daily Summary, July 2, 1975.
Well, there you have it: Illinois politicians willing to give gifts to Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana's daughter and it made the newspaper prominently. Mike Royko was arguably the most popular columnist of his day. You'll notice John Daley's name comes up.
Thanks to Steve Bartin
As Bureau aware, Cook County States Attorney's Office, Chicago, has in its possession some papers and documents seized under search warrant from Giancana residence. Appearing in July 1, 1975, issue of "Chicago Daily News", column of Mike Royko in article captioned "The Giancana Wedding Gifts", was a list of names of some of the several hundred guest who made monetary contributions at wedding of Giancana's daughter, Bonnie Lou, to Anthony Tisci. In previous tel. some of these guest were made known to bureau to include Circuit Court Judge Daniel Covelli.
In addition to those individuals previously noted to Bureau. Article reflected that wedding list also contained following individuals:
Pat Petrone "deceased", 25th Ward Alderman, $200 gift; Fred Roti, Alderman from First Ward, Chicago, $200 gift, Frank Chesrow, former President of Metropolitan Sanitary District of Chicago, present member of Cook County Board of Commissioners, $200 gift; Anthony DeTolve, former Illinois State Senator, nephew to Giancana by marriage, $200 gift; John Kringas, member of Chicago zoning board of appeals, partner with Vito Marzullo, Alderman in a lucrative funeral home , $50 gift; James J. Adduci, former Illinois State Representative, $20 gift; James Rinella, former Illinois State Representative, $20 gift, Louis Briatta, father- in - law to Chicago Mayor Daley's son, John Daley, who recently married Briatta's daughter, $100 gift.
Well, there you have it: Illinois politicians willing to give gifts to Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana's daughter and it made the newspaper prominently. Mike Royko was arguably the most popular columnist of his day. You'll notice John Daley's name comes up.
Thanks to Steve Bartin
Millennium Park's Grill, AKA "Clout Cafe" Linked to Mob, Yet Pays No Property Taxes
It wasn't long after the hinky backstory to the the Park Grill in Millennium Park earned it a moniker among political insiders isn't given easily: the Clout Cafe. It continues to earn its nickname.
For example, it's connected owners still don't have to pay property taxes. "In late June the Illinois Appellate Court ruled in favor of the Park Grill in its fight against the Cook County assessor, dropping the curtain on the latest act in one of the more sensational scandals of Mayor Daley's reign," the Reader reports.
"The ruling received little coverage, but at one point the restaurant, right under the Bean in Millennium Park, was front-page news, yet another example of the connected and powerful in this town managing to catch multimillion-dollar breaks at taxpayer expense.
"That was back in 2005, when the Sun-Times revealed that the owners had managed to win the Park District's competitive bid process for the right to operate in the prime space -- even though their bid was the lowest of three. Officials said they liked the group's experience.
"The investors included Matthew O'Malley, who also owns the Chicago Firehouse, where Daley took George W. Bush in 2006 to celebrate the president's 60th birthday; relatives of Tim Degnan, the mayor's former chief of staff and political strategist; and Fred Barbara, a Daley friend, millionaire businessman, and nephew of the late alderman and mobster Fred Roti."
That's a powerful roster, but Cook County Assessor James Houlihan thought the Grill oughta pay property taxes no matter who backed it -- and no matter what kind of sweetheart deal Daley's park district gave his pals. But the state apellate court's recent ruling upheld a Cook County court's ruling that the restaurant has a concession agreement with the park district, not a lease, and therefore is immune to property taxes.
Pretty sneaky, Sis!
"Restaurants and other businesses that lease property from the government typically pay what’s called leasehold taxes, while vendors who sell hot dogs or ice cream operate under a concession license agreement and aren't required to pay real estate taxes," Crain's explains. "Even though it serves food at a restaurant - and not a pushcart - Park Grill was awarded a 20-year concession license that requires annual payments to the park district of $245,000 plus a percentage of sales."
Under Houlihan's valuation, the restaurant would have reportedly owed more than $350,000. But then, that's assuming that the Park Grill is a restaurant leasing property from the city, which clearly it is not.
Thanks to Steve Rhodes
For example, it's connected owners still don't have to pay property taxes. "In late June the Illinois Appellate Court ruled in favor of the Park Grill in its fight against the Cook County assessor, dropping the curtain on the latest act in one of the more sensational scandals of Mayor Daley's reign," the Reader reports.
"The ruling received little coverage, but at one point the restaurant, right under the Bean in Millennium Park, was front-page news, yet another example of the connected and powerful in this town managing to catch multimillion-dollar breaks at taxpayer expense.
"That was back in 2005, when the Sun-Times revealed that the owners had managed to win the Park District's competitive bid process for the right to operate in the prime space -- even though their bid was the lowest of three. Officials said they liked the group's experience.
"The investors included Matthew O'Malley, who also owns the Chicago Firehouse, where Daley took George W. Bush in 2006 to celebrate the president's 60th birthday; relatives of Tim Degnan, the mayor's former chief of staff and political strategist; and Fred Barbara, a Daley friend, millionaire businessman, and nephew of the late alderman and mobster Fred Roti."
That's a powerful roster, but Cook County Assessor James Houlihan thought the Grill oughta pay property taxes no matter who backed it -- and no matter what kind of sweetheart deal Daley's park district gave his pals. But the state apellate court's recent ruling upheld a Cook County court's ruling that the restaurant has a concession agreement with the park district, not a lease, and therefore is immune to property taxes.
Pretty sneaky, Sis!
"Restaurants and other businesses that lease property from the government typically pay what’s called leasehold taxes, while vendors who sell hot dogs or ice cream operate under a concession license agreement and aren't required to pay real estate taxes," Crain's explains. "Even though it serves food at a restaurant - and not a pushcart - Park Grill was awarded a 20-year concession license that requires annual payments to the park district of $245,000 plus a percentage of sales."
Under Houlihan's valuation, the restaurant would have reportedly owed more than $350,000. But then, that's assuming that the Park Grill is a restaurant leasing property from the city, which clearly it is not.
Thanks to Steve Rhodes
Joseph "Joe Onions" Scanlon's Remains Are Confirmed
It's official. The remains found behind an East Providence apartment building in November 2008 are those of mob associate Joseph "Joe Onions" Scanlon.
Scanlon died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to the state Medical Examiner's Office. The M.E. used forensic anthropology and DNA analysis to identify the remains and the cause of death.
“We hope that this information will bring closure for the family,” said Director of Health David R. Gifford, MD, MPH. “This death occurred 30 years ago. We hope this gives them peace."
Scanlon disappeared April 3, 1978. From that day, until his remains were discovered, authorities could only suspect Scanlon was the victim of a gangland slaying. In fact, Patriarca crime family associates Nicholas Pari and Andy Merola served time in prison in connection with Scanlon's death, even though investigators never found the body.
It wasn't until November 2008, when State Police arrested Pari during their investigation "Operation Mobbed Up," that they discovered the location of Scanlon's body.
Pari told investigators the remains could be behind the Lisboa apartment complex on Bullocks Point Ave in East Providence. After days of excavating the site, authorities uncovered the remains which have now be postively identified as Scanlon's.
Pari died of cancer at the age of 71, a month after Scanlon's remains were uncovered. Merola died in 2007 without divulging the secret.
Thanks to Nancy Krause
Scanlon died from a gunshot wound to the head, according to the state Medical Examiner's Office. The M.E. used forensic anthropology and DNA analysis to identify the remains and the cause of death.
“We hope that this information will bring closure for the family,” said Director of Health David R. Gifford, MD, MPH. “This death occurred 30 years ago. We hope this gives them peace."
Scanlon disappeared April 3, 1978. From that day, until his remains were discovered, authorities could only suspect Scanlon was the victim of a gangland slaying. In fact, Patriarca crime family associates Nicholas Pari and Andy Merola served time in prison in connection with Scanlon's death, even though investigators never found the body.
It wasn't until November 2008, when State Police arrested Pari during their investigation "Operation Mobbed Up," that they discovered the location of Scanlon's body.
Pari told investigators the remains could be behind the Lisboa apartment complex on Bullocks Point Ave in East Providence. After days of excavating the site, authorities uncovered the remains which have now be postively identified as Scanlon's.
Pari died of cancer at the age of 71, a month after Scanlon's remains were uncovered. Merola died in 2007 without divulging the secret.
Thanks to Nancy Krause
Sonia “El Juez” Sotomayor Connected to Mexican Mafia
Senator Lindsey Graham dropped a bombshell on the confirmation hearings of Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor during questioning today.
Judge Sotomayor's mafia ties are plainly visible.
The report
, which Graham waved around in the air, contains serious charges that Sotomayor is hiding her true convictions as well as connections to La eMe, the Mexican Mafia. In fine detail Graham read the report to the Senate Judiciary Committee members and to Sotomayor who objected that the report was obtained illegally. As Graham read the charges Sotomayor became increasingly uncomfortable and asked for a recess in the hearings. The request was denied by the Democratic majority.
The report alleges that Sotomayor ran the Bronx chapter of the Mexican mafia from her brownstone apartment building.
“We used to see Cesar [a lieutenant in the Mexican mafia currently serving life in prison for murder] coming in and out of her [Sotomayor’s] apartment,” said Jorge Chavez who was an undercover agent for the FBI. Chavez’ testimony went on to detail that Sotomayor, known as “el Juez,” the Judge, in her underworld dealings, was a key decision-maker in the organization, going so far as to use her authority as a judge to order prisoners to institutions where the Mexican mafia could assassinate rival gang leaders as well as snitches in their own organization.
“My husband’s dead because of el Juez [Sotomayor],” said Veronica Matthews. “She used her power to have him shipped to another prison where he was killed in the exercise yard.” Matthews, wife of Hell’s Angels former second-in-command Bill “the Knife” Matthews is now in a witness protection program after Sotomayor allegedly ordered a squad of her “soldiers” to make her “go silent,” which was Sotomayor’s euphemism for murdering someone.
Chavez’ detailed reports to the FBI’s Organized Crime Taskforce also contain allegations that as “el Juez” Sotomayor’s famous ruling against New Haven Connecticut firefighters was actually to allow for more Mexican mafia members to obtain high ranking positions in the department to squelch ongoing arson investigations.
“This report concludes that Sonia Sotomayor decision directly impeded the investigation and that, furthermore, the new officers in New Haven went on to hide details of other crimes committed by La eMe,” Graham said. Sotomayor remained silent during the accusations, but she did appear to consult with several young Hispanic men who accompanied her to the hearings today. They refused to comment.
Sources in the Judiciary committee say that the majority members are holding an emergency meeting to decide whether to continue with the hearings or ask Obama to withdraw his nomination.
“If this doesn’t defeat the nomination, I’m not sure what will,” said Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Judiciary Committee ranking member, “but I’ll find it. We’re not ready to release anything quite yet, but we are working on other reports that connect her to the Octomom as well as Michael Jackson’s drug abuse.”
Satire by Ashley Phosphate
Judge Sotomayor's mafia ties are plainly visible.
The report
, which Graham waved around in the air, contains serious charges that Sotomayor is hiding her true convictions as well as connections to La eMe, the Mexican Mafia. In fine detail Graham read the report to the Senate Judiciary Committee members and to Sotomayor who objected that the report was obtained illegally. As Graham read the charges Sotomayor became increasingly uncomfortable and asked for a recess in the hearings. The request was denied by the Democratic majority.The report alleges that Sotomayor ran the Bronx chapter of the Mexican mafia from her brownstone apartment building.
“We used to see Cesar [a lieutenant in the Mexican mafia currently serving life in prison for murder] coming in and out of her [Sotomayor’s] apartment,” said Jorge Chavez who was an undercover agent for the FBI. Chavez’ testimony went on to detail that Sotomayor, known as “el Juez,” the Judge, in her underworld dealings, was a key decision-maker in the organization, going so far as to use her authority as a judge to order prisoners to institutions where the Mexican mafia could assassinate rival gang leaders as well as snitches in their own organization.
“My husband’s dead because of el Juez [Sotomayor],” said Veronica Matthews. “She used her power to have him shipped to another prison where he was killed in the exercise yard.” Matthews, wife of Hell’s Angels former second-in-command Bill “the Knife” Matthews is now in a witness protection program after Sotomayor allegedly ordered a squad of her “soldiers” to make her “go silent,” which was Sotomayor’s euphemism for murdering someone.
Chavez’ detailed reports to the FBI’s Organized Crime Taskforce also contain allegations that as “el Juez” Sotomayor’s famous ruling against New Haven Connecticut firefighters was actually to allow for more Mexican mafia members to obtain high ranking positions in the department to squelch ongoing arson investigations.
“This report concludes that Sonia Sotomayor decision directly impeded the investigation and that, furthermore, the new officers in New Haven went on to hide details of other crimes committed by La eMe,” Graham said. Sotomayor remained silent during the accusations, but she did appear to consult with several young Hispanic men who accompanied her to the hearings today. They refused to comment.
Sources in the Judiciary committee say that the majority members are holding an emergency meeting to decide whether to continue with the hearings or ask Obama to withdraw his nomination.
“If this doesn’t defeat the nomination, I’m not sure what will,” said Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Judiciary Committee ranking member, “but I’ll find it. We’re not ready to release anything quite yet, but we are working on other reports that connect her to the Octomom as well as Michael Jackson’s drug abuse.”
Satire by Ashley Phosphate
Did Alderman Edward Burke Add a Mob Associate to Payroll as a Favor for Reputed Mobster?
A look back in time. The Chicago Tribune on February 10, 1985 has a page one story by Trib reporters Robert Davis and William B. Crawford Jr.(Sorry no link on this one). The story is titled JAILED 1ST WARD 'FIXER' WORKED IN SHADOWS:
You might say how does someone like this get on Chicago's payroll? The Trib explains:
It didn't bother Alderman Burke that in the mid-1970's Albanese was fired from Chicago's Streets and Sanitation Department because of a fraud scheme. Alderman Burke was doing a favor for John D'Arco , Democratic Committeeman of the old 1st Ward. FBI agent William Roemer identified John D'Arco Sr. as a "made member" of the Chicago Mob in his book on Tony Accardo. We will clarify that, a former FBI agent who's a loyal reader of Newsalert informs us that John D'Arco Sr. was a high ranking made member of the Chicago Mob who had capo status to run a political crew. Alderman Burke, doing favors for mobsters.
Thanks to Steve Bartin
Victor Albanese is not a name well known around Chicago's City Hall.But in classic Chicago style, it is not who knows you but who you know that makes the difference.And last week, the name of Victor Albanese was being talked about in City Hall and, more important, in the Dirksen Federal Building just three blocks south. In Chicago parlance, Victor Albanese was a fixer, a bagman, an insider, a 1st Warder and, as of last week, an imprisoned felon. Albanese is a vital key in an investigation of alleged city government corruption...
You might say how does someone like this get on Chicago's payroll? The Trib explains:
Last May, reportedly at the repeated urgings of D'Arco, Ald. Edward Burke[14th], whose budget wranglings had left him several extra job openings for investigators for his city council Finance Committee,hired Albanese for $900 a month. Sources close to the committee said that Albanese's duties were few and that he was rarely seen around City Hall.
