Lefty, Lucky, the Ant, Bugsy, the Snake, the Chin, Scarface, the Brain. The monikers of mobsters are like the nicknames of odd superheroes. They are two syllables of rat-tat firing, evoking creepy animals, physical protrusions or uncanny powers. And now, here in a city where such figures were once as comfortably in their element as Zeus and his family on Olympus, they are finally getting something close to the museum they deserve: the Mob Museum, a $42 million survey of the American gangster, unfolding in 17,000 square feet of exhibition space, on three floors of a 41,000-square-foot landmark building on Stewart Avenue.
With artifacts, clever interactive displays, atmospheric exhibits, photographs and videos, we learn how Las Vegas developed out of the early 20th century desert, and how workers on the nearby Hoover Dam gave the town its first population explosion. We see how the mob maneuvered into businesses of pleasure, not releasing its hold until late in the 20th century when corporate casinos trumped their almost quaint predecessors.
We learn, too, of these Jewish and Italian immigrants who treated the “land of opportunity,” as “the opportunity to grab what they could,” and by trafficking in blood and booze built up national empires, until they were brought down with wiretaps, informants and more blood.
Like many things in mob-related American culture (even those nicknames), the museum mixes attraction and repulsion, sentimentality and hard-edged realism, relish and disgust. Like a gangster movie, it seduces us with these figures with one hand, and reminds us, with the other, of the demands of justice. Its alluring colloquial title, Mob Museum, is countered with a stern subtitle on the facade of this 1933 neo-Classical former post office and courthouse: the “National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.”
And while the museum seeks a kind of romantic appeal by opening on Valentine’s Day – the 83rd anniversary, it points out, of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, when members of George “Bugs” Moran’s gang were murdered by Al Capone’s rival thugs posing as police officers – it also makes sure to deflate gangster romance by reminding us that this cold-blooded episode was so horrific, it led to a turning point, spurring expanded federal investigation. We even see a portion of the original brick wall where the massacre took place, pockmarked by circled bullet holes; it serves as an eerie screen on which one of the museum’s many short films, “Bootleg Wars,” is projected.
The tension between allure and disgust recurs throughout. We may be shocked by the description of Bruno Facciola’s murder in New York City in 1990 (shot in both eyes, stabbed and a dead canary jammed in his mouth), but we also see photographs of 1950s celebrities in mob-run casinos and of glamorous film stars playing criminals. The mob is portrayed as weaving a web of evil (the museum believes John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the result of mob involvement in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro) but also as an object of fascination.
The exhibition designers, Gallagher & Associates, and the “content developers” Barrie Projects and the curator, Kathleen Coakley Barrie, begin their double-edge treatment soon after you enter the lobby where the original post boxes are still in place behind video screens and text panels.
You are lured in with an overused museological conceit: You are treated as a mobster “under suspicion.” The elevator to the third floor where the exhibitions begin includes a video of a policeman sternly reading you your Miranda rights, and the first “gallery” is a police “lineup” where photos are taken (eventually to be sold at the museum shop).
That conceit, though, is soon left behind. The emphasis is ultimately placed not on the mysterious appeal of the mob, but on the fight against it. The museum’s heart is a splendidly restored courtroom, where the Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce held its seventh hearing in 1950, led by Sen. Estes Kefauver. The Kefauver hearings were held in cities across the country, televised live and seen by 30 million people – the first media sensation. Here, that courtroom becomes the backdrop to a film about the hearings.
Emphasis on enforcement grows as the exhibitions proceed, with accounts of bugged homes and telephone booths, informants marked for death, and undercover agents trying to prevent killings. The museum never leaves behind hints of mob romance – one gallery includes heart-warming family photos of mob figures – but such fascination is never allowed to go unanswered: The next gallery is a chronicle of thuggery and blood.
There can be no surprise in the ultimate emphasis. The president of the nonprofit governing board of the museum, Ellen B. Knowlton, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and had been in charge of the agency’s Las Vegas division. Another board member, and one of the forces behind the museum, is Oscar B. Goodman, who served as Las Vegas mayor until term limits forced his retirement; he was then able to swear in his wife, Carolyn G. Goodman, the current mayor, in his place.
Even Goodman has two perspectives, one as former mayor, and the other as a former defense lawyer for many of the city’s mobsters, including Meyer Lansky and Anthony Spilotro. Las Vegas, to no surprise, doesn’t come off badly in this account of its mob-marred past. This museum is meant to be an anchor to revive the downtown area. The bulk of the funding has come from the city, with additional assistance from the state and federal governments including almost $9 million in grants for the restoration and preservation of the landmark building by the architects, Westlake Reed Leskosky.
Does Las Vegas get off too easy? Maybe it always did. One comment cited here is credited to Tony Accardo, a Chicago mob boss: “We don’t want no blood there,” he said. “It’s bad for tourist business.”
And in a gallery devoted to what is wryly called the mob’s “greatest hits,” the murders are mainly in cities other than Las Vegas. Besides, look around, outside of downtown: the economic veneer has chipped in recent years, but the legacy of mob-run spectacle and sensation is still astonishing.
But the gangster romance is far more dominant in another mob exhibition in town. Called “Las Vegas Mob Experience” when it opened last year at the Tropicana, it turned visitors into mob aspirants on a journey through various stage sets representing mob history, met along the way by moving images of James Caan, Mickey Rourke and other cinematic mob personas addressing them.
The show went melodramatically bankrupt but will soon be revived under new ownership as “Mob Attraction Las Vegas.” Visitors will move through stage sets of mob history; at the center is a series of galleries of artifacts provided by local gangster families. In a gallery labeled “To Meyer Lansky,” there are his home movies, outfits and favorite poems; in another is living-room furniture of Sam Giancana, Capone’s “efficient and ruthless triggerman.” We are indeed meant to be attracted by these figures; and a tour I took of the show’s planned script suggests that it will turn the mob into an amusing entertainment, refusing to take itself too seriously.
The Mob Museum has entirely different interests, but the tension with mob romance remains. And to a certain extent, that may be unavoidable, partly because of where we are standing: “Las Vegas was an ‘open city,”’ the exhibition tells us, “meaning that no one syndicate dominated the town. That made it an exciting destination for mobsters nationwide who were eager to start fresh and launch new ventures.”
The mob-run hotels even shaped Las Vegas culture as we know it. Sure, they were bad guys, but the appeal here was to the potential bad guy in everyone, while guaranteeing a degree of immunity: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” In displays here, the hotels of the 1950s and '60s have an avant-gardish freewheeling style. We see a photo of Elvis Presley and Liberace clowning around in the 1950s, or of Marlene Dietrich performing with Louis Armstrong at the Riviera in 1962. One picture here from the Sands shows a floating crap game that puts Nathan Detroit to shame: It is being played on a pool raft.
Moreover, in their embrace of lawlessness and in their assertion of power over life and death, mobsters could seem masters of the very forces of chance to which gamblers here are in thrall. Their gestures and decisions were as swift and sure as the click of a ball falling into a slot on the roulette wheel; their killings as mechanically ruthless as the spinning fruit on one-arm bandits. They are still the gods of Vegas. And here, with great verve, they have become objects of both homage and retribution.
Thanks to LVS
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Mark Hay Gets Six Years in Prison
A burglar who was a key government informant against reputed Chicago mobsters has been sentenced to six years in prison for his crimes.
Prosecutors sought leniency for 56-year-old Mark Hay, noting that he'll likely be in the witness protection program for the rest of his life.
Hay was in a criminal group overseen by Michael "The Large Guy" Sarno, a mob boss recently sentenced to 25 years in prison for racketeering and other charges.
Hay wore a wire during meetings with group members and helped the government get others to become witnesses.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu says the so-called Chicago Outfit "does not look kindly on individuals who cooperate against it."
Hay allegedly continued to commit burglaries after promising the government he wouldn't commit crimes while cooperating.
Prosecutors sought leniency for 56-year-old Mark Hay, noting that he'll likely be in the witness protection program for the rest of his life.
Hay was in a criminal group overseen by Michael "The Large Guy" Sarno, a mob boss recently sentenced to 25 years in prison for racketeering and other charges.
Hay wore a wire during meetings with group members and helped the government get others to become witnesses.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu says the so-called Chicago Outfit "does not look kindly on individuals who cooperate against it."
Hay allegedly continued to commit burglaries after promising the government he wouldn't commit crimes while cooperating.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Whitey Bulger's Defense Team Objects to Trial Date
James “Whitey” Bulger, the reputed Boston mobster and former FBI informant who was captured last year after 16 years on the run, will face trial Nov. 5, a federal judge said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler in Boston set the trial date today over the objection of Bulger’s court-appointed attorney, J.W. Carney Jr. Prosecutors have inundated him with 580,000 pages of documents and 921 tapes of secret wiretaps related to the 48-count racketeering indictment, Carney said.
“We can’t possibly be ready,” he told the judge. His client didn’t attend today’s hearing.
Bulger, 82, and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, were arrested in June after the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working on a tip, lured the fugitive out of an apartment building in Santa Monica, California. Bulger was wanted in connection with at least 19 murders committed from 1973 to 1985 and crimes including extortion, bookmaking and drug trafficking.
“I think it’s best I give you a strict timeline,” Bowler told Carney and federal prosecutors. “I urge you to work in a cooperative fashion. This is a monumental task.” She said Carney could request funding to hire more lawyers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly told the judge that Bulger is trying to delay trial by raising issues prosecutors have already litigated.
“Mr. Bulger is trying to run out the clock,” Kelly said. He said Bulger’s attorney has suggested in court papers that he may argue his client had immunity to commit crimes while working as an informant under corrupt FBI agents.
The federal courts threw out an attempt by Bulger’s partner, Stephen Flemmi, to claim immunity as an informant.
“FBI agents don’t have the authority to grant immunity,” Kelly said.
Bulger’s and Flemmi’s former FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., served a 10-year federal sentence for racketeering and is now serving 40 years in state prison in Florida for his role in the murder of a former Bulger associate in Miami.
The case is U.S. v. Bulger, 99-10371, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
Thanks to Janelle Lawrence
U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler in Boston set the trial date today over the objection of Bulger’s court-appointed attorney, J.W. Carney Jr. Prosecutors have inundated him with 580,000 pages of documents and 921 tapes of secret wiretaps related to the 48-count racketeering indictment, Carney said.
“We can’t possibly be ready,” he told the judge. His client didn’t attend today’s hearing.
Bulger, 82, and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, were arrested in June after the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working on a tip, lured the fugitive out of an apartment building in Santa Monica, California. Bulger was wanted in connection with at least 19 murders committed from 1973 to 1985 and crimes including extortion, bookmaking and drug trafficking.
“I think it’s best I give you a strict timeline,” Bowler told Carney and federal prosecutors. “I urge you to work in a cooperative fashion. This is a monumental task.” She said Carney could request funding to hire more lawyers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly told the judge that Bulger is trying to delay trial by raising issues prosecutors have already litigated.
“Mr. Bulger is trying to run out the clock,” Kelly said. He said Bulger’s attorney has suggested in court papers that he may argue his client had immunity to commit crimes while working as an informant under corrupt FBI agents.
The federal courts threw out an attempt by Bulger’s partner, Stephen Flemmi, to claim immunity as an informant.
“FBI agents don’t have the authority to grant immunity,” Kelly said.
Bulger’s and Flemmi’s former FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., served a 10-year federal sentence for racketeering and is now serving 40 years in state prison in Florida for his role in the murder of a former Bulger associate in Miami.
The case is U.S. v. Bulger, 99-10371, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston).
Thanks to Janelle Lawrence
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Appellate Judge Raises Concerns Over Family Secrets Mob Trial Judge
A federal appellate judge has expressed misgivings about a lower court judge's contact with jurors during Chicago's highest profile mob trial in decades — one credited with helping to weaken organized crime.
The judge commented Monday as attorneys for convicted reputed mobsters argued for a do-over of the 2007 Family Secrets trial before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jurors five years ago convicted reputed mob boss James Marcello and others of racketeering conspiracy that included 18 murders.
Appellate Judge Diane Wood told Monday's hearing she's concerned by accounts that trial Judge James Zagel seemed to have "private chats" with jurors that didn't become part of the official trial record.
Defense attorney Francis Lipuma singled out how Zagel dismissed one juror without consulting the trial lawyers.
The judge commented Monday as attorneys for convicted reputed mobsters argued for a do-over of the 2007 Family Secrets trial before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Jurors five years ago convicted reputed mob boss James Marcello and others of racketeering conspiracy that included 18 murders.
Appellate Judge Diane Wood told Monday's hearing she's concerned by accounts that trial Judge James Zagel seemed to have "private chats" with jurors that didn't become part of the official trial record.
Defense attorney Francis Lipuma singled out how Zagel dismissed one juror without consulting the trial lawyers.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Little Jimmy Marcello Returns to Chicago After Unauthorized Trip To West Coast
After a whirlwind swing to the West Coast and back, courtesy of the American taxpayers and a monumental goof up by federal authorities, Outfit boss Jimmy Marcello is back home.
On Sunday, Marcello was once again listed on the register of the friendly confines of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, after a federal judge angrily ordered his return last Friday.
The 68-year-old Outfit boss, serving a life term for murders and mayhem following conviction in the Operation Family Secrets trial, had been abruptly moved from the MCC two weeks ago to a prison in California. The transfer had apparently not been ordered or authorized.
When Marcello's attorney filed a motion suggesting the transfer was a result of government foul play, government attorneys last Friday said there had been a "miscommunication."
An irked U.S. District Judge James Zagel told prosecutors that, "this is something that should not have been done. I don't know how you are going to get him back here, but you're going to get him back here."
The message must have resonated with prosecutors and officials at the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service that operates the nation's prisoner transport network.
Although authorities on Friday declined to report exactly how Marcello would be transferred back to Chicago, it was accomplished with extraordinary speed and efficiency. The presumption is that Marcello was put on an aircraft operated by the Marshals Service, in it's division known as "JPATS," the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transport System.
Marcello made it from the Atwater penitentiary more than 150 miles east of San Francisco where he was still housed on Friday to the Chicago MCC on Sunday. The JPATS system shuttles 1,400 prisoners a day throughout the U.S. on a fleet of government and charter aircraft, buses, vans and cars.
Authorities told the I-Team on Friday that there was only one JPATS flight in and out of Chicago each week but it is not clear whether Marcello was on that flight or if authorities made separate arrangements.
The prisoner transport program, made famous by Hollywood in the movie Con Air, costs more than $150 million a year for the U.S. government to operate.
Marcello's mistaken, unnecessary trip to California and back cost taxpayers about $4,000. He will remain in Chicago as his appeal is heard, so that he can assist in case preparation according to Judge Zagel.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
On Sunday, Marcello was once again listed on the register of the friendly confines of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, after a federal judge angrily ordered his return last Friday.
The 68-year-old Outfit boss, serving a life term for murders and mayhem following conviction in the Operation Family Secrets trial, had been abruptly moved from the MCC two weeks ago to a prison in California. The transfer had apparently not been ordered or authorized.
When Marcello's attorney filed a motion suggesting the transfer was a result of government foul play, government attorneys last Friday said there had been a "miscommunication."
An irked U.S. District Judge James Zagel told prosecutors that, "this is something that should not have been done. I don't know how you are going to get him back here, but you're going to get him back here."
The message must have resonated with prosecutors and officials at the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service that operates the nation's prisoner transport network.
Although authorities on Friday declined to report exactly how Marcello would be transferred back to Chicago, it was accomplished with extraordinary speed and efficiency. The presumption is that Marcello was put on an aircraft operated by the Marshals Service, in it's division known as "JPATS," the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transport System.
Marcello made it from the Atwater penitentiary more than 150 miles east of San Francisco where he was still housed on Friday to the Chicago MCC on Sunday. The JPATS system shuttles 1,400 prisoners a day throughout the U.S. on a fleet of government and charter aircraft, buses, vans and cars.
Authorities told the I-Team on Friday that there was only one JPATS flight in and out of Chicago each week but it is not clear whether Marcello was on that flight or if authorities made separate arrangements.
The prisoner transport program, made famous by Hollywood in the movie Con Air, costs more than $150 million a year for the U.S. government to operate.
Marcello's mistaken, unnecessary trip to California and back cost taxpayers about $4,000. He will remain in Chicago as his appeal is heard, so that he can assist in case preparation according to Judge Zagel.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Friday, February 10, 2012
Michael Sarno Gets 25 Years in Prison and $1.7 Million+ Fine
A reputed mob boss known for his wide girth and reputation for violence was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday in a federal court in Chicago.
Michael "The Large Guy" Sarno also was ordered to pay nearly $1.8 million in restitution. A jury convicted Sarno, 54, and four co-defendants in 2010 of racketeering and other charges.
Just before U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman handed down the sentence, Sarno read from a statement in which he acknowledged "deep regrets." He asked his lawyers to read the rest after he choked up with emotion. Sarno's family sobbed as his attorney, Jeffrey Steinback, finished the statement, which referred lovingly to Sarno's children and wife.
Government attorneys say Sarno and his crew wanted to warn a game distributor not to encroach on their video-poker turf on Chicago's South Side and in the city's suburbs. To make this point, federal prosecutors say Sarno ordered C&S Coin Operated Amusements' Berwyn offices bombed in 2003.
Experts say Sarno's background as an enforcer wouldn't normally have translated into a top mob job. But with aging kingpins behind bars or dying, a weakened Chicago Outfit offered positions to men like Sarno.
His attorney said before sentencing that Sarno is in poor health, suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, and is "not going to live 25 years."
The judge said he recognized the hardship on Sarno's family was real and "a tragedy." But he said he decided on the lengthy sentence to protect the public and send a message to others who might be tempted to "follow in (Sarno's) footsteps."
He added that Sarno's two prior felony convictions failed to deter him. "He appears single-mindedly determined to engage in criminal conduct of an organized nature," Guzman said.
Sarno's attorneys told the judge they intend to appeal.
Sarno, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, blew a kiss to his family as he was led out of the courtroom.
After the hearing, prosecutors praised the judge's decision and thanked investigators who helped build the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said the sentence "sends a very powerful message that if you are intent upon using force or violence through your connection with organized crime, you're going to pay a heavy price to do that."
Thanks to Carla K. Johnson
Michael "The Large Guy" Sarno also was ordered to pay nearly $1.8 million in restitution. A jury convicted Sarno, 54, and four co-defendants in 2010 of racketeering and other charges.
Just before U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman handed down the sentence, Sarno read from a statement in which he acknowledged "deep regrets." He asked his lawyers to read the rest after he choked up with emotion. Sarno's family sobbed as his attorney, Jeffrey Steinback, finished the statement, which referred lovingly to Sarno's children and wife.
Government attorneys say Sarno and his crew wanted to warn a game distributor not to encroach on their video-poker turf on Chicago's South Side and in the city's suburbs. To make this point, federal prosecutors say Sarno ordered C&S Coin Operated Amusements' Berwyn offices bombed in 2003.
Experts say Sarno's background as an enforcer wouldn't normally have translated into a top mob job. But with aging kingpins behind bars or dying, a weakened Chicago Outfit offered positions to men like Sarno.
His attorney said before sentencing that Sarno is in poor health, suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, and is "not going to live 25 years."
The judge said he recognized the hardship on Sarno's family was real and "a tragedy." But he said he decided on the lengthy sentence to protect the public and send a message to others who might be tempted to "follow in (Sarno's) footsteps."
He added that Sarno's two prior felony convictions failed to deter him. "He appears single-mindedly determined to engage in criminal conduct of an organized nature," Guzman said.
Sarno's attorneys told the judge they intend to appeal.
Sarno, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, blew a kiss to his family as he was led out of the courtroom.
After the hearing, prosecutors praised the judge's decision and thanked investigators who helped build the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu said the sentence "sends a very powerful message that if you are intent upon using force or violence through your connection with organized crime, you're going to pay a heavy price to do that."
Thanks to Carla K. Johnson
Finally, The Truth About Al Capone’s Involvement In The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
“Contrary to public opinion, Al Capone did not die in prison and he did not die of syphilis,” states Deirdre Marie Capone. The grand niece who lived in the house of her famous (and favorite) uncle knew him well and recalls the man who taught her to ride a bike, swim, and play the mandolin. Already a best-seller on Amazon, her explicit memoir, Uncle Al Capone…The Untold Story From Inside His Family (Recap Publishing LLC), tells many never-before-known facts about this iconic figure’s life and death.
As the last member of the family born with the name Capone, Deirdre recalls what life was like as a child growing up in the Capone household and shares fond memories of her relationship with Al’s sister Mafalda, affectionately known to her as Aunt Maffie.
Deirdre knows what the ‘family’ was really like, and what the ‘outfit’ was all about. In her tell-all book she shares details untold until now; that “Ralph and Al Capone lobbied the Nevada legislature to legalize gambling, alcohol and prostitution in that state; that they were the owners of the first upscale casino in Las Vegas way before Bugsy Siegel came to Vegas, and what really happened in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
Attempts by Deirdre’s own father to live a more legitimate lifestyle and shake the shame of the Capone name failed, resulting in him taking his own life when she was just ten years old. Deirdre had tried to hide the fact she was a Capone for most of her own life – even leaving Chicago in her early thirties to start over in Minnesota and telling no one her real name except her husband. That changed the day her son came home from school and announced they were studying Al Capone in class and she and her husband agreed it was time to tell the kids her ancestry. Her fears were put to rest when the kids announced it was totally ‘cool’ and, at age 34, she finally accepted herself as Deirdre Marie Capone and today her 14 grandchildren are proud to tell the story of their ancestry.
While Uncle Al Capone is packed with fascinating stories about Al and his family, it also contains many never-before-published photos as well as authentic Capone family recipes for the food that Al and his family enjoyed. Uncle Al Capone offers a distinctly different look at a man who was endlessly depicted as the iconic mastermind behind some of the century’s most brutal killings.
Her book is a unique piece of American history and is the result of years of research and exhaustive interviews with relatives. As the last link in the Capone chain, Deirdre felt compelled to share this with the world.
For all the dissension, for all the pain, there comes a moment in our lives where we have to stand up and say: This - the good and the bad – is who I am, says Deirdre Marie Capone. For more information on this intriguing book, please visit: www.unclealcapone.com.
As the last member of the family born with the name Capone, Deirdre recalls what life was like as a child growing up in the Capone household and shares fond memories of her relationship with Al’s sister Mafalda, affectionately known to her as Aunt Maffie.
Deirdre knows what the ‘family’ was really like, and what the ‘outfit’ was all about. In her tell-all book she shares details untold until now; that “Ralph and Al Capone lobbied the Nevada legislature to legalize gambling, alcohol and prostitution in that state; that they were the owners of the first upscale casino in Las Vegas way before Bugsy Siegel came to Vegas, and what really happened in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
Attempts by Deirdre’s own father to live a more legitimate lifestyle and shake the shame of the Capone name failed, resulting in him taking his own life when she was just ten years old. Deirdre had tried to hide the fact she was a Capone for most of her own life – even leaving Chicago in her early thirties to start over in Minnesota and telling no one her real name except her husband. That changed the day her son came home from school and announced they were studying Al Capone in class and she and her husband agreed it was time to tell the kids her ancestry. Her fears were put to rest when the kids announced it was totally ‘cool’ and, at age 34, she finally accepted herself as Deirdre Marie Capone and today her 14 grandchildren are proud to tell the story of their ancestry.
While Uncle Al Capone is packed with fascinating stories about Al and his family, it also contains many never-before-published photos as well as authentic Capone family recipes for the food that Al and his family enjoyed. Uncle Al Capone offers a distinctly different look at a man who was endlessly depicted as the iconic mastermind behind some of the century’s most brutal killings.
Her book is a unique piece of American history and is the result of years of research and exhaustive interviews with relatives. As the last link in the Capone chain, Deirdre felt compelled to share this with the world.
For all the dissension, for all the pain, there comes a moment in our lives where we have to stand up and say: This - the good and the bad – is who I am, says Deirdre Marie Capone. For more information on this intriguing book, please visit: www.unclealcapone.com.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Is Angela “Big Ang” Raiola America's Newest Sweetheart?
America’s newest sweetheart is a chain-smoking Staten Island diva with a passion for plastic surgery.
She’s Angela “Big Ang” Raiola,
the latest cast member on the VH1 reality show “Mob Wives.”
Raiola debuted on the Jan. 1 second-season premiere when she tried — unsuccessfully — to get feuding “Mob Wives” co-stars Karen Gravano and Drita D’Avanzo to settle their differences. The result may have been a massive, punch-throwing fight that disrupted a lavish party for cast mate Renee Graziano, but it also put Raiola on the fast track to fame.
One fan even got a tattoo of Raiola’s face — with her trademark collagen-enhanced lips — and the image went viral.
“I’m very overwhelmed at how big I became,” Raiola told the Herald. “It’s been crazy, out of control. Everywhere I am, people are stopping me. Or they’re sending fan mail to my bar.”
That’s the Drunken Monkey, for those un-familiar with Staten Island hot spots. “I never thought this would happen,” added Raiola, 52, niece of late mob captain Salvatore “Sally Dogs” Lombardi. “But it’s fun. It’s very ex-citing.”
“Big Ang is like the godmother of all of us. She has all the wisdom,” D’Avanzo said in a recent episode.