It didn't bother Alderman Burke that in the mid-1970's Albanese was fired from Chicago's Streets and Sanitation Department because of a fraud scheme. Alderman Burke was doing a favor for John D'Arco , Democratic Committeeman of the old 1st Ward. FBI agent William Roemer identified John D'Arco Sr. as a "made member" of the Chicago Mob in his book on Tony Accardo. We will clarify that, a former FBI agent who's a loyal reader of Newsalert informs us that John D'Arco Sr. was a high ranking made member of the Chicago Mob who had capo status to run a political crew. Alderman Burke, doing favors for mobsters.
Thanks to Steve Bartin
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Will Alexi Giannoulias's Potential U.S. Senate Run Be Influenced by His Family's Bank Loans to Reputed Mobsters?
Broadway Bank is trying to recoup $12.9 million from two Chicago crime figures, rekindling a controversy as the bank's former chief loan officer, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, gears up to run for the U.S. Senate.
In recently filed foreclosure suits, the Giannoulias family-owned North Side bank alleges loan defaults by four companies whose owners include two convicted Chicago bookmakers — one also convicted of promoting a nationwide prostitution ring. The loans are on a hodgepodge of properties, including a South Beach hotel and a South Side shopping center that has lost its grocery anchor. The defendants include 1201 South Western LLC, a Berwyn-based company whose activities include making short-term real estate loans at interest rates of 1% a week, property records show.
Questions about Mr. Giannoulias' role in the loans surfaced in 2006, when he overcame concerns about his youth and inexperience to be elected treasurer. He defended the loans as sound business decisions, a claim undermined by the foreclosures.
Now, at age 33, he could face similar questions, particularly if there are more disclosures about the relationship between the convicted felons and Broadway.
"In a closely contested race, something like this can marginalize enough votes to put you out of the race," says political consultant Thom Serafin, president of Chicago-based communications firm Serafin & Associates Inc., who also notes criticism of Mr. Giannoulias' oversight of a state-run college savings fund. "All of that lends itself to a credibility gap, and that's where an opponent gets you."
Mr. Giannoulias' chances of winning the 2010 Democratic Senate primary got a boost last week when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she would run for re-election rather than campaign for senator or governor. A spokesman for Mr. Giannoulias declines to comment.
Mr. Giannoulias hasn't announced his Senate candidacy formally, but he has raised $1.1 million, giving him an early edge in a primary fight to succeed Roland Burris. Other potential Democratic candidates include Christopher Kennedy, a Chicago real estate executive and son of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, and Cheryle Jackson, president and CEO of the non-profit Chicago Urban League. On the Republican side, possible candidates include U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk and businessman Andy McKenna Jr., chairman of the state GOP.
The foreclosure cases are among a nationwide surge in troubled assets that hurt many banks including Broadway, an aggressive lender when commercial real estate was booming. "The borrowers were worthy at the time these loans were issued," Broadway Bank says in a statement. "However, when they failed to make their loan payments, the bank took legal action . . ., just as it would do in any situation involving a customer who did not repay a loan."
Broadway alleges $2.9 million in loans are in default on the Lorraine Hotel in Miami Beach. The property is owned by a venture that includes Michael Giorango, 56, who was convicted in 1991 of federal bookmaking charges in Chicago. He also was convicted in 2004 in Miami of promoting a nationwide prostitution operation.
Broadway also alleges that a nearly $6-million loan is in default on a shuttered restaurant along the Intracoastal Waterway in Hollywood, Fla. The potential development site is owned by a venture that includes Mr. Giorango and Demitri Stavropoulos, 41, who was convicted in 2004 in Chicago of running a betting operation that grossed more than $3 million in about three years.
The venture fought the foreclosure case, accusing the bank of improperly obstructing a sale of the property. Including fees and unpaid interest, the total amount due is almost $10.4 million, according to the complaint filed March 30 in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.
An attorney for Mr. Stavropoulos declines to comment.
Mr. Giorango, reached at a Los Angeles apartment building that he owns in a venture with Mr. Stavropoulous, also declines to comment. Broadway has a $3.4-million loan on the 30-unit property that comes due next year.
The venture that owns the apartment building, 1201 South Western, is a defendant in four foreclosure cases filed by Broadway last month in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to collect nearly $2.5 million. In addition to its real estate holdings, the venture has been an active lender, making 43 short-term loans totaling $6.9 million, an average of $160,500 per loan, property records show. Broadway financed the company on Dec. 21, 2004, a month after 1201 South Western made the first in a series of loans that continued through July 2006, the records indicate.
Interest rates could be obtained on just eight of the loans, totaling $800,000, which are the subject of collection cases. On those loans, the company charged interest of about 1% a week, according to the promissory notes.
Thanks to Thomas A. Corfman
In recently filed foreclosure suits, the Giannoulias family-owned North Side bank alleges loan defaults by four companies whose owners include two convicted Chicago bookmakers — one also convicted of promoting a nationwide prostitution ring. The loans are on a hodgepodge of properties, including a South Beach hotel and a South Side shopping center that has lost its grocery anchor. The defendants include 1201 South Western LLC, a Berwyn-based company whose activities include making short-term real estate loans at interest rates of 1% a week, property records show.
Questions about Mr. Giannoulias' role in the loans surfaced in 2006, when he overcame concerns about his youth and inexperience to be elected treasurer. He defended the loans as sound business decisions, a claim undermined by the foreclosures.
Now, at age 33, he could face similar questions, particularly if there are more disclosures about the relationship between the convicted felons and Broadway.
"In a closely contested race, something like this can marginalize enough votes to put you out of the race," says political consultant Thom Serafin, president of Chicago-based communications firm Serafin & Associates Inc., who also notes criticism of Mr. Giannoulias' oversight of a state-run college savings fund. "All of that lends itself to a credibility gap, and that's where an opponent gets you."
Mr. Giannoulias' chances of winning the 2010 Democratic Senate primary got a boost last week when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she would run for re-election rather than campaign for senator or governor. A spokesman for Mr. Giannoulias declines to comment.
Mr. Giannoulias hasn't announced his Senate candidacy formally, but he has raised $1.1 million, giving him an early edge in a primary fight to succeed Roland Burris. Other potential Democratic candidates include Christopher Kennedy, a Chicago real estate executive and son of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, and Cheryle Jackson, president and CEO of the non-profit Chicago Urban League. On the Republican side, possible candidates include U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk and businessman Andy McKenna Jr., chairman of the state GOP.
The foreclosure cases are among a nationwide surge in troubled assets that hurt many banks including Broadway, an aggressive lender when commercial real estate was booming. "The borrowers were worthy at the time these loans were issued," Broadway Bank says in a statement. "However, when they failed to make their loan payments, the bank took legal action . . ., just as it would do in any situation involving a customer who did not repay a loan."
Broadway alleges $2.9 million in loans are in default on the Lorraine Hotel in Miami Beach. The property is owned by a venture that includes Michael Giorango, 56, who was convicted in 1991 of federal bookmaking charges in Chicago. He also was convicted in 2004 in Miami of promoting a nationwide prostitution operation.
Broadway also alleges that a nearly $6-million loan is in default on a shuttered restaurant along the Intracoastal Waterway in Hollywood, Fla. The potential development site is owned by a venture that includes Mr. Giorango and Demitri Stavropoulos, 41, who was convicted in 2004 in Chicago of running a betting operation that grossed more than $3 million in about three years.
The venture fought the foreclosure case, accusing the bank of improperly obstructing a sale of the property. Including fees and unpaid interest, the total amount due is almost $10.4 million, according to the complaint filed March 30 in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.
An attorney for Mr. Stavropoulos declines to comment.
Mr. Giorango, reached at a Los Angeles apartment building that he owns in a venture with Mr. Stavropoulous, also declines to comment. Broadway has a $3.4-million loan on the 30-unit property that comes due next year.
The venture that owns the apartment building, 1201 South Western, is a defendant in four foreclosure cases filed by Broadway last month in Cook County Circuit Court seeking to collect nearly $2.5 million. In addition to its real estate holdings, the venture has been an active lender, making 43 short-term loans totaling $6.9 million, an average of $160,500 per loan, property records show. Broadway financed the company on Dec. 21, 2004, a month after 1201 South Western made the first in a series of loans that continued through July 2006, the records indicate.
Interest rates could be obtained on just eight of the loans, totaling $800,000, which are the subject of collection cases. On those loans, the company charged interest of about 1% a week, according to the promissory notes.
Thanks to Thomas A. Corfman
The Untold Stories of Alderman Don Parrillo
Former First Ward Alderman Don Parrillo, 78, is the most admittedly corrupt Chicago politician you likely never heard of. But that's likely to change.
Parrillo, who represented the city's notorious 1st Ward from 1964 to 1968, is about to self-publish a controversial book concerning organized crime and political corruption in the city Al Capone made famous.
His father, William "Billy" Parrillo, was the attorney of choice for the Chicago mob's elite, he says - Al Capone, Frank Nitti and Sam Giancana, among them.
Consequently, the alderman has a lot stories. "I started talking into my tape recorder," Parrillo explains. "I've got 16 chapters."
"I name names unless the person is still alive or a member of their family is still alive," he says, adding with a laugh, "I want to stay that way."
Parrillo also admits that getting into Chicago politics wasn't exactly his idea.
He was asked to run for alderman as a personal favor by Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana, who used to drive him and his brother to school as kids, Parrillo says. "This was before Giancana was anybody...I used to call him Mr. Sam."
Other Parrillo tales range from the simply curious - it was American film sex symbol of the 1930s, Jean Harlow, who infected Al Capone with the syphilis that eventually killed him - to the simply conspiratorial - the Kennedy brothers' (JFK & RFK) alleged involvement in the death of another American film sex icon, Marilyn Monroe.
For an unauthorized account of both Parrillo and his book, see reporter Anthony DeBartolo's 4,000-word Hyde Park Media web exclusive: "The Untold Stories of Alderman Don Parrillo."
Anthony DeBartolo is a Chicago-based reporter who has frequently contributed to the Chicago Tribune. His feature work has also appeared in daily newspapers across the U.S. and in Canada, including the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Toronto Star.
DeBartolo is also the author of the special interest health book, "Lupus Underground: A Patient's Case for a Long-Ignored, Drug-Free, Non-Patentable, Counter-Intuitive Therapy That Actually Works"
Parrillo, who represented the city's notorious 1st Ward from 1964 to 1968, is about to self-publish a controversial book concerning organized crime and political corruption in the city Al Capone made famous.
His father, William "Billy" Parrillo, was the attorney of choice for the Chicago mob's elite, he says - Al Capone, Frank Nitti and Sam Giancana, among them.
Consequently, the alderman has a lot stories. "I started talking into my tape recorder," Parrillo explains. "I've got 16 chapters."
"I name names unless the person is still alive or a member of their family is still alive," he says, adding with a laugh, "I want to stay that way."
Parrillo also admits that getting into Chicago politics wasn't exactly his idea.
He was asked to run for alderman as a personal favor by Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana, who used to drive him and his brother to school as kids, Parrillo says. "This was before Giancana was anybody...I used to call him Mr. Sam."
Other Parrillo tales range from the simply curious - it was American film sex symbol of the 1930s, Jean Harlow, who infected Al Capone with the syphilis that eventually killed him - to the simply conspiratorial - the Kennedy brothers' (JFK & RFK) alleged involvement in the death of another American film sex icon, Marilyn Monroe.
For an unauthorized account of both Parrillo and his book, see reporter Anthony DeBartolo's 4,000-word Hyde Park Media web exclusive: "The Untold Stories of Alderman Don Parrillo."
Anthony DeBartolo is a Chicago-based reporter who has frequently contributed to the Chicago Tribune. His feature work has also appeared in daily newspapers across the U.S. and in Canada, including the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, Sacramento Bee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Toronto Star.
DeBartolo is also the author of the special interest health book, "Lupus Underground: A Patient's Case for a Long-Ignored, Drug-Free, Non-Patentable, Counter-Intuitive Therapy That Actually Works"
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
LexisNexis Fears Data Was Breached by Mafia
Information broker LexisNexis has warned more than 13,000 consumers, saying that a Florida man who is facing charges in an alleged mafia racketeering conspiracy may have accessed some of the same sensitive consumer databases that were once used to track terrorists.
Lee Klein, 39, of Boynton Beach, Florida, was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in May following an undercover sting operation that netted 11 suspects from an alleged South Florida crew of the Bonanno crime family.
On Friday, the office of the New Hampshire Attorney General posted a letter that LexisNexis sent out to consumers last month, warning that Klein may have used his access to LexisNexis' Seisint databases "in order to perpetrate certain crimes."
LexisNexis has had problems with credit card fraudsters using its database in the past, but Klein's alleged crimes are different.
In court filings, the DOJ says Klein would provide Bonanno family members with names, addresses and account numbers as part of a fake check-cashing operation. But he's also accused of using computer databases to get information on potential extortion or assault targets as well as "individuals suspected by the Enterprise members of being involved with law enforcement."
In a statement, LexisNexis said Monday that "the former Seisint customer involved in this matter should have provided notice to potentially affected individuals. However, because the customer is no longer in business we provided the notice." The company said it sent out 13,329 notification letters.
Seisint is best known as the creator of the ill-fated MATRIX (Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) terrorist data-mining project, which was shut down in 2005 following privacy concerns. LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier, acquired Seisint in 2004 for US$775 million. It sells two Seisint products: Accurint, which provides information on individuals and their assets, and Securint, a background screening tool.
LexisNexis has had problems preventing criminals from using its databases for identity theft. Last May, the company warned that ID thieves had accessed around 32,000 records using its services. In March 2008, LexisNexis settled charges brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which said the company wasn't doing enough to prevent its data from being abused.
In the letter posted to the New Hampshire Attorney General's Web site, Lexis Nexis also warned that another man used its databases in an unrelated incident. On May 8, Yomi Jagunna, 44, pleaded guilty to fraud charges, saying he set up a fake debt collection company called the Elam Collection Agency. Using his account, Jagunna obtained and then sold Social Security numbers, charging $30 for each one.
Jagunna, who faces a sentence of up to 15 years on a conspiracy charge, was allegedly part of an eight-man identity theft ring.
Thanks to Robert McMillan
Lee Klein, 39, of Boynton Beach, Florida, was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in May following an undercover sting operation that netted 11 suspects from an alleged South Florida crew of the Bonanno crime family.
On Friday, the office of the New Hampshire Attorney General posted a letter that LexisNexis sent out to consumers last month, warning that Klein may have used his access to LexisNexis' Seisint databases "in order to perpetrate certain crimes."
LexisNexis has had problems with credit card fraudsters using its database in the past, but Klein's alleged crimes are different.
In court filings, the DOJ says Klein would provide Bonanno family members with names, addresses and account numbers as part of a fake check-cashing operation. But he's also accused of using computer databases to get information on potential extortion or assault targets as well as "individuals suspected by the Enterprise members of being involved with law enforcement."
In a statement, LexisNexis said Monday that "the former Seisint customer involved in this matter should have provided notice to potentially affected individuals. However, because the customer is no longer in business we provided the notice." The company said it sent out 13,329 notification letters.
Seisint is best known as the creator of the ill-fated MATRIX (Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) terrorist data-mining project, which was shut down in 2005 following privacy concerns. LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier, acquired Seisint in 2004 for US$775 million. It sells two Seisint products: Accurint, which provides information on individuals and their assets, and Securint, a background screening tool.