Raiola explained that the nickname, “Big Ang,” came from growing up in Brooklyn as one of two girls named Ang in the neighborhood.
“My girlfriend, she was very tiny and I was tall, so I became ‘Big Ang’ and she’s ‘Little Ang,’ ” she said.
Raiola said she’s friends with all the cast members, but feels closest to Graziano, saying: “I like every-thing about Renee. I’ve known her since she was a teenager. She’s a good person and has a big heart. She’s very sensitive. I real-ly like her.”
Raspy-voiced Raiola admits to a tummy tuck, liposuction, three breast implant surgeries and wanting a face-lift — and confesses an affinity for dating “wiseguys,” who she says have bought her million-dollar homes and Jaguars in the past.
“Big Ang” is still taking in her newfound fame and has not accepted commercial endorsements — yet — even as VH1 announces a spinoff, “Mob Wives: Chicago,” to debut with a different cast by the end of the year.
“I’m going to take it day to day,” said Raiola. “I’ll see what comes and go with it.”
Thanks to Dan O'Brien
She’s Angela “Big Ang” Raiola,
the latest cast member on the VH1 reality show “Mob Wives.”Raiola debuted on the Jan. 1 second-season premiere when she tried — unsuccessfully — to get feuding “Mob Wives” co-stars Karen Gravano and Drita D’Avanzo to settle their differences. The result may have been a massive, punch-throwing fight that disrupted a lavish party for cast mate Renee Graziano, but it also put Raiola on the fast track to fame.
One fan even got a tattoo of Raiola’s face — with her trademark collagen-enhanced lips — and the image went viral.
“I’m very overwhelmed at how big I became,” Raiola told the Herald. “It’s been crazy, out of control. Everywhere I am, people are stopping me. Or they’re sending fan mail to my bar.”
That’s the Drunken Monkey, for those un-familiar with Staten Island hot spots. “I never thought this would happen,” added Raiola, 52, niece of late mob captain Salvatore “Sally Dogs” Lombardi. “But it’s fun. It’s very ex-citing.”
“Big Ang is like the godmother of all of us. She has all the wisdom,” D’Avanzo said in a recent episode.
Raiola explained that the nickname, “Big Ang,” came from growing up in Brooklyn as one of two girls named Ang in the neighborhood.
“My girlfriend, she was very tiny and I was tall, so I became ‘Big Ang’ and she’s ‘Little Ang,’ ” she said.
Raiola said she’s friends with all the cast members, but feels closest to Graziano, saying: “I like every-thing about Renee. I’ve known her since she was a teenager. She’s a good person and has a big heart. She’s very sensitive. I real-ly like her.”
Raspy-voiced Raiola admits to a tummy tuck, liposuction, three breast implant surgeries and wanting a face-lift — and confesses an affinity for dating “wiseguys,” who she says have bought her million-dollar homes and Jaguars in the past.
“Big Ang” is still taking in her newfound fame and has not accepted commercial endorsements — yet — even as VH1 announces a spinoff, “Mob Wives: Chicago,” to debut with a different cast by the end of the year.
“I’m going to take it day to day,” said Raiola. “I’ll see what comes and go with it.”
Thanks to Dan O'Brien
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Raja Lahrasib KhanPleads Guilty to Attempting to Provide Funds to Support al Qaeda in Pakistan
A Chicago man, who personally provided hundreds of dollars to an alleged terrorist leader with whom he had met in his native Pakistan, pleaded guilty yesterday to attempting to provide additional funds to the same individual after learning he was working with al Qaeda. The defendant, Raja Lahrasib Khan, a Chicago taxi driver and native of Pakistan who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, resolving charges that have been pending since he was arrested in March 2010.
Khan, 58, of Chicago’s north side, never posed any imminent domestic danger, law enforcement officials said at the time of his arrest. He remains in federal custody while awaiting sentencing, which U.S. District Judge James Zagel scheduled for 2 p.m. on May 30, 2011.
Khan faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. His plea agreement calls for an agreed sentence of between five and eight years in prison, and it requires Khan to cooperate with the government in any matter in which he is called upon to assist through the termination of his sentence and any period of supervised release.
The guilty plea was announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI.
Khan, who was born and resided in the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan before immigrating to the United States in the late 1970s, admitted that he met with Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of the Kashmir independence movement, in Pakistan in the early to mid-2000s and again in 2008. At the time of the second meeting, Khan knew or had reason to believe that Kashmiri was working with al Qaeda, in addition to leading attacks against the Indian government in the Kashmir region. During their 2008 meeting, Kashmiri told Khan that Osama bin Laden was alive, healthy, and giving orders, and Khan gave Kashmiri approximately 20,000 Pakistani rupees (approximately $200 to $250), which he intended Kashmiri to use to support attacks against India.
On Nov. 23, 2009, Khan sent approximately 77,917 rupees (approximately $930) from Chicago to an individual in Pakistan, via Western Union, and then directed the individual by phone to give Kashmiri approximately 25,000 rupees (approximately $300). Although Khan intended the funds to be used by Kashmiri to support attacks against India, he was also aware that Kashmiri was working with al Qaeda.
In February and March 2010, Khan participated in several meetings with an undercover law enforcement agent who posed as someone interested in sending money to Kashmiri to purchase weapons and ammunition, but only if Kashmiri was working with al Qaeda, as well as sending individuals into Pakistan to receive military-style training so they could conduct attacks against U.S. forces and interests. On March 17, 2010, the undercover agent provided Khan with $1,000, which Khan agreed to provide to Kashmiri. Khan then gave the funds to his son, who was traveling from the United States to the United Kingdom (U.K.), intending to later retrieve the money from his son in the U.K. and subsequently provide it to Kashmiri in Pakistan.
On March 23, 2010, Khan’s son arrived at an airport in the U.K. and a search by U.K. law enforcement officials yielded seven of the ten $100 bills that the undercover agent had provided to Khan. After learning of his son’s detention, Khan attempted to end his involvement in the scheme to provide funds to Kashmiri by requesting an urgent meeting with another individual who was also present at Khan’s earlier meetings with the undercover agent. During their meeting, Khan demanded to return the undercover agent’s funds by providing $800 to this other individual.
The investigation was conducted by the Chicago FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, with particular assistance from the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police and the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher Veatch and Heather McShain and trial attorney Joseph Kaster, of the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Khan, 58, of Chicago’s north side, never posed any imminent domestic danger, law enforcement officials said at the time of his arrest. He remains in federal custody while awaiting sentencing, which U.S. District Judge James Zagel scheduled for 2 p.m. on May 30, 2011.
Khan faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. His plea agreement calls for an agreed sentence of between five and eight years in prison, and it requires Khan to cooperate with the government in any matter in which he is called upon to assist through the termination of his sentence and any period of supervised release.
The guilty plea was announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI.
Khan, who was born and resided in the Azad Kashmir region of Pakistan before immigrating to the United States in the late 1970s, admitted that he met with Ilyas Kashmiri, a leader of the Kashmir independence movement, in Pakistan in the early to mid-2000s and again in 2008. At the time of the second meeting, Khan knew or had reason to believe that Kashmiri was working with al Qaeda, in addition to leading attacks against the Indian government in the Kashmir region. During their 2008 meeting, Kashmiri told Khan that Osama bin Laden was alive, healthy, and giving orders, and Khan gave Kashmiri approximately 20,000 Pakistani rupees (approximately $200 to $250), which he intended Kashmiri to use to support attacks against India.
On Nov. 23, 2009, Khan sent approximately 77,917 rupees (approximately $930) from Chicago to an individual in Pakistan, via Western Union, and then directed the individual by phone to give Kashmiri approximately 25,000 rupees (approximately $300). Although Khan intended the funds to be used by Kashmiri to support attacks against India, he was also aware that Kashmiri was working with al Qaeda.
In February and March 2010, Khan participated in several meetings with an undercover law enforcement agent who posed as someone interested in sending money to Kashmiri to purchase weapons and ammunition, but only if Kashmiri was working with al Qaeda, as well as sending individuals into Pakistan to receive military-style training so they could conduct attacks against U.S. forces and interests. On March 17, 2010, the undercover agent provided Khan with $1,000, which Khan agreed to provide to Kashmiri. Khan then gave the funds to his son, who was traveling from the United States to the United Kingdom (U.K.), intending to later retrieve the money from his son in the U.K. and subsequently provide it to Kashmiri in Pakistan.
On March 23, 2010, Khan’s son arrived at an airport in the U.K. and a search by U.K. law enforcement officials yielded seven of the ten $100 bills that the undercover agent had provided to Khan. After learning of his son’s detention, Khan attempted to end his involvement in the scheme to provide funds to Kashmiri by requesting an urgent meeting with another individual who was also present at Khan’s earlier meetings with the undercover agent. During their meeting, Khan demanded to return the undercover agent’s funds by providing $800 to this other individual.
The investigation was conducted by the Chicago FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, with particular assistance from the Chicago Police Department, the Illinois State Police and the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher Veatch and Heather McShain and trial attorney Joseph Kaster, of the Counterterrorism Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
City of Chicago to Honor Maniac Latin Disciples with City Sticker?
Kudos to Detective Shaved Longcock for breaking a disturbing story about the City of Chicago's soon to be released city sticker design being designed both by a reputed Maniac Latin Disciples and in honor of the child killing gang.
Mob Wives Connected to Bonanno Crime Family Bust
Federal agents busted several high-ranking Bonanno crime family members last week and charged them with racketeering and extortion, authorities said.
Among those arrested in the joint FBI-Drug Enforcement Administration probe were two senior members of the Bonanno ruling administration, Anthony "TG" Graziano and Vinny Badalamenti, law enforcement sources said.
Bonanno captain Nicky Santoro was also charged in the sweep as were soldiers Vito Balsamo and Anthony Calabrese, sources said.
A Gambino crime family associate, James LaForte, was also arrested in the early morning raids, sources said.
The suspects were scheduled to be arraigned in Brooklyn federal court.
Graziano was already facing previous extortion charges in a separate case.
The massive sweep against the Bonanno leadership stems in part from the assistance of former mob associate Hector Pagan, who is the ex-husband of "Mob Wives" star Renee Graziano. Pagan is now a DEA informant.
Renee Graziano is the daughter of Anthony Graziano.
Anthony Graziano, 71, was released recently from prison, but then quickly ensnared in an earlier Drug Enforcement Administration probe that pre-dated today's developments.
In that previous case, Pagan -- a Bonanno associate-turned DEA informant -- reportedly wore a wire and secretly recorded conversations for the feds with his ex-father-in-law while discussing the collection of a loanshark debt.
Anthony Graziano was indicted by Brooklyn federal prosecutors on those earlier charges just last week.
Thanks to Mitchel Maddux
Among those arrested in the joint FBI-Drug Enforcement Administration probe were two senior members of the Bonanno ruling administration, Anthony "TG" Graziano and Vinny Badalamenti, law enforcement sources said.
Bonanno captain Nicky Santoro was also charged in the sweep as were soldiers Vito Balsamo and Anthony Calabrese, sources said.
A Gambino crime family associate, James LaForte, was also arrested in the early morning raids, sources said.
The suspects were scheduled to be arraigned in Brooklyn federal court.
Graziano was already facing previous extortion charges in a separate case.
The massive sweep against the Bonanno leadership stems in part from the assistance of former mob associate Hector Pagan, who is the ex-husband of "Mob Wives" star Renee Graziano. Pagan is now a DEA informant.
Renee Graziano is the daughter of Anthony Graziano.
Anthony Graziano, 71, was released recently from prison, but then quickly ensnared in an earlier Drug Enforcement Administration probe that pre-dated today's developments.
In that previous case, Pagan -- a Bonanno associate-turned DEA informant -- reportedly wore a wire and secretly recorded conversations for the feds with his ex-father-in-law while discussing the collection of a loanshark debt.
Anthony Graziano was indicted by Brooklyn federal prosecutors on those earlier charges just last week.
Thanks to Mitchel Maddux
Monday, February 06, 2012
"Jimmy the Man" Marcello Accusses the Government of Dirty Tricks
It has been nearly five years since several top Chicago mob bosses were convicted in the Operation Family Secrets racketeering and murder trial. In this Intelligence Report: Why one of them, James Marcello, is now accusing the government of dirty tricks.
Lawyers for James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello claim that the hoodlum is on his way to "Siberia" courtesy of the U.S. government.
Of course Marcello isn't actually headed to the Russian hinterland, but his lawyers say he has been abruptly moved from the federal lock-up in Chicago and is currently on his way to a prison 2,000 miles across the country.
Most of Marcello's relatives still live in the Chicago suburbs, near where the I-Team paid him a visit a few years ago when he was still a free man.