LexisNexis has had problems preventing criminals from using its databases for identity theft. Last May, the company warned that ID thieves had accessed around 32,000 records using its services. In March 2008, LexisNexis settled charges brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which said the company wasn't doing enough to prevent its data from being abused.
In the letter posted to the New Hampshire Attorney General's Web site, Lexis Nexis also warned that another man used its databases in an unrelated incident. On May 8, Yomi Jagunna, 44, pleaded guilty to fraud charges, saying he set up a fake debt collection company called the Elam Collection Agency. Using his account, Jagunna obtained and then sold Social Security numbers, charging $30 for each one.
Jagunna, who faces a sentence of up to 15 years on a conspiracy charge, was allegedly part of an eight-man identity theft ring.
Thanks to Robert McMillan
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sandra Harmon's "Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI, and a Story of Betrayal"
Book ‘Em is an exciting new feature on Crimesider. Every week we interview a top true-crime author to get the story behind their story.
For our first week, we spoke with journalist and bestselling author Sandra Harmon, whose new book, Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI and a Story of Betrayal, tells the story of Greg Scarpa, Jr., a hardened criminal and former Mob “wiseguy,” who, according to Harmon, became a jailhouse spy who gave the FBI information that might have averted the tragedy of 9/11, if only the Feds had listened.
In her book
, Harmon details how she gained inside access to both Mob and law enforcement figures and became a trusted confidante to an unrepentant mob killer turned FBI informant.
Harmon told Crimesider about the dangers of reporting on the Mob, the FBI's missed opportunities to prevent 9/11, and the intriguing sex life of one of the mob's most dangerous men.
What drew you to this story?
Harmon: Although I had never before written about crime - my biggest bestseller was “Elvis and Me,” written with Priscilla Presley - I became intrigued by the twisted and sometimes tragic tale of the Scarpa family.
Gregory Scarpa, Sr. was a mafia kingpin, so addicted to violence and murder that he was nicknamed The Grim Reaper. But Scarpa had hubris; he played both sides of the fence. For the thirty years he was leading a crew of fifty mobsters in a life of crime, he was also a top echelon informant for the FBI. For decades, his intimate relationship with his “handler,” the much publicized former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio, protected Scarpa and granted him a virtual license to kill, which he did, quite often, and always with obvious relish.
I learned about the extraordinary love affair between Greg Sr. and a woman named Linda Schiro. Although married to others, they raised a family together and remained “intimate” – demonstrating such deep and obvious love for each other and devotion to their family – that I wondered how they could have led such a heinous, amoral existence.
Then, I learned of Linda’s fondness for “threesome’s,” and Greg Sr.’s total acceptance of another man sharing their bed for fifteen years – Larry Mazza, a man who rose in the mafia to become Greg’s right hand man - at the same time sleeping with his boss’s mistress – often with all three in the same bed. Why would this psychopathic killer allow another man in his bed? Did he love Linda so much that he would do anything to make her happy? Or did he do it for himself? I admit I was intrigued. But intrigue is not enough for me to take up the long and arduous task of writing a book. What first pushed me forward was the need to uncover what I believed was the corrupt and self serving relationship between Greg Sr. and Lin DeVecchio. Ultimately, I became so involved in the story that I sent an affidavit to the Brooklyn District Attorney, which, in part, resulted in Lin DeVecchio being indicted on four counts of murder. In fact, I became so embroiled in the story that I was actually subpoenaed by both the prosecution and the defense to tell all I knew, and was forced to hire a first amendment attorney to protect my journalistic rights. It was a great eye-opener for me about all aspects of the “crime community,” the bad guys and the supposed good guys as well.
What’s the most compelling or surprising aspect of this story that you can reveal?
Harmon: The most compelling and surprising aspect of this story is that of Gregory Scarpa Jr., who was a promising young athlete until, to please his Machiavellian father, he entered the family business and became a mobster. In the late 80’s, he was betrayed by Greg Sr., who sacrificed his son to save himself from prison.
After a decade in federal prison, and awaiting a new trial, Greg Jr. was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City and placed in a cell next to Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Bombing. Greg made a deal with the government to get information from Yousef in exchange for leniency. A year later he furnished the feds with detailed intelligence on what would eventually result in the September 11th attacks. But incredibly, Gregory’s desperate warnings were both ignored and buried; he was sentenced to 40 years to life at the ADMAX Prison in Florence, Colorado. There, he would supply the FBI with intelligence on Oklahoma City bomber and fellow prisoner Terry Nichols. Again his contribution was ignored, and Gregory remains at ADMAX, where he believes he will one day be murdered.
Is there a hero?
Harmon: If there is a “hero” in MAFIA SON, it would have to be Gregory Jr., who is by no means “heroic.” He was a mafia capo who has admitted to murdering 26 people. However, he did risk his life to gather incredibly accurate intelligence which might well have averted 9/11 and the death of over 3,000 people had the federal prosecutors, including Patrick Fitzgerald, and Valerie Caproni, not put their careers first and justice second, which they continue to do to this day.
Do you ever worry that your reporting puts you in any danger?
Harmon: Before the indictment against DeVecchio, I never personally felt in danger, even though I am a woman alone who was investigating the highest level of corruption in many areas of government. But after I submitted that affidavit to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office in which I attested to a murder which Linda Schiro had discussed with me -- a crime allegedly involving DeVecchio, and the details of the affidavit were leaked to the press -- all hell broke loose, with stories in major newspapers naming me specifically as the instigator of the DeVecchio investigation. This led to months of my being threatened by Mafia types, intimidated by the FBI, ridiculed in local newspapers for lacking the journalistic credentials of a “real crime writer,” denigrated in cyberspace (with the greatest venom generated on a website known as the “Friends of Lin DeVecchio,” and denounced in a book by a former undercover FBI agent. I was also warned that in all likelihood my phone line had been tapped, and that certain terrorist factions – through contacts in federal custody – had gained access to my address and phone number; as a result, I was encouraged to exercise extreme caution in all correspondence. I have also been threatened with nine lawsuits from different characters I write about in the book.
Do you ever have nightmares because of this case?
Harmon: I don't have nightmares, but sometimes I have trouble falling asleep because I worry about which character from MAFIA SON, who is pissed at me because they don't like what I wrote, will next show up in my life and attempt to intimidate me.
Thanks to Barry Leibowitz
For our first week, we spoke with journalist and bestselling author Sandra Harmon, whose new book, Mafia Son: The Scarpa Mob Family, the FBI and a Story of Betrayal, tells the story of Greg Scarpa, Jr., a hardened criminal and former Mob “wiseguy,” who, according to Harmon, became a jailhouse spy who gave the FBI information that might have averted the tragedy of 9/11, if only the Feds had listened.
In her book
, Harmon details how she gained inside access to both Mob and law enforcement figures and became a trusted confidante to an unrepentant mob killer turned FBI informant.Harmon told Crimesider about the dangers of reporting on the Mob, the FBI's missed opportunities to prevent 9/11, and the intriguing sex life of one of the mob's most dangerous men.
What drew you to this story?
Harmon: Although I had never before written about crime - my biggest bestseller was “Elvis and Me,” written with Priscilla Presley - I became intrigued by the twisted and sometimes tragic tale of the Scarpa family.
Gregory Scarpa, Sr. was a mafia kingpin, so addicted to violence and murder that he was nicknamed The Grim Reaper. But Scarpa had hubris; he played both sides of the fence. For the thirty years he was leading a crew of fifty mobsters in a life of crime, he was also a top echelon informant for the FBI. For decades, his intimate relationship with his “handler,” the much publicized former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio, protected Scarpa and granted him a virtual license to kill, which he did, quite often, and always with obvious relish.
I learned about the extraordinary love affair between Greg Sr. and a woman named Linda Schiro. Although married to others, they raised a family together and remained “intimate” – demonstrating such deep and obvious love for each other and devotion to their family – that I wondered how they could have led such a heinous, amoral existence.
Then, I learned of Linda’s fondness for “threesome’s,” and Greg Sr.’s total acceptance of another man sharing their bed for fifteen years – Larry Mazza, a man who rose in the mafia to become Greg’s right hand man - at the same time sleeping with his boss’s mistress – often with all three in the same bed. Why would this psychopathic killer allow another man in his bed? Did he love Linda so much that he would do anything to make her happy? Or did he do it for himself? I admit I was intrigued. But intrigue is not enough for me to take up the long and arduous task of writing a book. What first pushed me forward was the need to uncover what I believed was the corrupt and self serving relationship between Greg Sr. and Lin DeVecchio. Ultimately, I became so involved in the story that I sent an affidavit to the Brooklyn District Attorney, which, in part, resulted in Lin DeVecchio being indicted on four counts of murder. In fact, I became so embroiled in the story that I was actually subpoenaed by both the prosecution and the defense to tell all I knew, and was forced to hire a first amendment attorney to protect my journalistic rights. It was a great eye-opener for me about all aspects of the “crime community,” the bad guys and the supposed good guys as well.
What’s the most compelling or surprising aspect of this story that you can reveal?
Harmon: The most compelling and surprising aspect of this story is that of Gregory Scarpa Jr., who was a promising young athlete until, to please his Machiavellian father, he entered the family business and became a mobster. In the late 80’s, he was betrayed by Greg Sr., who sacrificed his son to save himself from prison.
After a decade in federal prison, and awaiting a new trial, Greg Jr. was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City and placed in a cell next to Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Bombing. Greg made a deal with the government to get information from Yousef in exchange for leniency. A year later he furnished the feds with detailed intelligence on what would eventually result in the September 11th attacks. But incredibly, Gregory’s desperate warnings were both ignored and buried; he was sentenced to 40 years to life at the ADMAX Prison in Florence, Colorado. There, he would supply the FBI with intelligence on Oklahoma City bomber and fellow prisoner Terry Nichols. Again his contribution was ignored, and Gregory remains at ADMAX, where he believes he will one day be murdered.
Is there a hero?
Harmon: If there is a “hero” in MAFIA SON, it would have to be Gregory Jr., who is by no means “heroic.” He was a mafia capo who has admitted to murdering 26 people. However, he did risk his life to gather incredibly accurate intelligence which might well have averted 9/11 and the death of over 3,000 people had the federal prosecutors, including Patrick Fitzgerald, and Valerie Caproni, not put their careers first and justice second, which they continue to do to this day.
Do you ever worry that your reporting puts you in any danger?
Harmon: Before the indictment against DeVecchio, I never personally felt in danger, even though I am a woman alone who was investigating the highest level of corruption in many areas of government. But after I submitted that affidavit to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office in which I attested to a murder which Linda Schiro had discussed with me -- a crime allegedly involving DeVecchio, and the details of the affidavit were leaked to the press -- all hell broke loose, with stories in major newspapers naming me specifically as the instigator of the DeVecchio investigation. This led to months of my being threatened by Mafia types, intimidated by the FBI, ridiculed in local newspapers for lacking the journalistic credentials of a “real crime writer,” denigrated in cyberspace (with the greatest venom generated on a website known as the “Friends of Lin DeVecchio,” and denounced in a book by a former undercover FBI agent. I was also warned that in all likelihood my phone line had been tapped, and that certain terrorist factions – through contacts in federal custody – had gained access to my address and phone number; as a result, I was encouraged to exercise extreme caution in all correspondence. I have also been threatened with nine lawsuits from different characters I write about in the book.
Do you ever have nightmares because of this case?
Harmon: I don't have nightmares, but sometimes I have trouble falling asleep because I worry about which character from MAFIA SON, who is pissed at me because they don't like what I wrote, will next show up in my life and attempt to intimidate me.
Thanks to Barry Leibowitz
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Reputed Colombo Crime Family Capo, Michael Uvino, Gets 10 Years in Prison
A reputed Colombo crime family captain convicted of running illegal card games on Long Island and assaulting two men who robbed one of his clubs was sentenced Friday in Brooklyn to 10 years in prison.
Bookmaker Michael Uvino, 42, of Little Neck, got the stiff sentence despite insisting that he was a victim of gambling addiction, and despite pleas for mercy from his ex-cop father and a nun who praised his charitable work.
U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein told Uvino that even nonviolent mob rackets like gambling had contributed to the Mafia's destructive effects on the New York City region over four decades. "He's sworn to be a man of the Mafia for his life, and I'm convinced he'll go back," Weinstein told Uvino's lawyer. "The youngsters in this city have to understand that they can't join this organization, and that when they do they destroy their lives."
Prosecutors accused Uvino of bookmaking and running illegal gambling clubs on Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst and out of a Sons of Italy hall on Sunrise Highway in West Babylon. He was convicted in December.
"His sin is the gambling," the defendant's father, Carmine Uvino, told Weinstein. "I think you're being overly excessive."
Two associates of Uvino received lesser sentences from Weinstein Friday. Brian Dono, 38, of Lindenhurst, was sentenced to 46 months in prison, and Philip Costanza, 46, of the Bronx, received a 24-month prison term.
According to court papers, the government has seized the William Paca Lodge in West Babylon. The proceeds of a forfeiture sale will be split 50/50 with the local affiliate, which has been severed from the statewide Sons of Italy because of the charges.
Thanks to John Riley
Bookmaker Michael Uvino, 42, of Little Neck, got the stiff sentence despite insisting that he was a victim of gambling addiction, and despite pleas for mercy from his ex-cop father and a nun who praised his charitable work.
U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein told Uvino that even nonviolent mob rackets like gambling had contributed to the Mafia's destructive effects on the New York City region over four decades. "He's sworn to be a man of the Mafia for his life, and I'm convinced he'll go back," Weinstein told Uvino's lawyer. "The youngsters in this city have to understand that they can't join this organization, and that when they do they destroy their lives."
Prosecutors accused Uvino of bookmaking and running illegal gambling clubs on Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst and out of a Sons of Italy hall on Sunrise Highway in West Babylon. He was convicted in December.
"His sin is the gambling," the defendant's father, Carmine Uvino, told Weinstein. "I think you're being overly excessive."
Two associates of Uvino received lesser sentences from Weinstein Friday. Brian Dono, 38, of Lindenhurst, was sentenced to 46 months in prison, and Philip Costanza, 46, of the Bronx, received a 24-month prison term.
According to court papers, the government has seized the William Paca Lodge in West Babylon. The proceeds of a forfeiture sale will be split 50/50 with the local affiliate, which has been severed from the statewide Sons of Italy because of the charges.
Thanks to John Riley
New Boss Running the Boston Mafia
There’s a new don in town.
Lt. Stephen Johnson of the Massachusetts State Police, special services unit, confirmed today that a new gangster has supplanted Carmen “The Cheeseman” DiNunzio as godfather as the Boston mafia.
DiNunzio, 51, pleaded guilty in Salem Superior Court to extortion and gaming charges as part of a joint state and federal sentencing agreement. He’ll serve six years in a federal prison starting in September.
Johnson declined to say who is now in charge of the mob in Boston.
Despite busting up a widespread bookmaking operation north of Boston and putting DiNunzio away, Johnson said, “it’s just a drop in the bucket,” adding that the mafia is alive and well in Boston.
DiNunzio will be sentenced in federal court Sept. 24 on charges he attempted to bribe a Big Dig official over a dirt deal. He will be sentenced Sept. 25 in Salem.
DiNunzio was facing up to 52 years behind bars. DiNunzio left court without commenting.
DiNunzio’s longtime attorney, Anthony Cardinale, said his client is “anxious to get on with the next phase of his life,” while adding that he’s concerned about his health problems, including diabetes.
Cardinale said the federal case was “particularly troubling” because his client was caught on tape. “There was not much we could do,” he said. “Viewing both of them together it was our decision to make the best deal we could.”
Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said state police spent many years on the investigation.
Thanks to Laurel J. Sweet
Lt. Stephen Johnson of the Massachusetts State Police, special services unit, confirmed today that a new gangster has supplanted Carmen “The Cheeseman” DiNunzio as godfather as the Boston mafia.
DiNunzio, 51, pleaded guilty in Salem Superior Court to extortion and gaming charges as part of a joint state and federal sentencing agreement. He’ll serve six years in a federal prison starting in September.
Johnson declined to say who is now in charge of the mob in Boston.
Despite busting up a widespread bookmaking operation north of Boston and putting DiNunzio away, Johnson said, “it’s just a drop in the bucket,” adding that the mafia is alive and well in Boston.
DiNunzio will be sentenced in federal court Sept. 24 on charges he attempted to bribe a Big Dig official over a dirt deal. He will be sentenced Sept. 25 in Salem.
DiNunzio was facing up to 52 years behind bars. DiNunzio left court without commenting.
DiNunzio’s longtime attorney, Anthony Cardinale, said his client is “anxious to get on with the next phase of his life,” while adding that he’s concerned about his health problems, including diabetes.
Cardinale said the federal case was “particularly troubling” because his client was caught on tape. “There was not much we could do,” he said. “Viewing both of them together it was our decision to make the best deal we could.”
Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett said state police spent many years on the investigation.
Thanks to Laurel J. Sweet
Junior Gotti Denied Bail
Accused Mafia boss John "Junior" Gotti was denied bail by a federal judge on Wednesday in a setback two months before he faces his fourth trial in five years on federal racketeering charges.
Gotti, 45, was tried three times previously on racketeering charges including that he headed the Gambino crime family. The most recent was in 2006 when a judge declared a mistrial because jurors were deadlocked.
Two previous trials also were voided when juries failed to reach a verdict.
In Wednesday's bail arguments held in Manhattan federal court, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel sided with prosecutors who argued that a history of witness tampering meant Gotti should remain in jail pending trial.
Prosecutor Elie Honig said new evidence not presented at previous trials included a mob associate who will testify that in 2005 Gotti said they could escape criminal charges by pretending they had quit the crime family and had already received the "mob stamp of approval" to fake a withdrawal.
Gotti's lawyer Charles Carnesi said he will again argue that Gotti withdrew from the Mafia, a unique defense that has proved instrumental to Gotti winning the three mistrials. "It is absolutely not a different case. It charges the same crimes," Carnesi said, arguing the case should be dropped.
Gotti is accused of taking control of the Gambino family from his father, John J. Gotti, who was known as the "Teflon Don" for his many years evading criminal conviction.
The elder Gotti was finally convicted of murder, racketeering, conspiracy and other charges in 1992. He died in prison in 2002.
"Junior" is accused of murder, robbery, kidnapping, extortion and bribery from 1983 to 2008. His trial is scheduled to begin September 14.
Gotti, 45, was tried three times previously on racketeering charges including that he headed the Gambino crime family. The most recent was in 2006 when a judge declared a mistrial because jurors were deadlocked.
Two previous trials also were voided when juries failed to reach a verdict.
In Wednesday's bail arguments held in Manhattan federal court, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel sided with prosecutors who argued that a history of witness tampering meant Gotti should remain in jail pending trial.
Prosecutor Elie Honig said new evidence not presented at previous trials included a mob associate who will testify that in 2005 Gotti said they could escape criminal charges by pretending they had quit the crime family and had already received the "mob stamp of approval" to fake a withdrawal.
Gotti's lawyer Charles Carnesi said he will again argue that Gotti withdrew from the Mafia, a unique defense that has proved instrumental to Gotti winning the three mistrials. "It is absolutely not a different case. It charges the same crimes," Carnesi said, arguing the case should be dropped.
Gotti is accused of taking control of the Gambino family from his father, John J. Gotti, who was known as the "Teflon Don" for his many years evading criminal conviction.
The elder Gotti was finally convicted of murder, racketeering, conspiracy and other charges in 1992. He died in prison in 2002.
"Junior" is accused of murder, robbery, kidnapping, extortion and bribery from 1983 to 2008. His trial is scheduled to begin September 14.
"Public Enemies" vs "The Untouchables" Throw Down
Brandishing a murderers' row of cheekbones and all the muzzle money can buy, Michael Mann's Public Enemies offers us a romantic vision of the Depression-era bandit John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) as he's chased by a federal agent (Christian Bale) across the Midwest. Over two decades ago, Brian De Palma's hit The Untouchables gave us a decidedly more black-and-white take on cops and robbers, with a team of virtuous good guys working to unravel the blood-and-booze-soaked empire of the Chicago mob boss Al Capone (Robert De Niro). So, when Mann's brooding crime epic and De Palma's sensational action flick face off, which of these pictures runs away with the loot?
The Long Arm of the Law
Public Enemies: Stone-faced FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale) is unrelenting in his pursuit of Dillinger, despite having issues with the strong-arm tactics encouraged by a young J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup).
The Untouchables: Idealistic Treasury official Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is such a paragon of virtue that he needs to be schooled by loyal beat cop Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) in the ways of Chicago crime-fighting.
Winner: The Untouchables. Ness is a bit one-dimensional, but Malone and the other "untouchables" are the heart of this flick.
Mythical Actors, Mythical Outlaws
Public Enemies: Thanks to a spree of bank robberies in which he refuses to take ordinary citizens' money, Depp's John Dillinger achieves folk-hero status during the Great Depression.
The Untouchables: Although he claims to be a man of the people, De Niro's Al Capone is a brutal thug who will stoop to beating an associate with a baseball bat when the situation demands it.
Winner: Public Enemies. De Niro makes for a great movie monster, but Depp's Zen outlaw has a riveting appeal.
Violence, Violence, and More Violence
Public Enemies: Epic gun battles plague Dillinger and company. Almost always, it's because some idiot started shooting without provocation.
The Untouchables: Although most of them are new to gunplay, Ness and his men quickly become adept at shoot-outs -- most notably when they have to intercept a mob bookkeeper at a Chicago train station and a baby carriage gets in the way.
Winner: The Untouchables. Public Enemies has some beautifully intense sequences, but De Palma's film is basically one stunning set-piece after another.
Verdict
Winner: A tie. It's hard to match The Untouchables for sheer entertainment value, but Public Enemies' moody, ethereal take on the Dillinger saga is lovely and haunting.
Thanks to Bilge Ebiri
The Long Arm of the Law
Public Enemies: Stone-faced FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale) is unrelenting in his pursuit of Dillinger, despite having issues with the strong-arm tactics encouraged by a young J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup).
The Untouchables: Idealistic Treasury official Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is such a paragon of virtue that he needs to be schooled by loyal beat cop Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) in the ways of Chicago crime-fighting.
Winner: The Untouchables. Ness is a bit one-dimensional, but Malone and the other "untouchables" are the heart of this flick.
Mythical Actors, Mythical Outlaws
Public Enemies: Thanks to a spree of bank robberies in which he refuses to take ordinary citizens' money, Depp's John Dillinger achieves folk-hero status during the Great Depression.
The Untouchables: Although he claims to be a man of the people, De Niro's Al Capone is a brutal thug who will stoop to beating an associate with a baseball bat when the situation demands it.
Winner: Public Enemies. De Niro makes for a great movie monster, but Depp's Zen outlaw has a riveting appeal.
Violence, Violence, and More Violence
Public Enemies: Epic gun battles plague Dillinger and company. Almost always, it's because some idiot started shooting without provocation.
The Untouchables: Although most of them are new to gunplay, Ness and his men quickly become adept at shoot-outs -- most notably when they have to intercept a mob bookkeeper at a Chicago train station and a baby carriage gets in the way.
Winner: The Untouchables. Public Enemies has some beautifully intense sequences, but De Palma's film is basically one stunning set-piece after another.
Verdict
Winner: A tie. It's hard to match The Untouchables for sheer entertainment value, but Public Enemies' moody, ethereal take on the Dillinger saga is lovely and haunting.
Thanks to Bilge Ebiri
City of Chicago Squeezes Widow of Man Squeezed by The Chicago Outfit
Whether the name of Richie Urso ever makes it into the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich next June is anybody's guess.
You've probably never heard of Richie Urso. But the FBI sure has heard of him.
His is a classic Chicago story, about a beefy yet charming guy born on Grand Avenue, who got in trouble with the law as a kid, only to make political friends and become extremely wealthy.
He was arrested once for jewelry theft in the '60s by the Outfit's top Chicago police detective, William Hanhardt. Urso's alleged partner in the theft was the mob enforcer Frankie Cullotta, who later became the technical adviser for the movie "Casino." The charges against Urso went away. Like I said, it's a Chicago story.
Richie went from the trucking business into real estate, dropping thousands of dollars in contributions to politicians like Mayor Richard Daley and former Gov. Dead Meat. He hung around with bankers, real estate players, insiders at the Cook County Board of (Tax) Review, at Mart Anthony's Restaurant on Randolph Street.
He was worth millions in real estate. He was also the victim of an Outfit shakedown that figured in the FBI's landmark Family Secrets case against top mob bosses.
Now the FBI is going through his business, interested in his associates, including former Mutual Bank of Harvey boss Amrish Mahajan, who has dropped off the political map. Though not charged, Uncle Amrish is under investigation as a top Blagojevich fundraiser. "My husband was excited because he was supposed to go with Amrish and Daley on a trip to India," said Richie's wife, Joanne Urso, recalling what she told federal investigators. "They were all going to go together. But then he died."
Daley and his wife, Maggie, made the trip with a Chicago business delegation.
Amrish Mahajan was a political connection for Daley, Blagojevich and other politicians to the Indian community. His wife, Anita, said, "He did not go on the trip with the mayor."
Anita -- charged with bilking the state out of millions of dollars in phony drug tests -- said her husband was in India, and unreachable.
After Richie's death in 2003, lenders called in their notes. Lawyers demanded big fees. The will that he told Joanne was stashed in a Mutual Bank safe deposit box was never found. And Daley's City Hall, which had never given Richie much trouble, suddenly slapped Joanne with a series of citations on their properties.
City Hall is also demanding she sell Richie's prized 24-acre site just west of the Cook County Jail for millions less than she says it's worth. Ald. George Cardenas (12th) is demanding the site for a park. "I'm getting ripped off by everybody. By everybody," Joanne Urso said.
She told me Richie died of a heart attack on the kitchen floor of a girlfriend's home, on April 15, 2003. "You should call her," she said.
So we did. The woman is Mary Ann Dinovo, who works in human resources for the county tax review board, which handles tax appeals for every parcel of real estate in the county.
"He said, 'What do you got to eat?' " recalled Dinovo. "I'd just made a big tuna salad. He said, 'Can I have some?' The TV was on in the kitchen. The fork dropped out of his hand. He said he felt sick and went to the bathroom."
Minutes later, Richie Urso, his mouth full of tuna salad, was dead at age 61.
"It was karma that we met," Dinovo said. "We loved to do things together, go to shows, go to Navy Pier. ... He'd always play like he was poor. 'I'm just a poor truck driver,' he'd say. Sometimes we'd drive by a piece of property and he'd ask me who owned it."
Did you help him find out who owned it? "Absolutely not," said Dinovo, who said she has not been contacted by federal authorities. "I never knew what the hell he had. I didn't ask. But how do you think I felt when after he died, his friends told me that he was worth, like, $50 million? I said, 'What?' "
In late November of last year, Blagojevich hadn't yet been arrested. But the noose was tightening.
About a week before the FBI knocked on the governor's door, they knocked on Joanne Urso's door. FBI agents and a lawyer from the U.S. attorney's office wanted to chat.
"They asked about everything that was going on with the banks, the lawyers, our properties," Joanne Urso said. "... They asked about Amrish Mahajan and the governor. Oh, and [state Sen.] Jimmy DeLeo, they asked about him."
Only Blagojevich has been charged with a crime, and it's not illegal to know a guy like Richie Urso.
The FBI didn't have to ask about Richie and the Outfit. Without Richie, there may not have been a Family Secrets case that sent three mob bosses to prison.
That's because in 1986, just three months after gangsters Tony and Michael Spilotro were murdered, Richie Urso was the victim of an Outfit shakedown.
It all came out in testimony by mob turncoat Nicholas Calabrese, and chronicled in the book "Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob" by my colleague Jeff Coen.
Nick's brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., and fellow mobster John Fecarotta were competing to squeeze Urso for payments on a juice loan from the 1960s. It wasn't even Urso who borrowed the money. The father of an Urso partner owed the juice.
Urso was growing wealthy by the 1980s, and the mob wanted a piece. Fecarotta demanded that Urso make Fecarotta's house payments. Frank Calabrese Sr. held a knife to Urso's crotch, also demanding cash, according to trial testimony.
By then, Fecarotta had botched the burial of the Spilotro bodies, leaving them in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield, allowing them to be found. Fecarotta's shakedown of Richie Urso gave Frank Sr. another reason to lobby Outfit bosses for a Fecarotta solution. "And that sort of put the nail in the coffin," Nick Calabrese testified.
Nick and Frank helped kill Fecarotta on Belmont Avenue, but Nick lost a bloody glove at the scene. Years later, the FBI used DNA from that glove to turn Nick Calabrese into a star government witness.
The Outfit usually doesn't shake down legitimate squares, but targets people who can't run to the government.
"My husband helped all of them," Joanne Urso said. "When people borrowed money, he paid for that. He was paying and paying all his life."
At the time of his death Richie Urso controlled a string of properties, including a South Loop building housing the Pink Monkey strip club, a Cicero property housing the adult bookstore Bare Assets and a Chicago Chinatown neighborhood shopping complex. But the crown jewel was the land near the jail complex.
Now City Hall has moved to take the property. According to public records, Joanne Urso owes Mutual Bank more than $9 million on that property and another huge lot at 6501 W. 51st St.
The city has offered her $7.1 million for the Little Village parcel. Her appraisers say it's worth $13 million. It would be worth much more if Cook County expands the jail.
"They [City Hall] thought I would sell it right away," she said. "But I wasn't going to just give it away. Now it feels they've decided to try and just take it."
Joanne Urso is a woman alone. Her clout died six years ago, on another woman's kitchen floor, with tuna salad in his mouth.
Once, Richie Urso was squeezed by the Outfit. Now his widow is getting squeezed by City Hall. It's a classic Chicago story.
The central theme is that there's nothing deader than dead clout. And now Joanne Urso has to pay for it.
Thanks to John Kass
You've probably never heard of Richie Urso. But the FBI sure has heard of him.
His is a classic Chicago story, about a beefy yet charming guy born on Grand Avenue, who got in trouble with the law as a kid, only to make political friends and become extremely wealthy.
He was arrested once for jewelry theft in the '60s by the Outfit's top Chicago police detective, William Hanhardt. Urso's alleged partner in the theft was the mob enforcer Frankie Cullotta, who later became the technical adviser for the movie "Casino." The charges against Urso went away. Like I said, it's a Chicago story.
Richie went from the trucking business into real estate, dropping thousands of dollars in contributions to politicians like Mayor Richard Daley and former Gov. Dead Meat. He hung around with bankers, real estate players, insiders at the Cook County Board of (Tax) Review, at Mart Anthony's Restaurant on Randolph Street.