Now, the outfit boss is doing a life sentence for racketeering murder. During the appeal process, he had been housed at the Metro Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
With the appeal process going nowhere, federal prosecutors filed a motion to have Marcello transferred to his permanent prison assignment. The court had recommended the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which would have been convenient for Marcello's family to visit. But the Bureau of Prisons decided the hoodlum should do time in northern California at the Atwater facility. The hearing on his transfer is this week, but according to the latest court filing, Marcello's attorneys claim he was removed last Monday, bound for California, meaning "Marcello might as well have been sent to Siberia."
So, somewhere across America right now, Marcello's con caravan is on the move. We know from prison records that he went via Oklahoma, where Wednesday night he was checked into the prison at El Reno.
Marcello is now thought to be making a beeline for the West Coast, and eventually Atwater, a high-security prison on an abandoned Air Force base 130 miles from San Francisco. His Bureau of Prison record right now simply lists Marcello as "in transit."
The motion filed by Marcello's attorneys asks that the con caravan put on the brakes, do a u-turn and deliver Marcello back to the MCC in Chicago.
The I-Team didn't hear back from the mobster's lawyer Thursday, and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney declined to comment on this allegation that the government pulled a fast one by shipping Marcello out of town before his court hearing could be held on the transfer.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Lawyers for James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello claim that the hoodlum is on his way to "Siberia" courtesy of the U.S. government.
Of course Marcello isn't actually headed to the Russian hinterland, but his lawyers say he has been abruptly moved from the federal lock-up in Chicago and is currently on his way to a prison 2,000 miles across the country.
Most of Marcello's relatives still live in the Chicago suburbs, near where the I-Team paid him a visit a few years ago when he was still a free man.
Now, the outfit boss is doing a life sentence for racketeering murder. During the appeal process, he had been housed at the Metro Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
With the appeal process going nowhere, federal prosecutors filed a motion to have Marcello transferred to his permanent prison assignment. The court had recommended the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which would have been convenient for Marcello's family to visit. But the Bureau of Prisons decided the hoodlum should do time in northern California at the Atwater facility. The hearing on his transfer is this week, but according to the latest court filing, Marcello's attorneys claim he was removed last Monday, bound for California, meaning "Marcello might as well have been sent to Siberia."
So, somewhere across America right now, Marcello's con caravan is on the move. We know from prison records that he went via Oklahoma, where Wednesday night he was checked into the prison at El Reno.
Marcello is now thought to be making a beeline for the West Coast, and eventually Atwater, a high-security prison on an abandoned Air Force base 130 miles from San Francisco. His Bureau of Prison record right now simply lists Marcello as "in transit."
The motion filed by Marcello's attorneys asks that the con caravan put on the brakes, do a u-turn and deliver Marcello back to the MCC in Chicago.
The I-Team didn't hear back from the mobster's lawyer Thursday, and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney declined to comment on this allegation that the government pulled a fast one by shipping Marcello out of town before his court hearing could be held on the transfer.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Deirdre Capone Returns to Chicago This Week with Media Appearances & Book Signings Scheduled
Deirdre Capone will be on many TV and radio shows in Chicago this week. You can see her complete calendar at her web site, www.unclealcapone.com.
She will be speaking and signing books at the Barnes & Noble in Oakbrook on Saturday Feb. 11th from 11:00 am.
Dierdre just returned from New York where she was a guest on many TV shows including CBS This Morning and Fox & Friends. Those interviews are available online for viewing.
Her book Uncle Al Capone - The Untold Story from Inside His Family will be available in audio in the next couple of weeks. It is in the final stages of production. Dierdre has worked with a professional voice impressionist and all of the Al Capone quotes in the book will be in her uncles voice. No one has ever heard Al Capones voice before.
The book is also going into its second printing.
She will be speaking and signing books at the Barnes & Noble in Oakbrook on Saturday Feb. 11th from 11:00 am.
Dierdre just returned from New York where she was a guest on many TV shows including CBS This Morning and Fox & Friends. Those interviews are available online for viewing.
Her book Uncle Al Capone - The Untold Story from Inside His Family will be available in audio in the next couple of weeks. It is in the final stages of production. Dierdre has worked with a professional voice impressionist and all of the Al Capone quotes in the book will be in her uncles voice. No one has ever heard Al Capones voice before.
The book is also going into its second printing.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Vegas Rag Doll: A True Story of Terror & Survival as a Mob Hitman's Wife
My personal memory of hitman Tom Hanley dates to November 1979, when I was covering a federal court trial where he was a critical witness.
Just before leaving to spend Thanksgiving in San Diego, I told a friend that Hanley wasn't as ill as he claimed on the witness stand.
I thought he had been faking some of his confusion when he testified in a firebombing trial for four days. At 63, Hanley, a former sheet-metal union official turned hitman, seemed frail and had trouble hearing the questions put to him. He complained about his health so often, the judge ordered him to stop it.
Oops.
The day after Thanksgiving, he died of natural causes.
Hanley really was sick when he complained about his ailments while testifying against Ben Schmoutey, then the secretary-treasurer of Culinary union Local 226, charged with ordering non-union restaurants firebombed.
I've been thinking of that trial because over the holidays I read "Vegas Rag Doll: A True Story of Terror & Survival as a Mob Hitman's Wife," co-authored by Hanley's former wife, Wendy Mazaros, and Joe Schoenmann.
I could hardly wait to get to the part of the book covering the trial, the part I knew personally. Except by that time, Mazaros was married to Robert Peoples, the second murderer she wed. I never saw her at the trial, and she didn't attend Hanley's funeral a few weeks later.
Since the trial received scant mention in the book, I pulled out old clips of the trial and saw the screaming blue headlines that used to mark front-page banner stories in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"Hanley switches story," one screamed. He had testified before the grand jury that Schmoutey paid him for the firebombings. In court, he said meant to say Al Bramlet paid him. Well, that didn't help the Las Vegas Strike Force case.
Hanley and his son, Gramby, were the key witnesses against Schmoutey. The father and son had confessed to killing Bramlet, Schmoutey's predecessor, in 1977. Bramlet's nude body was found with six bullets in it, one in each ear, one in the sternum and three others in the area of his heart.
The Hanleys both testified about their own roles in firebombing nonunion restaurants that the Culinary union sought to organize. They were successful in three out of the five firebombings, which occurred between 1975 through 1977. It was long thought that Bramlet was killed because he refused to pay the Hanleys for the two failed firebombings. But there were other theories as well.
One was that the Chicago mob ordered Bramlet hit because they wanted to take more control over the Culinary union's $42 million pension fund and Bramlet was resisting. Another was perhaps Bramlet was stealing from the pension fund. Mazaros' book didn't provide a definitive answer, nor did Tom Hanley provide details during the trial.
At one point, he confessed he was answering questions though he couldn't hear the questions. Schmoutey's attorney, Oscar Goodman, didn't even bother to cross-examine him, leaving that job to other defense attorneys representing four other men also charged in the case.
U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne threw Hanley's testimony out, saying, "Hanley's testimony may go down in history as the most confusing testimony ever given in a criminal case."
On Nov. 20, 1979, Claiborne ordered all the defendants except one minor player acquitted saying the federal prosecutors hadn't proved their case. (The guy left was later acquitted as well.)
Three days later, Tom Hanley died.
Five months later in April 1980, it became public that the judge was being investigated by the Strike Force.
Claiborne later speculated that the Strike Force investigated him relentlessly partly because he dismissed the Schmoutey case.
Those were the glory days for those of us who covered federal court.
Union corruption. Political corruption. Judicial corruption. Mob murders. Scams. Some proven, some not. All intriguing.
Thanks to Jane Anne Morrison
Just before leaving to spend Thanksgiving in San Diego, I told a friend that Hanley wasn't as ill as he claimed on the witness stand.
I thought he had been faking some of his confusion when he testified in a firebombing trial for four days. At 63, Hanley, a former sheet-metal union official turned hitman, seemed frail and had trouble hearing the questions put to him. He complained about his health so often, the judge ordered him to stop it.
Oops.
The day after Thanksgiving, he died of natural causes.
Hanley really was sick when he complained about his ailments while testifying against Ben Schmoutey, then the secretary-treasurer of Culinary union Local 226, charged with ordering non-union restaurants firebombed.
I've been thinking of that trial because over the holidays I read "Vegas Rag Doll: A True Story of Terror & Survival as a Mob Hitman's Wife," co-authored by Hanley's former wife, Wendy Mazaros, and Joe Schoenmann.
I could hardly wait to get to the part of the book covering the trial, the part I knew personally. Except by that time, Mazaros was married to Robert Peoples, the second murderer she wed. I never saw her at the trial, and she didn't attend Hanley's funeral a few weeks later.
Since the trial received scant mention in the book, I pulled out old clips of the trial and saw the screaming blue headlines that used to mark front-page banner stories in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"Hanley switches story," one screamed. He had testified before the grand jury that Schmoutey paid him for the firebombings. In court, he said meant to say Al Bramlet paid him. Well, that didn't help the Las Vegas Strike Force case.
Hanley and his son, Gramby, were the key witnesses against Schmoutey. The father and son had confessed to killing Bramlet, Schmoutey's predecessor, in 1977. Bramlet's nude body was found with six bullets in it, one in each ear, one in the sternum and three others in the area of his heart.
The Hanleys both testified about their own roles in firebombing nonunion restaurants that the Culinary union sought to organize. They were successful in three out of the five firebombings, which occurred between 1975 through 1977. It was long thought that Bramlet was killed because he refused to pay the Hanleys for the two failed firebombings. But there were other theories as well.
One was that the Chicago mob ordered Bramlet hit because they wanted to take more control over the Culinary union's $42 million pension fund and Bramlet was resisting. Another was perhaps Bramlet was stealing from the pension fund. Mazaros' book didn't provide a definitive answer, nor did Tom Hanley provide details during the trial.
At one point, he confessed he was answering questions though he couldn't hear the questions. Schmoutey's attorney, Oscar Goodman, didn't even bother to cross-examine him, leaving that job to other defense attorneys representing four other men also charged in the case.
U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne threw Hanley's testimony out, saying, "Hanley's testimony may go down in history as the most confusing testimony ever given in a criminal case."
On Nov. 20, 1979, Claiborne ordered all the defendants except one minor player acquitted saying the federal prosecutors hadn't proved their case. (The guy left was later acquitted as well.)
Three days later, Tom Hanley died.
Five months later in April 1980, it became public that the judge was being investigated by the Strike Force.
Claiborne later speculated that the Strike Force investigated him relentlessly partly because he dismissed the Schmoutey case.
Those were the glory days for those of us who covered federal court.
Union corruption. Political corruption. Judicial corruption. Mob murders. Scams. Some proven, some not. All intriguing.
Thanks to Jane Anne Morrison
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Mob Month Panel & Book Signing: From Medellin to the Mob: Meet Ronin of the Underworld Kenny “Kenji” Gallo
Mob Month: From Medellin to the Mob: Meet Ronin of the Underworld Kenny “Kenji” Gallo
1/31/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Our final event features a panel discussion with Breakshot author Kenny “Kenji” Gallo about his life growing up as a mixed-race teenage dealer/distributor for South American drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, becoming a leading porn director/producer in California, partnering with West & East Coast mob families, and switching sides to become one of the most successful and notorious undercover operatives for the FBI. Joining the panel are Kenji’s former crime associate-turned-lawyer Ramon and Kenji’s ex-wife and adult film superstar Tabitha Stevens. Moderated by national TV crime commentator/author
Vito Colucci.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
1/31/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Our final event features a panel discussion with Breakshot author Kenny “Kenji” Gallo about his life growing up as a mixed-race teenage dealer/distributor for South American drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, becoming a leading porn director/producer in California, partnering with West & East Coast mob families, and switching sides to become one of the most successful and notorious undercover operatives for the FBI. Joining the panel are Kenji’s former crime associate-turned-lawyer Ramon and Kenji’s ex-wife and adult film superstar Tabitha Stevens. Moderated by national TV crime commentator/author
Vito Colucci.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Teamsters Get Former Mob Bookie Hired at The Illinois Department of Transporation Along with a Check for Over $100,000 from Taxpayers
FOX Chicago's investigators have learned that the state of Illinois has been ordered to re-hire a former mob bookie, and cut him a check for more than $100,000.
Ralph Peluso was fired in 2010 after we started asking questions about how he landed on the state payroll.
He is now back on the job, thanks to the powerful Teamsters union.
Peluso allegedly took plenty of bets during his long career as an outfit bookmaker. But even he may be stunned at how he beat the odds and scored a major payday at the expense of Illinois taxpayers.
The man who was supposed to kill Peluso certainly can't believe it. "It blew me away!” Frank Calabrese Jr. said. “This is something that the people of Illinois have to look at."
Frank Calabrese Jr., spoke with FOX Chicago News in an exclusive interview via Skype from his home in Phoenix, Ariz.