He was worth millions in real estate. He was also the victim of an Outfit shakedown that figured in the FBI's landmark Family Secrets case against top mob bosses.
Now the FBI is going through his business, interested in his associates, including former Mutual Bank of Harvey boss Amrish Mahajan, who has dropped off the political map. Though not charged, Uncle Amrish is under investigation as a top Blagojevich fundraiser. "My husband was excited because he was supposed to go with Amrish and Daley on a trip to India," said Richie's wife, Joanne Urso, recalling what she told federal investigators. "They were all going to go together. But then he died."
Daley and his wife, Maggie, made the trip with a Chicago business delegation.
Amrish Mahajan was a political connection for Daley, Blagojevich and other politicians to the Indian community. His wife, Anita, said, "He did not go on the trip with the mayor."
Anita -- charged with bilking the state out of millions of dollars in phony drug tests -- said her husband was in India, and unreachable.
After Richie's death in 2003, lenders called in their notes. Lawyers demanded big fees. The will that he told Joanne was stashed in a Mutual Bank safe deposit box was never found. And Daley's City Hall, which had never given Richie much trouble, suddenly slapped Joanne with a series of citations on their properties.
City Hall is also demanding she sell Richie's prized 24-acre site just west of the Cook County Jail for millions less than she says it's worth. Ald. George Cardenas (12th) is demanding the site for a park. "I'm getting ripped off by everybody. By everybody," Joanne Urso said.
She told me Richie died of a heart attack on the kitchen floor of a girlfriend's home, on April 15, 2003. "You should call her," she said.
So we did. The woman is Mary Ann Dinovo, who works in human resources for the county tax review board, which handles tax appeals for every parcel of real estate in the county.
"He said, 'What do you got to eat?' " recalled Dinovo. "I'd just made a big tuna salad. He said, 'Can I have some?' The TV was on in the kitchen. The fork dropped out of his hand. He said he felt sick and went to the bathroom."
Minutes later, Richie Urso, his mouth full of tuna salad, was dead at age 61.
"It was karma that we met," Dinovo said. "We loved to do things together, go to shows, go to Navy Pier. ... He'd always play like he was poor. 'I'm just a poor truck driver,' he'd say. Sometimes we'd drive by a piece of property and he'd ask me who owned it."
Did you help him find out who owned it? "Absolutely not," said Dinovo, who said she has not been contacted by federal authorities. "I never knew what the hell he had. I didn't ask. But how do you think I felt when after he died, his friends told me that he was worth, like, $50 million? I said, 'What?' "
In late November of last year, Blagojevich hadn't yet been arrested. But the noose was tightening.
About a week before the FBI knocked on the governor's door, they knocked on Joanne Urso's door. FBI agents and a lawyer from the U.S. attorney's office wanted to chat.
"They asked about everything that was going on with the banks, the lawyers, our properties," Joanne Urso said. "... They asked about Amrish Mahajan and the governor. Oh, and [state Sen.] Jimmy DeLeo, they asked about him."
Only Blagojevich has been charged with a crime, and it's not illegal to know a guy like Richie Urso.
The FBI didn't have to ask about Richie and the Outfit. Without Richie, there may not have been a Family Secrets case that sent three mob bosses to prison.
That's because in 1986, just three months after gangsters Tony and Michael Spilotro were murdered, Richie Urso was the victim of an Outfit shakedown.
It all came out in testimony by mob turncoat Nicholas Calabrese, and chronicled in the book "Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob" by my colleague Jeff Coen.
Nick's brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., and fellow mobster John Fecarotta were competing to squeeze Urso for payments on a juice loan from the 1960s. It wasn't even Urso who borrowed the money. The father of an Urso partner owed the juice.
Urso was growing wealthy by the 1980s, and the mob wanted a piece. Fecarotta demanded that Urso make Fecarotta's house payments. Frank Calabrese Sr. held a knife to Urso's crotch, also demanding cash, according to trial testimony.
By then, Fecarotta had botched the burial of the Spilotro bodies, leaving them in a shallow grave in an Indiana cornfield, allowing them to be found. Fecarotta's shakedown of Richie Urso gave Frank Sr. another reason to lobby Outfit bosses for a Fecarotta solution. "And that sort of put the nail in the coffin," Nick Calabrese testified.
Nick and Frank helped kill Fecarotta on Belmont Avenue, but Nick lost a bloody glove at the scene. Years later, the FBI used DNA from that glove to turn Nick Calabrese into a star government witness.
The Outfit usually doesn't shake down legitimate squares, but targets people who can't run to the government.
"My husband helped all of them," Joanne Urso said. "When people borrowed money, he paid for that. He was paying and paying all his life."
At the time of his death Richie Urso controlled a string of properties, including a South Loop building housing the Pink Monkey strip club, a Cicero property housing the adult bookstore Bare Assets and a Chicago Chinatown neighborhood shopping complex. But the crown jewel was the land near the jail complex.
Now City Hall has moved to take the property. According to public records, Joanne Urso owes Mutual Bank more than $9 million on that property and another huge lot at 6501 W. 51st St.
The city has offered her $7.1 million for the Little Village parcel. Her appraisers say it's worth $13 million. It would be worth much more if Cook County expands the jail.
"They [City Hall] thought I would sell it right away," she said. "But I wasn't going to just give it away. Now it feels they've decided to try and just take it."
Joanne Urso is a woman alone. Her clout died six years ago, on another woman's kitchen floor, with tuna salad in his mouth.
Once, Richie Urso was squeezed by the Outfit. Now his widow is getting squeezed by City Hall. It's a classic Chicago story.
The central theme is that there's nothing deader than dead clout. And now Joanne Urso has to pay for it.
Thanks to John Kass
John Dillinger Was Bad for the Business of the Chicago Outfit
After watching the excellent new Johnny Depp movie "Public Enemies" -- the story of romanticized desperado John Dillinger's murder in Chicago with the help of the Outfit -- Wings and I realized something.
We were hungry. So we walked over to Volare, the fine Italian restaurant at Grand and St. Clair on Wednesday evening, where three amazing things happened:
1. We had the most superb sausage and peppers in the universe. The sausage was beyond tasty, the peppers perfectly cooked, the sauce to kill for.
2. A group of people came in, the women in red dresses, the men in 1930s gangster outfits, fedoras for the guys, the women with much cleavage, feathered hats, tiny veils, red lips. It was a surprise party for Craig Alton, the fellow who runs Untouchable Tours, taking tourists to famous mob murder scenes, including where Dillinger fell facedown, near the Biograph Theater on Lincoln. We went over to say hello. He seemed like a nice fellow, dressed in a straw hat with suspenders, a fat, painted tie and a curly mustache. They were all going to the movie afterward. I asked: Don't you tour some of the newer sites, like the Melrose Park restaurant where Tony Zizzo disappeared a few years ago? Or the 2001 hit of street boss Anthony "The Hatch" Chiaramonti in Lyons? "No," Alton said, sheepishly. "The guys who did that are still alive."
3. At another table nearby was a handsome Italian family. Mother, father, sons and grandsons, proud, straight backed, polite. They proved their good manners by quietly chanting "chumbolone" at us.
The father, who said his name was John, announced to his family and half the restaurant that he grew up on Chicago's Taylor Street and then in River Forest.
"You wrote about Al Capone, and you also wrote about the real boss, the old man," said John. "You went past Capone and wrote about the real boss."
Paul Ricca?
"Yes," said John. "Paul Ricca."
Capone got all the attention. Ricca, a quiet fellow, never wanted to be a star. He let Capone get the applause and wisecrack with reporters. Ricca made the decisions and built modern organized crime in America. Hollywood has never made a movie about Paul Ricca. That should tell you something.
The Ricca mention by a stranger in a nice restaurant brings me back to "Public Enemies," directed by Michael Mann.
Mann gets it. He was born in Chicago, and produced one of my favorite films, one that actually speaks truth about this city: "Thief," starring James Caan. In that film, real Chicago cops played gangsters, and real gangsters played Chicago detectives. In any other town this might be seen as ironic. Not here.
So in "Public Enemies," Mann allows truth to press up against the Dillinger myth, the one with which generations of Americans were led to believe that The Lady in Red caused Dillinger's demise.
All The Lady in Red got was deported back to Romania, if she got that far and didn't end up on the bottom of the Cal-Sag Canal. And the Chicago Outfit got what it wanted: happy cops and happy FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, who kept winning at the racetracks while insisting there was no organized crime in America.
Mann understands Chicago. I'm not going to spoil anything. Anyone with a room temperature IQ knows how this one ends. But it was Mann's method of revealing this real Chicago truth that I found fascinating. It was in a big speech, by one of the actors playing an Outfit guy, talking to Depp's Dillinger.
Big speeches are usually disasters and belong only in manipulative TV shows like "Law and Order," where the big speech is delivered before the final commercial by a wise old actor with crinkly eyes.
In a movie, the big speech can ruin things. It can pull you out of that willing suspension of disbelief directors work so hard to achieve, and it can plop you back into reality, tasting the stale popcorn and the stale message from the actor delivering the big speech.
You might guess that I'm not a big fan of the big speech. Except the one in "Public Enemies," with the Outfit giving the message to Dillinger.
It's set in a wire room, with bets coming in on the phone, and Dillinger is told that the old freelance days are done. Freelancers bring heat and embarrass the locals. Businesses don't need heat. It costs money.
"You're bad for business," Dillinger is told.
It was almost subtle by comparison to other big speeches. But it was necessary, because the romantic outlaw had to learn the truth from the guys who snap their fingers and have chiefs of detectives and mayors shine their shoes.
Freelancers were entertaining, once. But freelancers cost too much. They get crushed.
Like John Dillinger.
Thanks to John Kass
We were hungry. So we walked over to Volare, the fine Italian restaurant at Grand and St. Clair on Wednesday evening, where three amazing things happened:
1. We had the most superb sausage and peppers in the universe. The sausage was beyond tasty, the peppers perfectly cooked, the sauce to kill for.
2. A group of people came in, the women in red dresses, the men in 1930s gangster outfits, fedoras for the guys, the women with much cleavage, feathered hats, tiny veils, red lips. It was a surprise party for Craig Alton, the fellow who runs Untouchable Tours, taking tourists to famous mob murder scenes, including where Dillinger fell facedown, near the Biograph Theater on Lincoln. We went over to say hello. He seemed like a nice fellow, dressed in a straw hat with suspenders, a fat, painted tie and a curly mustache. They were all going to the movie afterward. I asked: Don't you tour some of the newer sites, like the Melrose Park restaurant where Tony Zizzo disappeared a few years ago? Or the 2001 hit of street boss Anthony "The Hatch" Chiaramonti in Lyons? "No," Alton said, sheepishly. "The guys who did that are still alive."
3. At another table nearby was a handsome Italian family. Mother, father, sons and grandsons, proud, straight backed, polite. They proved their good manners by quietly chanting "chumbolone" at us.
The father, who said his name was John, announced to his family and half the restaurant that he grew up on Chicago's Taylor Street and then in River Forest.
"You wrote about Al Capone, and you also wrote about the real boss, the old man," said John. "You went past Capone and wrote about the real boss."
Paul Ricca?
"Yes," said John. "Paul Ricca."
Capone got all the attention. Ricca, a quiet fellow, never wanted to be a star. He let Capone get the applause and wisecrack with reporters. Ricca made the decisions and built modern organized crime in America. Hollywood has never made a movie about Paul Ricca. That should tell you something.
The Ricca mention by a stranger in a nice restaurant brings me back to "Public Enemies," directed by Michael Mann.
Mann gets it. He was born in Chicago, and produced one of my favorite films, one that actually speaks truth about this city: "Thief," starring James Caan. In that film, real Chicago cops played gangsters, and real gangsters played Chicago detectives. In any other town this might be seen as ironic. Not here.
So in "Public Enemies," Mann allows truth to press up against the Dillinger myth, the one with which generations of Americans were led to believe that The Lady in Red caused Dillinger's demise.
All The Lady in Red got was deported back to Romania, if she got that far and didn't end up on the bottom of the Cal-Sag Canal. And the Chicago Outfit got what it wanted: happy cops and happy FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, who kept winning at the racetracks while insisting there was no organized crime in America.
Mann understands Chicago. I'm not going to spoil anything. Anyone with a room temperature IQ knows how this one ends. But it was Mann's method of revealing this real Chicago truth that I found fascinating. It was in a big speech, by one of the actors playing an Outfit guy, talking to Depp's Dillinger.
Big speeches are usually disasters and belong only in manipulative TV shows like "Law and Order," where the big speech is delivered before the final commercial by a wise old actor with crinkly eyes.
In a movie, the big speech can ruin things. It can pull you out of that willing suspension of disbelief directors work so hard to achieve, and it can plop you back into reality, tasting the stale popcorn and the stale message from the actor delivering the big speech.
You might guess that I'm not a big fan of the big speech. Except the one in "Public Enemies," with the Outfit giving the message to Dillinger.
It's set in a wire room, with bets coming in on the phone, and Dillinger is told that the old freelance days are done. Freelancers bring heat and embarrass the locals. Businesses don't need heat. It costs money.
"You're bad for business," Dillinger is told.
It was almost subtle by comparison to other big speeches. But it was necessary, because the romantic outlaw had to learn the truth from the guys who snap their fingers and have chiefs of detectives and mayors shine their shoes.
Freelancers were entertaining, once. But freelancers cost too much. They get crushed.
Like John Dillinger.
Thanks to John Kass
Russian Organized Crime Enterprise Expanding to Cleveland?
They looted computer buyers, insurance companies and their own countrymen in a series of scams and extortions that caused police in Northeast Ohio to scramble for years.
But were the crimes, committed by Russian immigrants, part of a sinister, organized mob or were they unconnected acts linked only by the ancestry of the criminals?
Authorities say the disjointed Russian criminal network in Cleveland is hardly the structured version of the Italian Mafia during the city's mob wars, but its links offer a shadowy threat that often sprouts into the public's consciousness through white-collar crimes.
This week, a district attorney in upstate New York said an investigation into what he called organized Russian crime in suburban Cleveland plugged a $27 million marijuana pipeline that flowed from an Indian reservation to Northeast Ohio. Three people from Greater Cleveland, including Konstantin Sorin, were among several charged.
Authorities seized $1.3 million in cash, 14 vehicles and two utility trailers. One man, Daniel Simonds, who made drug runs from upstate New York to Cleveland, was found shot to death in his home in May 2008.
Jeffrey Buck, Reminderville police chief, said the marijuana pipeline was organized crime, with Russians involved. He declined to discuss whether the network could be deemed the Russian mob.
Richard Blake, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted dozens of Russian crime cases in Cleveland, acknowledged what he called "criminal elements" in Northeast Ohio, but he stopped short of saying that they were part of a broader, organized mob.
Blake agreed with the work of James Finckenauer, a criminal justice professor at Rutgers University who studied the Russian mob for the U.S. Justice Department. Finckenauer said in an interview Thursday that unlike the better known Italian Mafia, what people call the Russian mob is more of a loosely linked network of criminals with no central leadership.
In his research, Finckenauer found that about 15 organized Russian groups operate in the United States, with a handful maintaining their links overseas. The networks are built of individuals cooperating with each other, rather than orderly ranks following orders from above, according to Finckenauer.