He said Pelsuo was a key part of his father's outfit street crew in the 1980s and 1990s. Peluso paid Frank Calabrese Sr. $1,000 a week in street tax, in return for the mob muscle to run one of Chicago’s largest bookmaking operations. "He handled juice loans. He handled gambling,” Calabrese Jr. said. “He was our go-to guy for politicians."
Peluso - nicknamed "Curly" for obvious reasons – later fell out of favor and Calabrese Sr. wanted him killed. His feelings are clear in this prison conversation secretly recorded by the FBI.
"Gotta watch Curly,” Calabrese Jr. said. “Curly's a very treacherous son of a b****."
Peluso was scheduled to testify against Calabrese Sr., in the historic family secrets mob trial in 2007. But he got cold feet at the last minute. Still, Peluso's name surfaced 24 times during the trial, which led to the convictions of several longtime outfit leaders for nearly 20 murders going back decades.
Just months after the trial ended, Peluso quietly landed a $76,000 a year supervisor's job at the Illinois Department of Transportation.
In 2010, FOX Chicago broke the story of the ex-mobster's state job and Peluso was fired for "conduct unbecoming a state employee."
Well, guess who's back on the state payroll? "I'm shocked,” Calabrese Jr. said. “I'd love to know who's backing this guy."
The teamsters are backing Peluso. They appealed his termination and won.
According to IDOT, an arbitrator recently ruled the state did not have "just cause" to fire Peluso. The arbitrator ordered him reinstated to his job, including back pay totaling more than $103,000.
IDOT said in a statement that it is disappointed: "The department aggressively defended its position and strongly disagrees with the arbitrator's decision."
"Why would the collective bargaining agreements protect someone like this?” Rep. Ed Sullivan asked. The Republican state representative is asking for an investigation into Peluso's re-hiring, as well as how the ex-mobster got the job in the first place. "With unemployment at ten percent,” Rep. Sullivan asked, “how does someone with this questionable background get a job with the state of Illinois?"
The man whose father wanted him to kill Peluso said there's a simple explanation: "That's called clout,” Calabrese Jr. said.
FOX Chicago managed to reach Peluso by phone at the IDOT maintenance yard in Schaumburg where he works. He said he had no comment and hung up.
The teamsters aren't talking, either. Repeated calls to local 916 in Springfield, which appealed Pelsuo's firing, have gone unanswered.
Thanks to Dane Placko
Ralph Peluso was fired in 2010 after we started asking questions about how he landed on the state payroll.
He is now back on the job, thanks to the powerful Teamsters union.
Peluso allegedly took plenty of bets during his long career as an outfit bookmaker. But even he may be stunned at how he beat the odds and scored a major payday at the expense of Illinois taxpayers.
The man who was supposed to kill Peluso certainly can't believe it. "It blew me away!” Frank Calabrese Jr. said. “This is something that the people of Illinois have to look at."
Frank Calabrese Jr., spoke with FOX Chicago News in an exclusive interview via Skype from his home in Phoenix, Ariz.
He said Pelsuo was a key part of his father's outfit street crew in the 1980s and 1990s. Peluso paid Frank Calabrese Sr. $1,000 a week in street tax, in return for the mob muscle to run one of Chicago’s largest bookmaking operations. "He handled juice loans. He handled gambling,” Calabrese Jr. said. “He was our go-to guy for politicians."
Peluso - nicknamed "Curly" for obvious reasons – later fell out of favor and Calabrese Sr. wanted him killed. His feelings are clear in this prison conversation secretly recorded by the FBI.
"Gotta watch Curly,” Calabrese Jr. said. “Curly's a very treacherous son of a b****."
Peluso was scheduled to testify against Calabrese Sr., in the historic family secrets mob trial in 2007. But he got cold feet at the last minute. Still, Peluso's name surfaced 24 times during the trial, which led to the convictions of several longtime outfit leaders for nearly 20 murders going back decades.
Just months after the trial ended, Peluso quietly landed a $76,000 a year supervisor's job at the Illinois Department of Transportation.
In 2010, FOX Chicago broke the story of the ex-mobster's state job and Peluso was fired for "conduct unbecoming a state employee."
Well, guess who's back on the state payroll? "I'm shocked,” Calabrese Jr. said. “I'd love to know who's backing this guy."
The teamsters are backing Peluso. They appealed his termination and won.
According to IDOT, an arbitrator recently ruled the state did not have "just cause" to fire Peluso. The arbitrator ordered him reinstated to his job, including back pay totaling more than $103,000.
IDOT said in a statement that it is disappointed: "The department aggressively defended its position and strongly disagrees with the arbitrator's decision."
"Why would the collective bargaining agreements protect someone like this?” Rep. Ed Sullivan asked. The Republican state representative is asking for an investigation into Peluso's re-hiring, as well as how the ex-mobster got the job in the first place. "With unemployment at ten percent,” Rep. Sullivan asked, “how does someone with this questionable background get a job with the state of Illinois?"
The man whose father wanted him to kill Peluso said there's a simple explanation: "That's called clout,” Calabrese Jr. said.
FOX Chicago managed to reach Peluso by phone at the IDOT maintenance yard in Schaumburg where he works. He said he had no comment and hung up.
The teamsters aren't talking, either. Repeated calls to local 916 in Springfield, which appealed Pelsuo's firing, have gone unanswered.
Thanks to Dane Placko
Security Tracking Systems For Today That Keep Up With The World Of Tomorrow
Security in this country is a huge issue; on a national level, and for corporations, prisons and individuals alike. This is where Berkeley Varitronics Systems comes in – a leading provider of advanced wireless solutions and security products to the domestic and international wireless telecommunications industry. CEO Scott Schober is a sought-after security expert who made a presentation at the inaugural Concordia Summit in New York City recently to top level political decision-makers from around the world that included Mikheil Saakashvili – President of Georgia, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, former President George W. Bush, and Thomas Kean, former Governor of New Jersey.
Schober’s security team was part of the 9/11 first-responders who attempted to locate people buried under the rubble by locating their cell phones. BVS products can be used to detect anything - from people illegally crossing our borders, bomb threats, detecting smuggled cell phones in prisons, to protecting board room secrets of corporate America.
Berkeley Varitronics Wolfhound-Pro cell phone detector has been featured on Fox News. It is a precision, handheld, wireless sniffer specifically tuned to the RF signature of common cell phones for both U.S. and European bands and its high speed scanning receiver allows security personnel to locate nearby cell phones in either standby mode or during active voice, text or data transmissions. Instead of illegal and unsafe cellular jamming signals, this detector prevents wireless usage by detecting and even locating the perpetrator.
This product is vital in prisons where keeping cell phones out is becoming a major problem across the country, but especially in California where state prisoners are being bumped into local jails. Prisoners having access to cell phones is always a serious safety concern, but more so with gang members who use them to contact outside members, intimidate witnesses, or conduct criminal activity from inside prison walls. Cell phones can also be used to relay information on transportation of inmates, by giving date, time and route.
Schober’s security team was part of the 9/11 first-responders who attempted to locate people buried under the rubble by locating their cell phones. BVS products can be used to detect anything - from people illegally crossing our borders, bomb threats, detecting smuggled cell phones in prisons, to protecting board room secrets of corporate America.
Berkeley Varitronics Wolfhound-Pro cell phone detector has been featured on Fox News. It is a precision, handheld, wireless sniffer specifically tuned to the RF signature of common cell phones for both U.S. and European bands and its high speed scanning receiver allows security personnel to locate nearby cell phones in either standby mode or during active voice, text or data transmissions. Instead of illegal and unsafe cellular jamming signals, this detector prevents wireless usage by detecting and even locating the perpetrator.
This product is vital in prisons where keeping cell phones out is becoming a major problem across the country, but especially in California where state prisoners are being bumped into local jails. Prisoners having access to cell phones is always a serious safety concern, but more so with gang members who use them to contact outside members, intimidate witnesses, or conduct criminal activity from inside prison walls. Cell phones can also be used to relay information on transportation of inmates, by giving date, time and route.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Mob Month Panel & Book Signing: UBATZ Documentary Screening with Salvatore “Ubatz” Polisi and Henry Hill
Mob Month: UBATZ Documentary Screening with Salvatore “Ubatz” Polisi and Henry Hill
1/24/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Join us for the Las Vegas premiere screening of the gritty documentary UBATZ, about Salvatore “Ubatz” Polisi’s life in and out of the NY Mob as John Gotti’s associate and creator of “The Sinatra Club.” After the screening, stay for a revealing panel discussion with Polisi, Goodfellas mobster Henry Hill, and the film’s director David Murphy. Moderated by mob historian Dr. Michael Green.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
1/24/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Join us for the Las Vegas premiere screening of the gritty documentary UBATZ, about Salvatore “Ubatz” Polisi’s life in and out of the NY Mob as John Gotti’s associate and creator of “The Sinatra Club.” After the screening, stay for a revealing panel discussion with Polisi, Goodfellas mobster Henry Hill, and the film’s director David Murphy. Moderated by mob historian Dr. Michael Green.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Joseph Scalise and Robert Pullia Plead Guilty
Reputed Chicago mobster Joseph Scalise pleaded guilty today on the eve of trial to plotting a series of strong-armed robberies, including an armored car heist and the holdup of the home of a deceased mob boss.
Scalise, 73, said after court that the offer from federal prosecutors was too good to refuse. He and co-defendant Robert Pullia, 70, who also pleaded guilty, both face about 9 to 10 years in prison under the deal. “I think we could have won at trial,” said a relaxed and smiling Scalise, 73. “You just got to be realistic.”
Scalise’s co-defendant, Robert Pullia, 70, also pleaded guilty, but a third defendant, Arthur Rachel, 73, plans to go ahead with a bench trial slated for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.
Scalise and Pullia are scheduled to be sentenced May 10.
All three have convictions that stretch back to the 1960s and long, storied histories in Chicago.
Scalise and Rachel, both of whom have reputed ties to the Chicago Outfit, were convicted of robbing a London jeweler in 1980 of gems worth $3.4 million, including the 45-carat Marlborough diamond, which is still missing.
Outside court, Scalise remained coy about the gem’s whereabouts – hinting that the insurance company that covered its loss might be able to buy the answer. “If Lloyd’s wanted to pay enough money, maybe they could (find out where it is),” said Scalise, whose attorneys said is not cooperating with authorities.
Scalise, who has consulted with Hollywood producers on movie plots, also told reporters he was writing a book.
Pullia, meanwhile, left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without commenting but asked his attorney, Marc Martin, to make one statement to the court and reporters on his behalf. “Mr. Pullia is not cooperating,” Martin said.
Thanks to Annie Sweeney
Scalise, 73, said after court that the offer from federal prosecutors was too good to refuse. He and co-defendant Robert Pullia, 70, who also pleaded guilty, both face about 9 to 10 years in prison under the deal. “I think we could have won at trial,” said a relaxed and smiling Scalise, 73. “You just got to be realistic.”
Scalise’s co-defendant, Robert Pullia, 70, also pleaded guilty, but a third defendant, Arthur Rachel, 73, plans to go ahead with a bench trial slated for Thursday before U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber.
Scalise and Pullia are scheduled to be sentenced May 10.
All three have convictions that stretch back to the 1960s and long, storied histories in Chicago.
Scalise and Rachel, both of whom have reputed ties to the Chicago Outfit, were convicted of robbing a London jeweler in 1980 of gems worth $3.4 million, including the 45-carat Marlborough diamond, which is still missing.
Outside court, Scalise remained coy about the gem’s whereabouts – hinting that the insurance company that covered its loss might be able to buy the answer. “If Lloyd’s wanted to pay enough money, maybe they could (find out where it is),” said Scalise, whose attorneys said is not cooperating with authorities.
Scalise, who has consulted with Hollywood producers on movie plots, also told reporters he was writing a book.
Pullia, meanwhile, left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without commenting but asked his attorney, Marc Martin, to make one statement to the court and reporters on his behalf. “Mr. Pullia is not cooperating,” Martin said.
Thanks to Annie Sweeney
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Jury Selection Begins Today for Trial of Alleged Mobsters, Jerry Scalise, Art Rachel and Bobby Pullia
Don't let their age fool you.
That might be the message from prosecutors this week when three alleged Chicago mobsters -- Joseph "Jerry" Scalise, Arthur "The Genius" Rachel, and Robert "Bobby" Pullia -- go on trial. All the defendants are in their 70s.
Some people look towards pensions and 401k plans to get by when they retire, but prosecutors say these three defendants were looking for another way to find financial security in their golden years.
Prosecutors say Scalise, Rachel, and Pullia were planning to rob the Southside family home of the late Angelo LaPietra when they were arrested outside the mansion in April 2012. There was speculation that the famous 45 karat Marlborough diamond was hidden inside the home of the late mob boss. The diamond still hasn't been found.
Scalise and Rachel had already been busted in 1980 for stealing the diamond from a London jewelry store. They served 13 years behind bars.
Prosecutors said they were trying to profit from the home invasion in addition to plotting to rob a West Suburban bank.
Their lawyers insist they're innocent.
Scalise in recent years hadn't been shy about his past and even served as a consultant to the Paramount movie "Public Enemies," in which Johnny Depp played John Dillinger.
Jury selection begins Tuesday morning, opening statements could come by the afternoon or maybe Wednesday. The trial is expected to last about two weeks.
Thanks to Larry Yellen
That might be the message from prosecutors this week when three alleged Chicago mobsters -- Joseph "Jerry" Scalise, Arthur "The Genius" Rachel, and Robert "Bobby" Pullia -- go on trial. All the defendants are in their 70s.
Some people look towards pensions and 401k plans to get by when they retire, but prosecutors say these three defendants were looking for another way to find financial security in their golden years.
Prosecutors say Scalise, Rachel, and Pullia were planning to rob the Southside family home of the late Angelo LaPietra when they were arrested outside the mansion in April 2012. There was speculation that the famous 45 karat Marlborough diamond was hidden inside the home of the late mob boss. The diamond still hasn't been found.
Scalise and Rachel had already been busted in 1980 for stealing the diamond from a London jewelry store. They served 13 years behind bars.
Prosecutors said they were trying to profit from the home invasion in addition to plotting to rob a West Suburban bank.
Their lawyers insist they're innocent.
Scalise in recent years hadn't been shy about his past and even served as a consultant to the Paramount movie "Public Enemies," in which Johnny Depp played John Dillinger.
Jury selection begins Tuesday morning, opening statements could come by the afternoon or maybe Wednesday. The trial is expected to last about two weeks.
Thanks to Larry Yellen
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Mob Month Panel & Book Signing: Son of a Gun: How to Diss Your Hitman Dad and Keep Friends
Mob Month: Son of a Gun: How to Diss Your Hitman Dad and Keep Friends
1/17/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Childhood friends Billy Cutolo, Jr. and Andrew DiDonato will discuss growing up in opposing mob families and how Andrew survived the hit put out on him by Billy’s father, “Wild” Bill Cutolo. Moderated by Surviving The Mob and The Battle For Las Vegas author Dennis Griffin.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
1/17/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Childhood friends Billy Cutolo, Jr. and Andrew DiDonato will discuss growing up in opposing mob families and how Andrew survived the hit put out on him by Billy’s father, “Wild” Bill Cutolo. Moderated by Surviving The Mob and The Battle For Las Vegas author Dennis Griffin.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Augustin Zambrano, Nationwide Latin Kings Leader, Sentenced to 60 Years in Prison for RICO Conspiracy and Related Gang Crimes
The highest-ranking leader nationwide of the Latin Kings street gang was sentenced yesterday to 60 years in federal prison, the statutory maximum, after being convicted at trial last April of racketeering conspiracy (RICO) and related charges involving narcotics trafficking and violence that plagued numerous neighborhoods on the city’s north, south and west sides.. The defendant, Augustin Zambrano, 51, a “Corona” of the Almighty Latin King Nation, who was responsible for overseeing the illegal activities of all factions of the powerful street gang with some 10,000 members in Illinois alone, has been in federal custody since 2009 and must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence.
In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle cited Zambrano’s extensive criminal record of violent offenses and his lack whatsoever of any acceptance of responsibility or remorse for victims.
Zambrano, also known as “Big Tino,” “Tino,” “Old Man,” and “Viejo,” and three co-defendants were found guilty of running a criminal enterprise to enrich themselves and others through drug-trafficking and preserving and protecting their power, territory and revenue through acts of murder, attempted murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, extortion, and other acts of violence.
“This investigation has held to hold the leaders of the Latin Kings like Zambrano responsible for their iron-fisted leadership of a criminal enterprise responsible for murders and attempted murders. As the CEO of this gang, Zambrano bears responsibility for its criminal acts,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
In urging the maximum sentence, prosecutors wrote in a court filing:
Three co-defendants were convicted with Zambrano at trial of RICO conspiracy and other crimes. Jose Guzman, a former “Nation Enforcer” in the 26th Street, or Little Village, faction, was sentenced last month to 35 years in prison. Awaiting sentencing are Vicente Garcia, the “Supreme Regional Inca,” who was in charge of all Latin Kings in Illinois, and Alphonso Chavez, the “Inca,” or leader of the gang’s 31st and Drake faction. Fernando “Ace” King, who preceded Garcia as Supreme Regional Inca and pleaded guilty, was sentenced last October to 40 years in prison.
Evidence at trial included audio and video recordings of three beatings inflicted upon gang members for violating the rules and testimony documenting 20 shootings in the Little Village area, including at least one in which the victim died. Zambrano and Garcia were both convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon.
The four trial defendants were among a total of 31 co-defendants who were indicted in September 2008 or charged in a superseding indictment in October 2009. Of those 31 defendants, 24 pleaded guilty, four were convicted at trial, and three remain fugitives. From its origin and base in the west side Little Village community, the Latin Kings spread throughout Chicago and Illinois and established branches in other states, where local leaders acted with some autonomy but adhered to the rules and hierarchy of the Chicago gang, according to the evidence in the five-week federal trial.
The RICO conspiracy count included evidence that Zambrano and several co-defendants conspired to demand and receive payment from an organization illegally selling fraudulent immigration documents in Little Village by threatening, and actually engaging in, the use of force and violence against members of that organization unless the defendants received regular cash payments. Trial evidence proved federal charges that Latin Kings leaders extorted “street tax” from non-gang members, referred to as “miqueros,” who sold false identification documents.
As part of the RICO conspiracy, evidence also showed that defendants kept victims in fear of the gang and its leaders by enforcing what it referred to as an “SOS”—shoot on sight or smash on sight—order against Latin King members who cooperated with law enforcement in order to enforce the gang’s grip on the community and control over its members and associates.
Mr. Fitzgerald announced the sentence with Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Andrew L. Traver, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Chicago Police Department, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Chicago, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Police also had significant roles in the investigation, which was conducted through the federal High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force and under the umbrella of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
The convictions resulted from sustained, coordinated investigations by multiple federal law enforcement agencies, working together with the Chicago Police Department and other state and local partners, to dismantle the hierarchy of the Latin Kings and other highly-organized, often violent, drug-trafficking Chicago street gangs. In late 2006, ATF agents led an investigation that resulted in federal drug trafficking and firearms charges against 38 Latin Kings members and associates. In 2008, the FBI led an investigation that resulted in state and federal charges against 40 Latin Kings members and associates, including a dozen of the Zambrano co-defendants. In total, more than 80 Latin Kings members and associates have faced state or federal charges since 2006 and, of those, approximately 65 have been convicted federally, with only a few fugitives still facing federal charges.
Zambrano is the highest-ranking leader of the Latin Kings to be convicted since Gustavo “Gino” Colon, who also holds the title of “Corona” and is serving a life sentence that was imposed in 2000 for running a continuing criminal enterprise
The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew Porter, Nancy DePodesta and Tinos Diamantatos.
In imposing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle cited Zambrano’s extensive criminal record of violent offenses and his lack whatsoever of any acceptance of responsibility or remorse for victims.
Zambrano, also known as “Big Tino,” “Tino,” “Old Man,” and “Viejo,” and three co-defendants were found guilty of running a criminal enterprise to enrich themselves and others through drug-trafficking and preserving and protecting their power, territory and revenue through acts of murder, attempted murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, extortion, and other acts of violence.
“This investigation has held to hold the leaders of the Latin Kings like Zambrano responsible for their iron-fisted leadership of a criminal enterprise responsible for murders and attempted murders. As the CEO of this gang, Zambrano bears responsibility for its criminal acts,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
In urging the maximum sentence, prosecutors wrote in a court filing:
“Zambrano chose violence at every turn. The message he sent out through his words and actions was that violence was the only path that mattered. He did so personally and through his appointment of trusted lieutenants such as Fernando King and Vicente Garcia, who were responsible through their stewardship for murder, attempted murder, shootings, beatings, and other acts of violence. Zambrano did not carry out any of this violence by himself. He was insulated. He was behind the scenes. He entrusted others to do it. He put leaders in place who shared his vision . . . to see to it that that Latin Kings acted barbarically. The result was an organization with its own rules, its own laws, and a savage code of violence. In many cases, the soldiers for whom defendant and the other leaders of the Latin Kings are responsible were simply boys who killed or were killed.”
Three co-defendants were convicted with Zambrano at trial of RICO conspiracy and other crimes. Jose Guzman, a former “Nation Enforcer” in the 26th Street, or Little Village, faction, was sentenced last month to 35 years in prison. Awaiting sentencing are Vicente Garcia, the “Supreme Regional Inca,” who was in charge of all Latin Kings in Illinois, and Alphonso Chavez, the “Inca,” or leader of the gang’s 31st and Drake faction. Fernando “Ace” King, who preceded Garcia as Supreme Regional Inca and pleaded guilty, was sentenced last October to 40 years in prison.
Evidence at trial included audio and video recordings of three beatings inflicted upon gang members for violating the rules and testimony documenting 20 shootings in the Little Village area, including at least one in which the victim died. Zambrano and Garcia were both convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon.
The four trial defendants were among a total of 31 co-defendants who were indicted in September 2008 or charged in a superseding indictment in October 2009. Of those 31 defendants, 24 pleaded guilty, four were convicted at trial, and three remain fugitives. From its origin and base in the west side Little Village community, the Latin Kings spread throughout Chicago and Illinois and established branches in other states, where local leaders acted with some autonomy but adhered to the rules and hierarchy of the Chicago gang, according to the evidence in the five-week federal trial.
The RICO conspiracy count included evidence that Zambrano and several co-defendants conspired to demand and receive payment from an organization illegally selling fraudulent immigration documents in Little Village by threatening, and actually engaging in, the use of force and violence against members of that organization unless the defendants received regular cash payments. Trial evidence proved federal charges that Latin Kings leaders extorted “street tax” from non-gang members, referred to as “miqueros,” who sold false identification documents.
As part of the RICO conspiracy, evidence also showed that defendants kept victims in fear of the gang and its leaders by enforcing what it referred to as an “SOS”—shoot on sight or smash on sight—order against Latin King members who cooperated with law enforcement in order to enforce the gang’s grip on the community and control over its members and associates.
Mr. Fitzgerald announced the sentence with Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Andrew L. Traver, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Chicago Police Department, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Chicago, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Police also had significant roles in the investigation, which was conducted through the federal High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force and under the umbrella of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF).
The convictions resulted from sustained, coordinated investigations by multiple federal law enforcement agencies, working together with the Chicago Police Department and other state and local partners, to dismantle the hierarchy of the Latin Kings and other highly-organized, often violent, drug-trafficking Chicago street gangs. In late 2006, ATF agents led an investigation that resulted in federal drug trafficking and firearms charges against 38 Latin Kings members and associates. In 2008, the FBI led an investigation that resulted in state and federal charges against 40 Latin Kings members and associates, including a dozen of the Zambrano co-defendants. In total, more than 80 Latin Kings members and associates have faced state or federal charges since 2006 and, of those, approximately 65 have been convicted federally, with only a few fugitives still facing federal charges.
Zambrano is the highest-ranking leader of the Latin Kings to be convicted since Gustavo “Gino” Colon, who also holds the title of “Corona” and is serving a life sentence that was imposed in 2000 for running a continuing criminal enterprise
The government is being represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew Porter, Nancy DePodesta and Tinos Diamantatos.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Napoli Italian Soccer Club Attacked by Mafia?
Leading Italian club Napoli has taken action to protect its players and their families following a spate of attacks that may be Mafia-related, Yahoo! Sports has learned.
The Camorra crime syndicate, which wields significant control in the southern city of Naples, is thought by authorities to be behind a worrying series of burglaries and gunpoint robberies suffered by members of the Napoli squad over the past several months. Napoli is based in Naples.
Star
forward Edinson Cavani’s house was burglarized while he was away on international duty in his native Uruguay, and his agent, Claudio Angellucci, was mugged soon after. In November, Marek Hamsik’s pregnant wife, Martina Franova, was forced from her BMW by a gun-toting carjacker. Only a week later Ezequiel Lavezzi’s girlfriend, Yanina Screpante, took to Twitter to reveal an incident where two assailants robbed her of a Rolex on a Naples street.
Police connected the crimes to the fact that Cavani, Hamsik and Lavezzi are three of the club’s highest-profile players, with all having attracted transfer attention from wealthier sides, including the English Premier League’s Manchester City.
“The short space of time over which this has happened leaps out at you, which is why we are looking at these incidents with a certain interest,” said Naples chief of police Luigi Merolla in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
A Napoli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Yahoo! Sports that preventative measures are now in place. “Steps … to safeguard the wellbeing of our players have been [implemented],” said the official. “We do not want to take any chances.”