"Generally, there's no capo [or leader] as there was in the traditional La Cosa Nostra," Blake said.
The FBI has investigated Russian crime in Cleveland for years. A spokesman for the FBI declined to say whether Northeast Ohio is a hub of the Russian mob.
About 24,000 people with Russian ancestry live in Cuyahoga County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The hub is Mayfield Heights and other eastern suburbs. The local Russian community grew dramatically in the 1990s, when many Jews fled religious persecution in the former Soviet Union. Cleveland's Jewish community helped to resettle more than 6,000 Russian Jews.
Some Russian leaders say little about crime. Olga Sonis, a Beachwood-based refugee counselor who has helped to resettle hundreds of Russian immigrants, said she has never heard about mob troubles here. Grigoriy Topolynskiy, the president of the American Association of Jews from the former Soviet Union, told a reporter he wouldn't discuss it Thursday, saying, "I'll give you a call in a few days."
Others say the Russian mob is an easy stereotype to make, so those Russians accused of crimes are automatically linked to the "mob," similar to Italians and the Mafia.
"There are multitudes of Russian people here who are warm, good people," said Kenneth Kovach, the executive director of the International Community Council in Cleveland. "They are the vast majority."
The council is a networking group representing most of the international cultures of Northeast Ohio. Kovach also the choir director at St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Tremont.
But Kovach said he believes he sees evidence of what Blake and other authorities say exists in Cleveland, threads of a loosely linked group of criminals. He said he attended an FBI citizens academy class a few years ago. During a break, he and some agents talked about organized crime. Kovach, who has made 19 trips to Russia in the past 15 years, said an agent told him that outside of New York, Cleveland is a key place for the Russian mob.
"I believe it is here, but I'm not sure of the extent of it," he said. "I believe it is in the white-collar crime, not in crimes of violence."
Some major crimes committed by Russians in Cuyahoga County have followed that pattern. In 2001, Blake, the federal prosecutor, helped convict about 25 Russian immigrants in an insurance scam involving high-priced cars. The case stemmed from an undercover FBI investigation.
That same year, police found two Russian men stopped along Interstate 271, near Fairmount Boulevard, with machine guns, silencers, duct tape, bulletproof vests and ammunition. They were prepared to rob a computer store owner.
In 1999, Igor Abramovsky, a Twinsburg computer store manager, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for bilking customers and threatening to kill people who complained about his bad business. A few years earlier, two Russian men approached a half-dozen Cleveland business owners and demanded a total of about $25,000 to $50,000 in loans from their fellow countrymen, which were never paid back.
Thanks to John Caniglia
But were the crimes, committed by Russian immigrants, part of a sinister, organized mob or were they unconnected acts linked only by the ancestry of the criminals?
Authorities say the disjointed Russian criminal network in Cleveland is hardly the structured version of the Italian Mafia during the city's mob wars, but its links offer a shadowy threat that often sprouts into the public's consciousness through white-collar crimes.
This week, a district attorney in upstate New York said an investigation into what he called organized Russian crime in suburban Cleveland plugged a $27 million marijuana pipeline that flowed from an Indian reservation to Northeast Ohio. Three people from Greater Cleveland, including Konstantin Sorin, were among several charged.
Authorities seized $1.3 million in cash, 14 vehicles and two utility trailers. One man, Daniel Simonds, who made drug runs from upstate New York to Cleveland, was found shot to death in his home in May 2008.
Jeffrey Buck, Reminderville police chief, said the marijuana pipeline was organized crime, with Russians involved. He declined to discuss whether the network could be deemed the Russian mob.
Richard Blake, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted dozens of Russian crime cases in Cleveland, acknowledged what he called "criminal elements" in Northeast Ohio, but he stopped short of saying that they were part of a broader, organized mob.
Blake agreed with the work of James Finckenauer, a criminal justice professor at Rutgers University who studied the Russian mob for the U.S. Justice Department. Finckenauer said in an interview Thursday that unlike the better known Italian Mafia, what people call the Russian mob is more of a loosely linked network of criminals with no central leadership.
In his research, Finckenauer found that about 15 organized Russian groups operate in the United States, with a handful maintaining their links overseas. The networks are built of individuals cooperating with each other, rather than orderly ranks following orders from above, according to Finckenauer.
"Generally, there's no capo [or leader] as there was in the traditional La Cosa Nostra," Blake said.
The FBI has investigated Russian crime in Cleveland for years. A spokesman for the FBI declined to say whether Northeast Ohio is a hub of the Russian mob.
About 24,000 people with Russian ancestry live in Cuyahoga County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The hub is Mayfield Heights and other eastern suburbs. The local Russian community grew dramatically in the 1990s, when many Jews fled religious persecution in the former Soviet Union. Cleveland's Jewish community helped to resettle more than 6,000 Russian Jews.
Some Russian leaders say little about crime. Olga Sonis, a Beachwood-based refugee counselor who has helped to resettle hundreds of Russian immigrants, said she has never heard about mob troubles here. Grigoriy Topolynskiy, the president of the American Association of Jews from the former Soviet Union, told a reporter he wouldn't discuss it Thursday, saying, "I'll give you a call in a few days."
Others say the Russian mob is an easy stereotype to make, so those Russians accused of crimes are automatically linked to the "mob," similar to Italians and the Mafia.
"There are multitudes of Russian people here who are warm, good people," said Kenneth Kovach, the executive director of the International Community Council in Cleveland. "They are the vast majority."
The council is a networking group representing most of the international cultures of Northeast Ohio. Kovach also the choir director at St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Tremont.
But Kovach said he believes he sees evidence of what Blake and other authorities say exists in Cleveland, threads of a loosely linked group of criminals. He said he attended an FBI citizens academy class a few years ago. During a break, he and some agents talked about organized crime. Kovach, who has made 19 trips to Russia in the past 15 years, said an agent told him that outside of New York, Cleveland is a key place for the Russian mob.
"I believe it is here, but I'm not sure of the extent of it," he said. "I believe it is in the white-collar crime, not in crimes of violence."
Some major crimes committed by Russians in Cuyahoga County have followed that pattern. In 2001, Blake, the federal prosecutor, helped convict about 25 Russian immigrants in an insurance scam involving high-priced cars. The case stemmed from an undercover FBI investigation.
That same year, police found two Russian men stopped along Interstate 271, near Fairmount Boulevard, with machine guns, silencers, duct tape, bulletproof vests and ammunition. They were prepared to rob a computer store owner.
In 1999, Igor Abramovsky, a Twinsburg computer store manager, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for bilking customers and threatening to kill people who complained about his bad business. A few years earlier, two Russian men approached a half-dozen Cleveland business owners and demanded a total of about $25,000 to $50,000 in loans from their fellow countrymen, which were never paid back.
Thanks to John Caniglia
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Stonewall Gay Bar Crackdown Originally Targeted Mafia Activities in New York
I WAS perhaps the unlikeliest person in the world to cover the Stonewall riots for The Village Voice. It was June 27, 1969. I had graduated from West Point only three weeks earlier and was spending my summer leave in New York before reporting for duty at Fort Benning, in Georgia. After a late dinner in Chinatown, I was about to enter the Lion’s Head, a writers’ hangout on Christopher Street near the Voice’s offices, when I blundered straight into the first moments of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar a couple of doors down the street. Even a newly minted second lieutenant of infantry could see that it was a story.
Across the street from the Stonewall, a crowd of maybe 100 was watching the police march out a dozen or so bar patrons and employees into a paddy wagon. The young arrestees paused at the back of the waiting paddy wagon and struck vampy poses, smiling and waving to the crowd.
This was not the way gays were supposed to behave when they were arrested, and the officers started shoving them with their nightsticks. People in the crowd yelled at the police to stop. The officers responded by telling them to get off the street. Someone started throwing pocket change at the officers, and others began rocking the paddy wagon. Then, from the back of the crowd, beer cans and bottles flew through the air. In a hail of coins and street debris, the paddy wagon drove away with two patrol cars, and the remaining officers retreated inside the Stonewall, locking the doors behind them.
Soon enough, loose cobblestones from a nearby repaving site rained down on the bar’s windows. An uprooted parking meter was used to ram the club’s doors. Someone lighted a wad of newspaper and threw it through the bar’s broken window, starting a small fire. The policemen inside the Stonewall put it out with a fire hose, which they then turned on the crowd.
Instead of dispersing, the people in the street cavorted sarcastically in the spray, teasing the officers with suggestive come-ons. A few moments later, patrol cars came screaming down Christopher Street from Sixth Avenue. And at approximately 2 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, the gay men decided they weren’t going to take it anymore. The clash outside the Stonewall went on for 48 more hours and become famous as the riots that started the gay-rights movement.
Amazingly, there was no TV coverage and only a few paragraphs in the city’s daily papers. Myths and controversies have arisen in the vacuum left by the mainstream news media.
One involves the argument about who is, and isn’t, a “veteran” of Stonewall. A handful can prove they were there by pointing to themselves in the famous photograph, taken by Fred McDarrah, that was on the cover of the following week’s Voice, accompanying my article and another by a colleague, Howard Smith.
For the record, I orchestrated that image. Fred was famously parsimonious as a photographer, in the habit of taking only a few photos for a story. Outside the Stonewall that night, he took a look at the scene and asked me to get a bunch of rioters together. I rounded them up and posed them on a stoop, and Fred got his shot.
A prominent Stonewall myth holds that the riots were an uprising by the gay community against decades of oppression. This would be true if the “gay community” consisted of Stonewall patrons. The bar’s regulars, though, were mostly teenagers from Queens, Long Island and New Jersey, with a few young drag queens and homeless youths who squatted in abandoned tenements on the Lower East Side.
I was there on the Saturday and Sunday nights when the Village’s established gay community, having heard about the incidents of Friday night, rushed back from vacation rentals on Fire Island and elsewhere. Although several older activists participated in the riots, most stood on the edges and watched.
Many told me they were put off by the way the younger gays were taunting the police — forming chorus lines and singing, “We are the Stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls!” Many of the older gay men lived largely closeted lives, had careers to protect and years of experience with discrimination. They believed the younger generation’s behavior would lead to even more oppression.
In part, at least, they were correct. It would take several more years before major New York political figures came out in favor of employment anti-discrimination laws, and much longer before other gay rights would be realized.
Another myth is that the police raid on the Stonewall was part of a broader crackdown on gay bars in the summer of 1969, a mayoral election year. In fact, the Stonewall operation was the work of a Police Department deputy inspector, Seymour Pine, and officers from the morals unit, and they carried it out without the knowledge of the officers of the local police precinct, whom they suspected of taking payoffs from the Stonewall and other Mafia-run gay bars in the Village.
Deputy Inspector Pine had two stated reasons for the raid: the Stonewall was selling liquor without a license, which it was, and it was being used by a Mafia blackmail ring that was setting up gay patrons who worked on Wall Street, which also seems likely.
The owner of the Stonewall, Tony Lauria, was reputed to be a front man for Matty Ianniello (known as “Matty the Horse”), a capo in the Genovese crime family who oversaw a string of clubs in the city. New York’s gay-bar scene at the time was a corrupt system apparently designed to benefit mobster owners, who served watered-down drinks at inflated prices, often made with ill-gotten liquor from truck hijackings.
It worked like this: citing disorderly behavior laws, the State Liquor Authority ruled that bars catering to openly homosexual patrons were not entitled to liquor licenses. Gay bars were thus made effectively illegal, which left them to the mob, which happily ran clubs without liquor licenses and paid the police to look the other way. Several more years would pass before the first clubs with openly gay owners would be licensed — places like the Ballroom on West Broadway and Reno Sweeney on West 13th Street — and the mob lost its stranglehold, an early legacy of Stonewall.
On Sunday, the third night of the riots, I ran into Allen Ginsberg on the street and accompanied him into the reopened Stonewall, where he talked and danced with some of the young revelers. Afterward, as the last of the riot police packed up to go home, I walked with him toward his home in the East Village. He said everything seemed different after the riots — how grim, even sad, gay bars were compared to the “beautiful” scene at the Stonewall that night.
As I turned south on Lafayette Street, he waved and cried out, “Defend the fairies!” His jolly farewell was obviously meant in jest, because after Stonewall, they didn’t need defending any more.
Thanks to Lucian K. Truscott IV
Across the street from the Stonewall, a crowd of maybe 100 was watching the police march out a dozen or so bar patrons and employees into a paddy wagon. The young arrestees paused at the back of the waiting paddy wagon and struck vampy poses, smiling and waving to the crowd.
This was not the way gays were supposed to behave when they were arrested, and the officers started shoving them with their nightsticks. People in the crowd yelled at the police to stop. The officers responded by telling them to get off the street. Someone started throwing pocket change at the officers, and others began rocking the paddy wagon. Then, from the back of the crowd, beer cans and bottles flew through the air. In a hail of coins and street debris, the paddy wagon drove away with two patrol cars, and the remaining officers retreated inside the Stonewall, locking the doors behind them.
Soon enough, loose cobblestones from a nearby repaving site rained down on the bar’s windows. An uprooted parking meter was used to ram the club’s doors. Someone lighted a wad of newspaper and threw it through the bar’s broken window, starting a small fire. The policemen inside the Stonewall put it out with a fire hose, which they then turned on the crowd.
Instead of dispersing, the people in the street cavorted sarcastically in the spray, teasing the officers with suggestive come-ons. A few moments later, patrol cars came screaming down Christopher Street from Sixth Avenue. And at approximately 2 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, the gay men decided they weren’t going to take it anymore. The clash outside the Stonewall went on for 48 more hours and become famous as the riots that started the gay-rights movement.
Amazingly, there was no TV coverage and only a few paragraphs in the city’s daily papers. Myths and controversies have arisen in the vacuum left by the mainstream news media.
One involves the argument about who is, and isn’t, a “veteran” of Stonewall. A handful can prove they were there by pointing to themselves in the famous photograph, taken by Fred McDarrah, that was on the cover of the following week’s Voice, accompanying my article and another by a colleague, Howard Smith.
For the record, I orchestrated that image. Fred was famously parsimonious as a photographer, in the habit of taking only a few photos for a story. Outside the Stonewall that night, he took a look at the scene and asked me to get a bunch of rioters together. I rounded them up and posed them on a stoop, and Fred got his shot.
A prominent Stonewall myth holds that the riots were an uprising by the gay community against decades of oppression. This would be true if the “gay community” consisted of Stonewall patrons. The bar’s regulars, though, were mostly teenagers from Queens, Long Island and New Jersey, with a few young drag queens and homeless youths who squatted in abandoned tenements on the Lower East Side.
I was there on the Saturday and Sunday nights when the Village’s established gay community, having heard about the incidents of Friday night, rushed back from vacation rentals on Fire Island and elsewhere. Although several older activists participated in the riots, most stood on the edges and watched.
Many told me they were put off by the way the younger gays were taunting the police — forming chorus lines and singing, “We are the Stonewall girls, we wear our hair in curls!” Many of the older gay men lived largely closeted lives, had careers to protect and years of experience with discrimination. They believed the younger generation’s behavior would lead to even more oppression.
In part, at least, they were correct. It would take several more years before major New York political figures came out in favor of employment anti-discrimination laws, and much longer before other gay rights would be realized.
Another myth is that the police raid on the Stonewall was part of a broader crackdown on gay bars in the summer of 1969, a mayoral election year. In fact, the Stonewall operation was the work of a Police Department deputy inspector, Seymour Pine, and officers from the morals unit, and they carried it out without the knowledge of the officers of the local police precinct, whom they suspected of taking payoffs from the Stonewall and other Mafia-run gay bars in the Village.
Deputy Inspector Pine had two stated reasons for the raid: the Stonewall was selling liquor without a license, which it was, and it was being used by a Mafia blackmail ring that was setting up gay patrons who worked on Wall Street, which also seems likely.
The owner of the Stonewall, Tony Lauria, was reputed to be a front man for Matty Ianniello (known as “Matty the Horse”), a capo in the Genovese crime family who oversaw a string of clubs in the city. New York’s gay-bar scene at the time was a corrupt system apparently designed to benefit mobster owners, who served watered-down drinks at inflated prices, often made with ill-gotten liquor from truck hijackings.
It worked like this: citing disorderly behavior laws, the State Liquor Authority ruled that bars catering to openly homosexual patrons were not entitled to liquor licenses. Gay bars were thus made effectively illegal, which left them to the mob, which happily ran clubs without liquor licenses and paid the police to look the other way. Several more years would pass before the first clubs with openly gay owners would be licensed — places like the Ballroom on West Broadway and Reno Sweeney on West 13th Street — and the mob lost its stranglehold, an early legacy of Stonewall.
On Sunday, the third night of the riots, I ran into Allen Ginsberg on the street and accompanied him into the reopened Stonewall, where he talked and danced with some of the young revelers. Afterward, as the last of the riot police packed up to go home, I walked with him toward his home in the East Village. He said everything seemed different after the riots — how grim, even sad, gay bars were compared to the “beautiful” scene at the Stonewall that night.
As I turned south on Lafayette Street, he waved and cried out, “Defend the fairies!” His jolly farewell was obviously meant in jest, because after Stonewall, they didn’t need defending any more.
Thanks to Lucian K. Truscott IV
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
One Year Anniversary of World Wide Mafia Wars
Zynga, the largest developer of social games, announced the one year anniversary of social gaming’s most popular crime-based game, Mafia Wars. Since its launch in June 2008, Mafia Wars has grown to more than four million daily active users; in the last three months, alone, the game has doubled the number of daily players.
In celebration of Mafia Wars’ one year anniversary, Zynga also launched Cuba, an entirely new destination, and extends the amount of time players can enjoy Mafia Wars. Players who have reached the rank of “Consigliere” (level 35) can leave New York City and cross the Cuban border which has been outside the reach of the Mafia’s influence for almost 50 years. Now with Cuba as a destination, players can expand their influence and increase their power with new loot, weapons, businesses, collections and achievements. Cuba offers more than 100 levels of additional jobs, items, a unique property system, and opens up a wealth of new opportunities including:
* 40+ new jobs to carry out
* 52 brand new weapons, armor and vehicles
* Four businesses that can be purchased and upgraded
“Mafia Wars is on its way to becoming a cult classic,” said Bill Mooney, executive producer, MMO Studios, Zynga. “We have the most dedicated and loyal players who have made the game a hit and we want to thank them by extending the game in a dynamic destination that makes the game unique and challenging.”
The Mafia Wars franchise has reached key milestones during its first year. The iPhone version which launched in April contains rich, high-quality graphics and interface including original animations and sounds, creating a fun and addictive gaming experience. Mafia Wars was also recently voted Best Game of the Year in the Webby People’s Voice Awards where more than 50,000 votes were cast by people around the world for their favorite sites, video, and ads. Additionally, Mafia Wars has garnered over two million fans on its Facebook Page making it the highest ranked page.
In celebration of Mafia Wars’ one year anniversary, Zynga also launched Cuba, an entirely new destination, and extends the amount of time players can enjoy Mafia Wars. Players who have reached the rank of “Consigliere” (level 35) can leave New York City and cross the Cuban border which has been outside the reach of the Mafia’s influence for almost 50 years. Now with Cuba as a destination, players can expand their influence and increase their power with new loot, weapons, businesses, collections and achievements. Cuba offers more than 100 levels of additional jobs, items, a unique property system, and opens up a wealth of new opportunities including:
* 40+ new jobs to carry out
* 52 brand new weapons, armor and vehicles
* Four businesses that can be purchased and upgraded
“Mafia Wars is on its way to becoming a cult classic,” said Bill Mooney, executive producer, MMO Studios, Zynga. “We have the most dedicated and loyal players who have made the game a hit and we want to thank them by extending the game in a dynamic destination that makes the game unique and challenging.”
The Mafia Wars franchise has reached key milestones during its first year. The iPhone version which launched in April contains rich, high-quality graphics and interface including original animations and sounds, creating a fun and addictive gaming experience. Mafia Wars was also recently voted Best Game of the Year in the Webby People’s Voice Awards where more than 50,000 votes were cast by people around the world for their favorite sites, video, and ads. Additionally, Mafia Wars has garnered over two million fans on its Facebook Page making it the highest ranked page.
Monday, July 06, 2009
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, Taken Over by The Mob
Not so long ago, the faces of gaming on social networks were those of zombies, vampires, and cuddly virtual pets. Now it's more along the lines of Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano.
You've probably seen it in your news feed: From Facebook to MySpace and now Twitter, Mafia-themed games have more or less taken over. Mobsters, a game created by development company Playdom, is the most popular application on MySpace's platform. Mafia Wars, owned by Zynga, is a huge hit on Facebook. The Social Gaming Network has an iPhone app called Mafia: Respect and Retaliation. And earlier this month, a Twitter-based game called 140 Mafia launched. The craze appears to have started with a Facebook app called Mob Wars, which was built by a smaller company called Psycho Monkey.
The premises of most of these games are the same. You can found or join a "mob" with friends from the social network that the game has been built on. You can carry out missions, including "killing" other players in rival mobs, in order to earn points. Your activities are broadcast, via news feeds or Twitter posts, to your friends on the network in question.
With the mobster gaming craze, social-network developers may have found the secret to bringing multiplayer role-playing games--long the lucrative domain of ultrageeks--fully into the mainstream. They can build elaborate role-playing scenarios with points, levels, teams, and weapons, but without the nerdy stigma that's become attached to fantasy-themed games in the vein of World of Warcraft. (A 2006 episode of the Comedy Central cartoon "South Park" summed this up well.)
"A lot of the core architecture is very similar to role-playing games in the past, in the way that levels and achievements and so forth are often themed around the certain topic but are pretty generic, actually," said Justin Smith, who runs the blogs Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. "When you compare a dragon game to a mob-based game, they're actually pretty much the same thing with different content."
"People just really like the crime genre," said Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, which publishes Mafia Wars. The mobster game is currently the company's most popular app, with 15 million active users across social networks Facebook, MySpace, and Tagged. "GTA (Grand Theft Auto) and a lot of derivative games of GTA top the charts, and I think that it's more those games feel more culturally relevant to people than a lot of other games that go into other genres that are either historical or more fantasy. I think that people like fantasies that are closer to reality."
There's another side to it: Organized crime in the real world tends to be concerned with the illicit transfer of wealth in one form or another (drugs, laundered money, gambling, you name it). When you take the popular perception of the mobster lifestyle and transport it to a gaming environment, there are plenty of opportunities to bring money into the mix. Most of the Web's Mafia-themed role-playing games make money from display ads as well as the sale of virtual goods, and some make it possible to earn extra points and "level up" by completing offers and surveys. It's no secret that some social gaming companies are making a ton of money, but mobster games are a particularly lucrative enterprise.
"(It's about) climbing your way to the top, and the status, and the ego of being the biggest and the best and the toughest," said Jason Bailey, CEO and co-founder of Super Rewards, the company that has partnered with 140 Mafia to power its payment platform. In 140 Mafia, for example, players who want to speed up their "recovery" from a round of game play can petition to the "godfather" for a favor (and that'll cost them real money).
Plus, Bailey said, it gets personal: "It has that small violence factor as well, being able to feed on people and put them on the hit list. When somebody does that to you, when somebody kills your character...the rage that it conjures up in people is much much stronger and they're much more willing to retaliate than in a sports game or a racing-themed game."
As with any online sensation, though, the question remains: Is this just a fad? From film noir to "The Godfather" to "The Sopranos," mobster themes have a solid shelf life to them, but mobster games on social networks could easily fade from favor if something more exciting comes along. But the real lasting power, social gaming insiders said, is in the fact that Web development makes it possible to keep a game in a constant stage of evolution. Once these games hit critical mass--which Mafia games arguably have--it's easier to keep people around.
Short attention spans
They're also low-maintenance, said Dave Kahn, head product manager for Zynga's Mafia Wars.
"I would say the difference between what makes Mafia Wars more popular over time than your traditional console game or your traditional hardcore game is that you can have the same experience with five minutes of play and you can interact with your friends," Kahn said. "I would say a game like GTA or a game of that crime genre would be much more popular if you could interact with your friends on a daily basis, and it doesn't require much time investment for you and your friends to have that satisfactory interaction."
"You're able to come in and come out in short spurts. You can play for 30 seconds, you can play for five minutes," Jason Bailey said. "It's not like a first-person shooter or a real-time strategy game where, if the phone rings, you're going to get shot. It's really easy to come in and out of these games."
On the flip side, though, casual players who haven't put a massive time investment into a game are quite likely to be more fickle about whether they stick around or not. Time will tell when it comes to just how "sticky" mobster games turn out to be for players who aren't completely hardcore.
But beyond attention span issues, perhaps the biggest challenge to the creators of mobster games is that there are simply too many of them already, and the companies that make them have fallen into courtroom infighting that bears an ironic resemblance to actual mob warfare. There's an outstanding lawsuit between Zynga and Playdom, for example, over the latter's allegedly illegal use of the Mafia Wars name in advertising its own Mobsters game. And Mob Wars creator Psycho Monkey sued Zynga over copyright infringement in February.
"There's a variety of litigation that's still pending, and I think it just generally reflects the current culture of game development on social networks right now," Inside Social Games' Justin Smith said. "There's a lot of rapid iteration based on adapting other games and twisting them in a very slight way, and there haven't been many good examples of cases in which the IP has been successfully protected in the courts. So I think it will really be interesting in seeing how some of these cases play out over the next few months."
As we learned in the Scrabulous-Wordscraper-Lexulous affair last year, in which the manufacturer of board game Scrabble used litigation to force a Facebook-based imitator to change its name, intellectual property laws for games are complicated, and extremely similar games may legally coexist as long as they don't share a few key features. But it's not clear whether the mob wars over Mob Wars and its ilk will be without carnage.
"There's literally 20 or 30 mob-themed games on the Facebook and MySpace platforms, and that's conservative," Jason Bailey said. "If people find something that works, they copy it and copy it and copy it, ad nauseam."
The playing field for mobster games, as well as any other games on social networks that make money through virtual goods and transactions, could also change dramatically when social networks start introducing payment systems of their own. Facebook will start to do this soon, and it's also been circulated as a possible business model for Twitter. It's unclear what the rules will be in either case.
But Super Rewards' Jason Bailey--whose company will be a competitor to Facebook's in-house virtual currency platform, it should be said--thinks the dominance of mobster games won't change much if Facebook brings new rules to the applications on its platform. It may be too late for the massive social network to be the real kingpin when it comes to monetizing the likes of the mobster game craze.
"Facebook's issue, I believe, is it's hard to tack something like this on later...companies go out and spend millions of dollars building games for your platform," he said. Were Facebook to start requiring a cut of the revenues, "there would be literally a riot of people with torches at (CEO Mark) Zuckerberg's house tonight complaining about it."
Well, that's a whole different kind of mob.
Thanks to Caroline McCarthy
You've probably seen it in your news feed: From Facebook to MySpace and now Twitter, Mafia-themed games have more or less taken over. Mobsters, a game created by development company Playdom, is the most popular application on MySpace's platform. Mafia Wars, owned by Zynga, is a huge hit on Facebook. The Social Gaming Network has an iPhone app called Mafia: Respect and Retaliation. And earlier this month, a Twitter-based game called 140 Mafia launched. The craze appears to have started with a Facebook app called Mob Wars, which was built by a smaller company called Psycho Monkey.
The premises of most of these games are the same. You can found or join a "mob" with friends from the social network that the game has been built on. You can carry out missions, including "killing" other players in rival mobs, in order to earn points. Your activities are broadcast, via news feeds or Twitter posts, to your friends on the network in question.
With the mobster gaming craze, social-network developers may have found the secret to bringing multiplayer role-playing games--long the lucrative domain of ultrageeks--fully into the mainstream. They can build elaborate role-playing scenarios with points, levels, teams, and weapons, but without the nerdy stigma that's become attached to fantasy-themed games in the vein of World of Warcraft. (A 2006 episode of the Comedy Central cartoon "South Park" summed this up well.)
"A lot of the core architecture is very similar to role-playing games in the past, in the way that levels and achievements and so forth are often themed around the certain topic but are pretty generic, actually," said Justin Smith, who runs the blogs Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games. "When you compare a dragon game to a mob-based game, they're actually pretty much the same thing with different content."
"People just really like the crime genre," said Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, which publishes Mafia Wars. The mobster game is currently the company's most popular app, with 15 million active users across social networks Facebook, MySpace, and Tagged. "GTA (Grand Theft Auto) and a lot of derivative games of GTA top the charts, and I think that it's more those games feel more culturally relevant to people than a lot of other games that go into other genres that are either historical or more fantasy. I think that people like fantasies that are closer to reality."
There's another side to it: Organized crime in the real world tends to be concerned with the illicit transfer of wealth in one form or another (drugs, laundered money, gambling, you name it). When you take the popular perception of the mobster lifestyle and transport it to a gaming environment, there are plenty of opportunities to bring money into the mix. Most of the Web's Mafia-themed role-playing games make money from display ads as well as the sale of virtual goods, and some make it possible to earn extra points and "level up" by completing offers and surveys. It's no secret that some social gaming companies are making a ton of money, but mobster games are a particularly lucrative enterprise.
"(It's about) climbing your way to the top, and the status, and the ego of being the biggest and the best and the toughest," said Jason Bailey, CEO and co-founder of Super Rewards, the company that has partnered with 140 Mafia to power its payment platform. In 140 Mafia, for example, players who want to speed up their "recovery" from a round of game play can petition to the "godfather" for a favor (and that'll cost them real money).
Plus, Bailey said, it gets personal: "It has that small violence factor as well, being able to feed on people and put them on the hit list. When somebody does that to you, when somebody kills your character...the rage that it conjures up in people is much much stronger and they're much more willing to retaliate than in a sports game or a racing-themed game."
As with any online sensation, though, the question remains: Is this just a fad? From film noir to "The Godfather" to "The Sopranos," mobster themes have a solid shelf life to them, but mobster games on social networks could easily fade from favor if something more exciting comes along. But the real lasting power, social gaming insiders said, is in the fact that Web development makes it possible to keep a game in a constant stage of evolution. Once these games hit critical mass--which Mafia games arguably have--it's easier to keep people around.
Short attention spans
They're also low-maintenance, said Dave Kahn, head product manager for Zynga's Mafia Wars.
"I would say the difference between what makes Mafia Wars more popular over time than your traditional console game or your traditional hardcore game is that you can have the same experience with five minutes of play and you can interact with your friends," Kahn said. "I would say a game like GTA or a game of that crime genre would be much more popular if you could interact with your friends on a daily basis, and it doesn't require much time investment for you and your friends to have that satisfactory interaction."