The Camorra was thought to be closely involved with Napoli during the side’s glory days in the late 1980s when Argentinean superstar Diego Maradona led them to two Serie A titles. And when several Camorra members turned informant in the mid-1990s, it was revealed that the Mafia had thrown wild parties involving call girls for Napoli players.
A more serious allegation was that the team deliberately lost a Serie A, and therefore the championship, in 1990, at the behest of Camorra-controlled bookmakers.
Both Napoli and the Camorra suffered a downturn in fortunes for well over a decade. The soccer club experienced financial crisis and bankruptcy, and fell all the way down to the third-tier Serie C before bouncing back and claiming a place in this season’s Champions League, where it will face Chelsea in the round of 16 in February.
The Mafia group lost power when many of its senior members were jailed, but has since sought to reassert control over Naples and other parts of southern Italy, law enforcement officials say. Napoli’s return to soccer strength seems to have piqued the interest of Camorra and it retains close ties with many fans organizations.
Hard line fan groups, known as “ultras,” have issued threats of violence in an attempt to secure free tickets. After supporters caused severe damage to a train en route to a game in Rome in 2008, more than 200 of the people questioned were reported to have had criminal ties.
The Camorra’s interest runs deeper than free tickets and it is believed the organization wants to gain control of a share of the club’s profits in exchange for “protection,” a common Mafia racket.
Napoli chiefs are concerned that talk of Mafia threats will hinder the club’s ability to recruit new players – one of the major reasons it has sought to keep details of the security provided to its stars silent.
Club president Aurelio de Laurentis recently insisted that his players are in no serious danger and that the wave of crimes was a mere coincidence due, in part, to the recession.
“Naples is no more violent that Milan or Rome, which I would call the real crime capital of Italy,” de Laurentis told the Daily Mirror. “I would like to tell (Screpante) that during a recession she shouldn’t go around with a Rolex on his wrist.”
Thanks to Martin Rogers
The Camorra crime syndicate, which wields significant control in the southern city of Naples, is thought by authorities to be behind a worrying series of burglaries and gunpoint robberies suffered by members of the Napoli squad over the past several months. Napoli is based in Naples.
Star
forward Edinson Cavani’s house was burglarized while he was away on international duty in his native Uruguay, and his agent, Claudio Angellucci, was mugged soon after. In November, Marek Hamsik’s pregnant wife, Martina Franova, was forced from her BMW by a gun-toting carjacker. Only a week later Ezequiel Lavezzi’s girlfriend, Yanina Screpante, took to Twitter to reveal an incident where two assailants robbed her of a Rolex on a Naples street.Police connected the crimes to the fact that Cavani, Hamsik and Lavezzi are three of the club’s highest-profile players, with all having attracted transfer attention from wealthier sides, including the English Premier League’s Manchester City.
“The short space of time over which this has happened leaps out at you, which is why we are looking at these incidents with a certain interest,” said Naples chief of police Luigi Merolla in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
A Napoli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Yahoo! Sports that preventative measures are now in place. “Steps … to safeguard the wellbeing of our players have been [implemented],” said the official. “We do not want to take any chances.”
The Camorra was thought to be closely involved with Napoli during the side’s glory days in the late 1980s when Argentinean superstar Diego Maradona led them to two Serie A titles. And when several Camorra members turned informant in the mid-1990s, it was revealed that the Mafia had thrown wild parties involving call girls for Napoli players.
A more serious allegation was that the team deliberately lost a Serie A, and therefore the championship, in 1990, at the behest of Camorra-controlled bookmakers.
Both Napoli and the Camorra suffered a downturn in fortunes for well over a decade. The soccer club experienced financial crisis and bankruptcy, and fell all the way down to the third-tier Serie C before bouncing back and claiming a place in this season’s Champions League, where it will face Chelsea in the round of 16 in February.
The Mafia group lost power when many of its senior members were jailed, but has since sought to reassert control over Naples and other parts of southern Italy, law enforcement officials say. Napoli’s return to soccer strength seems to have piqued the interest of Camorra and it retains close ties with many fans organizations.
Hard line fan groups, known as “ultras,” have issued threats of violence in an attempt to secure free tickets. After supporters caused severe damage to a train en route to a game in Rome in 2008, more than 200 of the people questioned were reported to have had criminal ties.
The Camorra’s interest runs deeper than free tickets and it is believed the organization wants to gain control of a share of the club’s profits in exchange for “protection,” a common Mafia racket.
Napoli chiefs are concerned that talk of Mafia threats will hinder the club’s ability to recruit new players – one of the major reasons it has sought to keep details of the security provided to its stars silent.
Club president Aurelio de Laurentis recently insisted that his players are in no serious danger and that the wave of crimes was a mere coincidence due, in part, to the recession.
“Naples is no more violent that Milan or Rome, which I would call the real crime capital of Italy,” de Laurentis told the Daily Mirror. “I would like to tell (Screpante) that during a recession she shouldn’t go around with a Rolex on his wrist.”
Thanks to Martin Rogers
"El Chapo" Named World's Most Powerful Drug Trafficker
The U.S. Treasury Department called Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman "the world's most powerful drug trafficker" Tuesday. The fugitive Sinaloa cartel leader also got a boost from Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo, who said she believed in Guzman more than in the government.
It was the latest in an odd series of encomiums for Guzman, who was included this year on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City issued a statement saying three of Guzman's alleged associates had been hit with sanctions under the drug Kingpin Act, which prohibits people in the U.S. from conducting businesses with them and freezes their U.S. assets. The two Mexican men and a Colombian allegedly aided Guzman's trafficking operations.
The statement quoted Adam J. Szubin, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, as saying the move "marks the fourth time in the past year that OFAC has targeted and exposed the support structures of the organization led by Chapo Guzman, the world's most powerful drug trafficker."
Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry truck and has a $7 million bounty on his head, has long been recognized as Mexico's most powerful drug capo. Authorities say his Sinaloa cartel has recently been expanding abroad, building international operations in Central and South America and the Pacific.
Del Castillo, who played a female drug trafficker in the TV series "La Reina del Sur" ("Queen of the South"), offered grudging praise for Guzman in a posting Tuesday on the social media site Twextra, linked to her Twitter account.
"Today, I believe more in El Chapo Guzman than in the governments who hide truths from me," she wrote.
The actress did not specify whether she was referring to the Mexican government, or what she meant when she accused "governments" of "hiding the cures for cancer, AIDS, etc. for their own benefit and enrichment."
Del Castillo's publicist, Marianne Sauvage, confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the actress wrote the posting, and that the account belonged to Del Castillo.
The 800-word posting ended with an impassioned plea to Guzman:"Mr. Chapo, wouldn't it be great if you started trafficking with positive things? With cures for diseases, with food for street children, with alcohol for old people's homes so they spend their final days doing whatever they like, trafficking with corrupt politicians and not with women and children who wind up as slaves?"
"Go ahead, dare to, sir, you would be the hero of heroes, let's traffick with love, you know how," the message concluded.
Also Tuesday, Mexican authorities said they had seized 32.6 metric tons of a precursor chemical used to make methamphetamines at the Pacific coast port of Manzanillo.
Mexico's navy said the chemical methylamine came in a shipment from China, but did not say whether Manzanillo was the final destination of the shipment. Mexico seized almost 675 metric tons of the chemical at sea ports in December alone, all of which was destined for Guatemala.
Experts say that when another chemical is added, methylamine can yield its weight in uncut meth.
Also Tuesday, federal police reported they had defused a car bomb left outside the state detectives' agency offices in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern border state of Tamaulipas.
After detectives reported the car smelled of gasoline, specially equipped federal officers opened the trunk and found 10 sticks of explosives, two jugs of gasoline, wires, a cellphone and what appeared to be detonating devices.
There was no immediate information on who left the car bomb.
Tamaulipas has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Gulf and Zetas drug cartels, and the gangs have attacked police and police offices with car bombs in the past.
Thanks to Adriana Gomez Licon
It was the latest in an odd series of encomiums for Guzman, who was included this year on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City issued a statement saying three of Guzman's alleged associates had been hit with sanctions under the drug Kingpin Act, which prohibits people in the U.S. from conducting businesses with them and freezes their U.S. assets. The two Mexican men and a Colombian allegedly aided Guzman's trafficking operations.
The statement quoted Adam J. Szubin, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, as saying the move "marks the fourth time in the past year that OFAC has targeted and exposed the support structures of the organization led by Chapo Guzman, the world's most powerful drug trafficker."
Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 in a laundry truck and has a $7 million bounty on his head, has long been recognized as Mexico's most powerful drug capo. Authorities say his Sinaloa cartel has recently been expanding abroad, building international operations in Central and South America and the Pacific.
Del Castillo, who played a female drug trafficker in the TV series "La Reina del Sur" ("Queen of the South"), offered grudging praise for Guzman in a posting Tuesday on the social media site Twextra, linked to her Twitter account.
"Today, I believe more in El Chapo Guzman than in the governments who hide truths from me," she wrote.
The actress did not specify whether she was referring to the Mexican government, or what she meant when she accused "governments" of "hiding the cures for cancer, AIDS, etc. for their own benefit and enrichment."
Del Castillo's publicist, Marianne Sauvage, confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that the actress wrote the posting, and that the account belonged to Del Castillo.
The 800-word posting ended with an impassioned plea to Guzman:"Mr. Chapo, wouldn't it be great if you started trafficking with positive things? With cures for diseases, with food for street children, with alcohol for old people's homes so they spend their final days doing whatever they like, trafficking with corrupt politicians and not with women and children who wind up as slaves?"
"Go ahead, dare to, sir, you would be the hero of heroes, let's traffick with love, you know how," the message concluded.
Also Tuesday, Mexican authorities said they had seized 32.6 metric tons of a precursor chemical used to make methamphetamines at the Pacific coast port of Manzanillo.
Mexico's navy said the chemical methylamine came in a shipment from China, but did not say whether Manzanillo was the final destination of the shipment. Mexico seized almost 675 metric tons of the chemical at sea ports in December alone, all of which was destined for Guatemala.
Experts say that when another chemical is added, methylamine can yield its weight in uncut meth.
Also Tuesday, federal police reported they had defused a car bomb left outside the state detectives' agency offices in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern border state of Tamaulipas.
After detectives reported the car smelled of gasoline, specially equipped federal officers opened the trunk and found 10 sticks of explosives, two jugs of gasoline, wires, a cellphone and what appeared to be detonating devices.
There was no immediate information on who left the car bomb.
Tamaulipas has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Gulf and Zetas drug cartels, and the gangs have attacked police and police offices with car bombs in the past.
Thanks to Adriana Gomez Licon
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Mafia Movies to be Featured at National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement
A mob museum slated to open soon in Las Vegas will trace Hollywood's portrayal of mobsters from the birth of the silver screen in a violence-fraught exhibit that organizers said is not intended for children.
Screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the book "Wiseguy" and then adapted it into the Martin Scorsese film "Goodfellas," told The Associated Press that he will help usher in the exhibit when the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement opens in Las Vegas in mid-February. Pileggi will appear in a five-minute documentary on the mob and pop culture that will be shown near the end of the museum tour.
The film, part of an exhibit called "The Myth of the Mob," will attempt to explain why so many people are fascinated with organized crime. The exhibit will also feature costumes from mobster-centric TV shows and movies, including "The Sopranos."
"Just because you are depicting something ugly, it doesn't mean you are honoring it," Pileggi said. "I don't know too many gangster movies where the gangster wins in the end. These are tales of morality and that is the key to them."
The downtown Las Vegas museum will open at a former courthouse where a famous mob hearing that helped expose organized crime to ordinary Americans was held in 1950. It is expected to feature gangster artifacts, including the wall from Chicago's St. Valentine's Day massacre, the only gun recovered at the mass shooting and the barber chair where hit man Albert Anastasia's life came to an end in 1957.
Dennis Barrie, the museum's director, said he interviewed Pileggi for up to three hours to create the five-minute film on the history of gangster flicks. Barrie said he wants museum-goers to explore whether popular movies glamourize mob culture, or get it right."I don't think it's a kids' museum," Barrie said. "This is a pretty brutal world and it comes across in the museum."
Pileggi, whose parents were Italian immigrants, said he was attracted to mob stories as a young man because he wanted to know why some people in his neighborhood were drawn to organized crimes, while others shunned it."I don't think they are the worst people in the world," Pileggi said. "I think they are fascinating."
Pileggi began his writing career as an Associated Press crime reporter. He received an Oscar nomination for "Goodfellas" and teamed up with Scorsese again for the Las Vegas crime-opus "Casino" in 1995. He said the movies are "unbelievably realistic."