"You're able to come in and come out in short spurts. You can play for 30 seconds, you can play for five minutes," Jason Bailey said. "It's not like a first-person shooter or a real-time strategy game where, if the phone rings, you're going to get shot. It's really easy to come in and out of these games."
On the flip side, though, casual players who haven't put a massive time investment into a game are quite likely to be more fickle about whether they stick around or not. Time will tell when it comes to just how "sticky" mobster games turn out to be for players who aren't completely hardcore.
But beyond attention span issues, perhaps the biggest challenge to the creators of mobster games is that there are simply too many of them already, and the companies that make them have fallen into courtroom infighting that bears an ironic resemblance to actual mob warfare. There's an outstanding lawsuit between Zynga and Playdom, for example, over the latter's allegedly illegal use of the Mafia Wars name in advertising its own Mobsters game. And Mob Wars creator Psycho Monkey sued Zynga over copyright infringement in February.
"There's a variety of litigation that's still pending, and I think it just generally reflects the current culture of game development on social networks right now," Inside Social Games' Justin Smith said. "There's a lot of rapid iteration based on adapting other games and twisting them in a very slight way, and there haven't been many good examples of cases in which the IP has been successfully protected in the courts. So I think it will really be interesting in seeing how some of these cases play out over the next few months."
As we learned in the Scrabulous-Wordscraper-Lexulous affair last year, in which the manufacturer of board game Scrabble used litigation to force a Facebook-based imitator to change its name, intellectual property laws for games are complicated, and extremely similar games may legally coexist as long as they don't share a few key features. But it's not clear whether the mob wars over Mob Wars and its ilk will be without carnage.
"There's literally 20 or 30 mob-themed games on the Facebook and MySpace platforms, and that's conservative," Jason Bailey said. "If people find something that works, they copy it and copy it and copy it, ad nauseam."
The playing field for mobster games, as well as any other games on social networks that make money through virtual goods and transactions, could also change dramatically when social networks start introducing payment systems of their own. Facebook will start to do this soon, and it's also been circulated as a possible business model for Twitter. It's unclear what the rules will be in either case.
But Super Rewards' Jason Bailey--whose company will be a competitor to Facebook's in-house virtual currency platform, it should be said--thinks the dominance of mobster games won't change much if Facebook brings new rules to the applications on its platform. It may be too late for the massive social network to be the real kingpin when it comes to monetizing the likes of the mobster game craze.
"Facebook's issue, I believe, is it's hard to tack something like this on later...companies go out and spend millions of dollars building games for your platform," he said. Were Facebook to start requiring a cut of the revenues, "there would be literally a riot of people with torches at (CEO Mark) Zuckerberg's house tonight complaining about it."
Well, that's a whole different kind of mob.
Thanks to Caroline McCarthy
Friday, July 03, 2009
Carmen "The Cheeseman" DiNunzio, The Reputed Underboss of the New England Mob, Pleads Guilty
The reputed underboss of the New England mob has pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges in a plea deal that will send him to prison for six years.
Carmen "The Cheeseman" DiNunzio pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribing an undercover FBI agent posing as a state highway department official in an attempt to win a $6 million contract on the Big Dig highway project.
DiNunzio is expected to plead guilty next week to separate state gambling and extortion charges.
Prosecutors have agreed to wrap both cases together under one plea agreement and to recommend a sentence of six years in federal prison. Sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 24.
Authorities say the 51-year-old DiNunzio has been underboss of the New England branch of the Mafia since 2004
Carmen "The Cheeseman" DiNunzio pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribing an undercover FBI agent posing as a state highway department official in an attempt to win a $6 million contract on the Big Dig highway project.
DiNunzio is expected to plead guilty next week to separate state gambling and extortion charges.
Prosecutors have agreed to wrap both cases together under one plea agreement and to recommend a sentence of six years in federal prison. Sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 24.
Authorities say the 51-year-old DiNunzio has been underboss of the New England branch of the Mafia since 2004
Mob Hit on Reputed Bonanno Crime Family Solider Anthony Seccafico?
A man identified by a law enforcement official as a soldier in the Bonanno crime family who was under federal investigation was shot to death early Thursday morning near a bus stop on Staten Island, the authorities said.
The man, Anthony Seccafico, was waiting for a bus near his town house on Ilyssa Way about 4:30 a.m. when an unknown number of attackers opened fire, law enforcement officials said.
Witnesses told the police that they heard seven shots and passers-by discovered Mr. Seccafico bleeding in the street about 100 feet from the bus stop, on Arthur Kill Road, the authorities said. Mr. Seccafico, 46, who was waiting for the X17 bus to take him to work in Manhattan, was shot several times and apparently tried to flee his attackers, investigators said. He was taken to Staten Island University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, the police said.
On Thursday, detectives were trying to determine the motive behind the killing. A police official said it was possible that it was related to Mr. Seccafico’s criminal history, including a 1996 case in Coney Island in which he was charged with four counts of assault and illegal possession of a weapon.
The medical examiner’s office has scheduled an autopsy for Friday morning.
In November 2002, Mr. Seccafico was arrested with 19 others on charges of participating in a $2.5 million-a-year gambling ring as part of a Bonanno crew.
Mr. Seccafico pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, and received a three-month sentence. Also involved in that case was Salvatore Montagna, who had been elevated to the head of the Bonanno family and was recently deported.
A federal law enforcement official said Mr. Seccafico had been under federal investigation when he was killed, though the official would not describe the nature of the investigation. When Mr. Seccafico was arrested in 2002, he was in the mobster Patrick DeFilippo’s crew, the official said. Mr. DeFilippo, who lived in Manhattan, operated out of the Bronx, and Mr. Seccafico “spent a little time in the Bronx,” the official said. Mr. DeFilippo is serving 40 years in federal prison for racketeering conspiracy, gambling and loan sharking. Mr. Seccafico became a “made” member of the Bonanno crime family after 2003, the official said.
The official said that according to a list obtained by federal authorities, Mr. Seccafico was proposed for membership in the family by Mr. DeFilippo.
An investigator familiar with Mr. Seccafico said he had been a laborer and a member of Local 79 of the Construction and General Building Laborers’ Union. That investigator said Mr. Seccafico was “just a runner” for the 2002 gambling operation.
Before his arrest in connection with the organized crime ring, Mr. Seccafico had a criminal record dating to 1984, when he was arrested on drug and gun charges. He served less than a year for selling a controlled substance. After his 1996 arrest in Coney Island, Mr. Seccafico pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon and served eight days in jail and three years’ probation.
In stark contrast to his life as a soldier for the New York mob, Mr. Seccafico was described by neighbors as a blue-collar family man who worked to support his wife and two young children. “They’re very, very nice people,” said Mona Gaber, a neighbor of the Seccafico family. Ms. Gaber said she would often see Mr. Seccafico come home still dirty from his job as a construction worker.
Thanks to Dominick Tao
The man, Anthony Seccafico, was waiting for a bus near his town house on Ilyssa Way about 4:30 a.m. when an unknown number of attackers opened fire, law enforcement officials said.
Witnesses told the police that they heard seven shots and passers-by discovered Mr. Seccafico bleeding in the street about 100 feet from the bus stop, on Arthur Kill Road, the authorities said. Mr. Seccafico, 46, who was waiting for the X17 bus to take him to work in Manhattan, was shot several times and apparently tried to flee his attackers, investigators said. He was taken to Staten Island University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, the police said.
On Thursday, detectives were trying to determine the motive behind the killing. A police official said it was possible that it was related to Mr. Seccafico’s criminal history, including a 1996 case in Coney Island in which he was charged with four counts of assault and illegal possession of a weapon.
The medical examiner’s office has scheduled an autopsy for Friday morning.
In November 2002, Mr. Seccafico was arrested with 19 others on charges of participating in a $2.5 million-a-year gambling ring as part of a Bonanno crew.
Mr. Seccafico pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges, and received a three-month sentence. Also involved in that case was Salvatore Montagna, who had been elevated to the head of the Bonanno family and was recently deported.
A federal law enforcement official said Mr. Seccafico had been under federal investigation when he was killed, though the official would not describe the nature of the investigation. When Mr. Seccafico was arrested in 2002, he was in the mobster Patrick DeFilippo’s crew, the official said. Mr. DeFilippo, who lived in Manhattan, operated out of the Bronx, and Mr. Seccafico “spent a little time in the Bronx,” the official said. Mr. DeFilippo is serving 40 years in federal prison for racketeering conspiracy, gambling and loan sharking. Mr. Seccafico became a “made” member of the Bonanno crime family after 2003, the official said.
The official said that according to a list obtained by federal authorities, Mr. Seccafico was proposed for membership in the family by Mr. DeFilippo.
An investigator familiar with Mr. Seccafico said he had been a laborer and a member of Local 79 of the Construction and General Building Laborers’ Union. That investigator said Mr. Seccafico was “just a runner” for the 2002 gambling operation.
Before his arrest in connection with the organized crime ring, Mr. Seccafico had a criminal record dating to 1984, when he was arrested on drug and gun charges. He served less than a year for selling a controlled substance. After his 1996 arrest in Coney Island, Mr. Seccafico pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon and served eight days in jail and three years’ probation.
In stark contrast to his life as a soldier for the New York mob, Mr. Seccafico was described by neighbors as a blue-collar family man who worked to support his wife and two young children. “They’re very, very nice people,” said Mona Gaber, a neighbor of the Seccafico family. Ms. Gaber said she would often see Mr. Seccafico come home still dirty from his job as a construction worker.
Thanks to Dominick Tao
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Mafia Drama, Brotherhood, Cancelled
Showtime has confirmed that the drama Brotherhood, about two Irish brothers on opposite sides of the law, has been cancelled.
After three seasons on TV the show, set in Providence, will not be renewed. Brotherhood's story was one told many times before, but with a New England mafia twist: Tommy (Jason Clarke) and Michael (Jason Isaacs) Caffee, Irish-American brothers, find themselves on enemy fronts, the first being a policeman and the second a mafia professional.
E! Online's Watch With Kristin reports that, "News that the ax had officially dropped was first reported when TVShowsonDVD.com discovered that the season-three discs were to be branded 'the final season.' The cancellation news might have been surprising even for the show's own cast since, according to the same article on E!, actress Fionnula Flanagan was awaiting news from Showtime regarding the show's "on hiatus" status in February.
Thanks to Romina Massa
After three seasons on TV the show, set in Providence, will not be renewed. Brotherhood's story was one told many times before, but with a New England mafia twist: Tommy (Jason Clarke) and Michael (Jason Isaacs) Caffee, Irish-American brothers, find themselves on enemy fronts, the first being a policeman and the second a mafia professional.
E! Online's Watch With Kristin reports that, "News that the ax had officially dropped was first reported when TVShowsonDVD.com discovered that the season-three discs were to be branded 'the final season.' The cancellation news might have been surprising even for the show's own cast since, according to the same article on E!, actress Fionnula Flanagan was awaiting news from Showtime regarding the show's "on hiatus" status in February.
Thanks to Romina Massa
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Reputed Chicago Outfit Informant Battles Cook County State's Attorney for Child Custody
A politically connected Cook County state's attorney's office employee threatened to use her position to expose her ex-boyfriend as a federal informant against the Outfit, voice mail messages played in court suggest.
Prosecutors are investigating two cell phone messages that narcotics unit administrator Patti Simone left the father of her children, Nicky Rosales, during a bitter split earlier this year, Cook County State's Atty. Anita Alvarez's spokeswoman Sally Daly said. The tapes were played by Rosales on Friday for a family court judge handling the couple's custody battle.
In the first message, Simone refers to several alleged Outfit-connected suburbs and neighborhoods, threatening to expose Rosales unless he moves out of their Palos Hills apartment. "Everyone will know that you are working with the government," she warns. "Do you understand?"
In the second, Simone tells Rosales, "There are several investigators who will be more than happy to let certain people know you are cooperating with the Feds -- do you understand?"
Simone left the messages April 4 after Rosales told her he had a gun and implied he would abduct the couple's daughter and son, evidence showed.
Rosales had sent a series of "scary" text messages to her before she responded by recording the voice mail messages, an emotional Simone on Friday told Judge Martha Mills. "I thought he was capable of anything," Simone added, saying Rosales had held a gun to her head in 2008.
She and Rosales, who had been together on-and-off for 10 years, finally separated this spring. Mills on Friday awarded Simone a protection order against Rosales, saying she found his claims that he hadn't threatened Simone "incredible."
Rosales denies pending charges of violating an earlier interim protection order.
Daly said the state's attorney could still bring "disciplinary or criminal" charges against Simone over the voice mail messages.
Simone works in Alvarez's narcotics unit. She has continued to work at the Criminal Court building since the tapes surfaced. She is the daughter of Palos Township Democratic Committeeman Sam Simone.
The godfather to her children is Richie "The Cat" Catazone, reputed to run the Chicago Outfit's 26th Street gambling operation, while Rosales' cousin is convicted mob hit man Harry Aleman, Rosales said.
Speaking outside court, he denied being a federal informant.
Simone declined to comment. Her attorney, Joseph Parisi, said the judge's decision to grant an order of protection showed Simone was in the right.
FBI spokeswoman Virginia Wright declined to comment.
Thanks to Kim Jannsen
Prosecutors are investigating two cell phone messages that narcotics unit administrator Patti Simone left the father of her children, Nicky Rosales, during a bitter split earlier this year, Cook County State's Atty. Anita Alvarez's spokeswoman Sally Daly said. The tapes were played by Rosales on Friday for a family court judge handling the couple's custody battle.
In the first message, Simone refers to several alleged Outfit-connected suburbs and neighborhoods, threatening to expose Rosales unless he moves out of their Palos Hills apartment. "Everyone will know that you are working with the government," she warns. "Do you understand?"
In the second, Simone tells Rosales, "There are several investigators who will be more than happy to let certain people know you are cooperating with the Feds -- do you understand?"
Simone left the messages April 4 after Rosales told her he had a gun and implied he would abduct the couple's daughter and son, evidence showed.
Rosales had sent a series of "scary" text messages to her before she responded by recording the voice mail messages, an emotional Simone on Friday told Judge Martha Mills. "I thought he was capable of anything," Simone added, saying Rosales had held a gun to her head in 2008.
She and Rosales, who had been together on-and-off for 10 years, finally separated this spring. Mills on Friday awarded Simone a protection order against Rosales, saying she found his claims that he hadn't threatened Simone "incredible."
Rosales denies pending charges of violating an earlier interim protection order.
Daly said the state's attorney could still bring "disciplinary or criminal" charges against Simone over the voice mail messages.
Simone works in Alvarez's narcotics unit. She has continued to work at the Criminal Court building since the tapes surfaced. She is the daughter of Palos Township Democratic Committeeman Sam Simone.
The godfather to her children is Richie "The Cat" Catazone, reputed to run the Chicago Outfit's 26th Street gambling operation, while Rosales' cousin is convicted mob hit man Harry Aleman, Rosales said.
Speaking outside court, he denied being a federal informant.
Simone declined to comment. Her attorney, Joseph Parisi, said the judge's decision to grant an order of protection showed Simone was in the right.
FBI spokeswoman Virginia Wright declined to comment.
Thanks to Kim Jannsen
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