Pileggi said former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman asked him to get involved with the museum. Goodman, a former mob lawyer who came up with the idea of the museum, provided Pileggi with facts and insight when he was writing "Casino" and had a brief cameo in the movie."Who knows it better than Nick Pileggi?" Goodman said. "When you have his stamp of approval on these kinds of exhibits, it takes on a certain sense of reality as well as legitimacy."
The $42 million museum will be the second gangster-focused attraction to open in Las Vegas in the past year.
The Tropicana casino and hotel on the Las Vegas Strip unveiled its interactive "Mob Experience" attraction in March. The venue is undergoing a renovation after a brutal start. Attendance was sluggish from the beginning, and then its developer, Jay Bloom, was forced to resign amid multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills, said Spence Johnston, a Mob Experience spokesman.
Goodman said the organized crime museum will have a more successful launch because its collection will focus on history instead of entertainment."I was interested in having a real museum with real culture," he said. "This is not a gimmick."
Screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the book "Wiseguy" and then adapted it into the Martin Scorsese film "Goodfellas," told The Associated Press that he will help usher in the exhibit when the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement opens in Las Vegas in mid-February. Pileggi will appear in a five-minute documentary on the mob and pop culture that will be shown near the end of the museum tour.
The film, part of an exhibit called "The Myth of the Mob," will attempt to explain why so many people are fascinated with organized crime. The exhibit will also feature costumes from mobster-centric TV shows and movies, including "The Sopranos."
"Just because you are depicting something ugly, it doesn't mean you are honoring it," Pileggi said. "I don't know too many gangster movies where the gangster wins in the end. These are tales of morality and that is the key to them."
The downtown Las Vegas museum will open at a former courthouse where a famous mob hearing that helped expose organized crime to ordinary Americans was held in 1950. It is expected to feature gangster artifacts, including the wall from Chicago's St. Valentine's Day massacre, the only gun recovered at the mass shooting and the barber chair where hit man Albert Anastasia's life came to an end in 1957.
Dennis Barrie, the museum's director, said he interviewed Pileggi for up to three hours to create the five-minute film on the history of gangster flicks. Barrie said he wants museum-goers to explore whether popular movies glamourize mob culture, or get it right."I don't think it's a kids' museum," Barrie said. "This is a pretty brutal world and it comes across in the museum."
Pileggi, whose parents were Italian immigrants, said he was attracted to mob stories as a young man because he wanted to know why some people in his neighborhood were drawn to organized crimes, while others shunned it."I don't think they are the worst people in the world," Pileggi said. "I think they are fascinating."
Pileggi began his writing career as an Associated Press crime reporter. He received an Oscar nomination for "Goodfellas" and teamed up with Scorsese again for the Las Vegas crime-opus "Casino" in 1995. He said the movies are "unbelievably realistic."
Pileggi said former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman asked him to get involved with the museum. Goodman, a former mob lawyer who came up with the idea of the museum, provided Pileggi with facts and insight when he was writing "Casino" and had a brief cameo in the movie."Who knows it better than Nick Pileggi?" Goodman said. "When you have his stamp of approval on these kinds of exhibits, it takes on a certain sense of reality as well as legitimacy."
The $42 million museum will be the second gangster-focused attraction to open in Las Vegas in the past year.
The Tropicana casino and hotel on the Las Vegas Strip unveiled its interactive "Mob Experience" attraction in March. The venue is undergoing a renovation after a brutal start. Attendance was sluggish from the beginning, and then its developer, Jay Bloom, was forced to resign amid multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills, said Spence Johnston, a Mob Experience spokesman.
Goodman said the organized crime museum will have a more successful launch because its collection will focus on history instead of entertainment."I was interested in having a real museum with real culture," he said. "This is not a gimmick."
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Mob Month Panel & Book Signing: How the FBI, Nevada Gaming Control and the IRS Took Down the Mob
Mob Month: How the FBI, Nevada Gaming Control and the IRS Took Down the Mob
1/10/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
This panel discussion includes former & current representatives from the FBI, Nevada Gaming Control, Las Vegas Mob Museum, and IRS Criminal Investigations Las Vegas unit. Topics will include the strategies and devices that mobsters used to skim the casinos, the creation of The Black Book, and how the Feds conducted their field research and mafia round-ups. Moderated by Master Cheat author and former NV Gaming Control agent Jack Miller.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
1/10/2012 • 7 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
This panel discussion includes former & current representatives from the FBI, Nevada Gaming Control, Las Vegas Mob Museum, and IRS Criminal Investigations Las Vegas unit. Topics will include the strategies and devices that mobsters used to skim the casinos, the creation of The Black Book, and how the Feds conducted their field research and mafia round-ups. Moderated by Master Cheat author and former NV Gaming Control agent Jack Miller.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Mobster Confessions
Discovery will premiere MOBSTER CONFESSIONS on Monday, January 9 at 10 PM ET/PT. Andrew DiDonato, John Veasey, Frank Cullotta and Frank Calabrese Jr. are featured in the initial wave of episodes:
MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2011:
10 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - Andrew DiDonato
New York street thug is seduced by the power and protection of the Gambino crime family. Yet once the family turns on him, he must choose between being hunted by the mob or working with authorities to bring them down.
10:30 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - John Veasey
A troubled teen turned hitman kills for the Philadelphia mob but is later targeted by his own mafia family. After surviving an attempted hit, he testifies against the men he once swore to protect.
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2011:
10 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - Frank Cullotta
The riches of a glittering life in Las Vegas tempt a man to do anything, even kill, for the Chicago Outfit. His world is turned upside down when an FBI sting brings him in to warn him that he's about to be whacked by his own mafia family.
10:30 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - Frank Calabrese Jr.
A son, desperate to escape the grip of his brutal mafia father, faces a difficult decision: turn on his own dad or be forced to continue a life of crime.
MONDAY, JANUARY 9, 2011:
10 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - Andrew DiDonato
New York street thug is seduced by the power and protection of the Gambino crime family. Yet once the family turns on him, he must choose between being hunted by the mob or working with authorities to bring them down.
10:30 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - John Veasey
A troubled teen turned hitman kills for the Philadelphia mob but is later targeted by his own mafia family. After surviving an attempted hit, he testifies against the men he once swore to protect.
MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2011:
10 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - Frank Cullotta
The riches of a glittering life in Las Vegas tempt a man to do anything, even kill, for the Chicago Outfit. His world is turned upside down when an FBI sting brings him in to warn him that he's about to be whacked by his own mafia family.
10:30 PM ET/PT - MOBSTER CONFESSIONS - Frank Calabrese Jr.
A son, desperate to escape the grip of his brutal mafia father, faces a difficult decision: turn on his own dad or be forced to continue a life of crime.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Victoria Gotti Joins Celebrity Apprentice
Victoria Gotti is a writer, reality television participant and daughter of former Gambino crime family Mafia boss, John Gotti. She will be competing on the upcoming season of Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Help Capture the "Tire Iron Bandit"
Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), is asking for the public’s help in identifying the individual dubbed the “Tire Iron Bandit,” who is wanted in connection with the armed robbery of a Willow Springs bank on two separate occasions.
The most recent theft took place on January 3rd of 2011, when the First Merit Bank branch, located at 8480 S. Archer Avenue in the southwest suburb, was robbed of undisclosed amount of money. This individual is also believed to have robbed the same bank on July 16, 2010.
During the most recent theft, the robber entered the bank late in the afternoon just as two employees were preparing to close for the day. The robber quickly approached the teller counter, holding a tire iron in his left hand, and demanding money from the tellers on duty. The robber then placed a small duffel bag on the counter and held it open for the tellers, who placed cash from their drawer inside. The robber then fled the bank, but his method and direction of escape was not seen.
During the previous robbery in 2010, the robber entered the bank and approached the teller counter. While holding a tire iron in his hand, he orally announced a robbery, ordering a bank employee to place money from her drawer into a black gym bag that the robber brought with him. He repeatedly threatened bank employees with harm, if his demands were not met. After receiving an undisclosed amount of cash, the robber fled the bank on foot and was last seen running through an adjacent alley.
No injuries were reported during either robbery, both of which are being investigated jointly by the FBI and the Willow Springs Police Department.
Anyone having any information about either of these robberies is asked to call the Chicago FBI at (312) 421-6700.
Additional information about this and other unsolved Chicago area bank robberies, including downloadable photographs, is available online at the Bandit Tracker Chicago website, www.bandittrackerchicago.com.
The most recent theft took place on January 3rd of 2011, when the First Merit Bank branch, located at 8480 S. Archer Avenue in the southwest suburb, was robbed of undisclosed amount of money. This individual is also believed to have robbed the same bank on July 16, 2010.
During the most recent theft, the robber entered the bank late in the afternoon just as two employees were preparing to close for the day. The robber quickly approached the teller counter, holding a tire iron in his left hand, and demanding money from the tellers on duty. The robber then placed a small duffel bag on the counter and held it open for the tellers, who placed cash from their drawer inside. The robber then fled the bank, but his method and direction of escape was not seen.
During the previous robbery in 2010, the robber entered the bank and approached the teller counter. While holding a tire iron in his hand, he orally announced a robbery, ordering a bank employee to place money from her drawer into a black gym bag that the robber brought with him. He repeatedly threatened bank employees with harm, if his demands were not met. After receiving an undisclosed amount of cash, the robber fled the bank on foot and was last seen running through an adjacent alley.
No injuries were reported during either robbery, both of which are being investigated jointly by the FBI and the Willow Springs Police Department.
Anyone having any information about either of these robberies is asked to call the Chicago FBI at (312) 421-6700.
Additional information about this and other unsolved Chicago area bank robberies, including downloadable photographs, is available online at the Bandit Tracker Chicago website, www.bandittrackerchicago.com.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
CHICAGO OVERCOAT CINEMATOGRAPHER KEVIN MOSS NOMINATED FOR ASC AWARD
The American Society of Cinematographers announced the nominees for this year’s ASC Awards, and cinematographer Kevin Moss has been chosen for his work on Chicago Overcoat. ASC president Michael Goi personally called Moss to share the news and congratulate him on the Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography nomination. The film is being considered in the "Motion Picture/Miniseries Television” category along with the following nominees: Ed Lachman (HBO’s Mildred Pierce), David Moxness (“Moral Issues and Inner Turmoil” segment of ReelzChannel's The Kennedys, Martin Ruhe (PBS' Page Eight), and Wojciech Szepel (Episode 2 of PBS' Any Human Heart). Moss previously received an Honorable Mention from the ASC for his work on the awardwinning short film, The Small Assassin.
After its much-anticipated television premiere on Showtime in December 2010, Chicago Overcoat has been released in every major country throughout the world. The film had its North American home video release in April 2011, and is available to rent at Netflix, Redbox, and Blockbuster Express, and to purchase at Amazon, iTunes, and hundreds of other online stores. Major retailers will have Chicago Overcoat DVDs on their shelves early 2012.
The film stars Frank Vincent (The Sopranos) as an aging hit man who tries to get back a piece of the glory days. Fellow Sopranos cast member Kathrine Narducci (A Bronx Tale) co-stars as Vincent’s girlfriend, along with Danny Goldring (The Dark Knight) as a homicide detective, and Mike Starr (Goodfellas) as a mob boss. The cast also features Emmy Award winner Armand Assante (American Gangster) and Golden Globe winner Stacy Keach (Lights Out).
Chicago Overcoat had its world premiere at the 45th Chicago International Film Festival, where it was voted into the “Best of the Fest”. It went on to win “Best Dramatic Feature” at the 8th Garden State Film Festival, then “Best Cinematography” at the 6th Midwest Independent Film Festival. The film received much critical acclaim during its festival tour. In Variety’s review Alissa Simon wrote: “This energetic calling-card pic boasts the most charismatic mafia murderer since Tony Soprano…” Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker wrote: “Well produced and directed…a very tense thriller.”
For information on how to rent or purchase Chicago Overcoat go to www.beverlyridgepictures.com
or follow the film on Facebook and Twitter.
After its much-anticipated television premiere on Showtime in December 2010, Chicago Overcoat has been released in every major country throughout the world. The film had its North American home video release in April 2011, and is available to rent at Netflix, Redbox, and Blockbuster Express, and to purchase at Amazon, iTunes, and hundreds of other online stores. Major retailers will have Chicago Overcoat DVDs on their shelves early 2012.
The film stars Frank Vincent (The Sopranos) as an aging hit man who tries to get back a piece of the glory days. Fellow Sopranos cast member Kathrine Narducci (A Bronx Tale) co-stars as Vincent’s girlfriend, along with Danny Goldring (The Dark Knight) as a homicide detective, and Mike Starr (Goodfellas) as a mob boss. The cast also features Emmy Award winner Armand Assante (American Gangster) and Golden Globe winner Stacy Keach (Lights Out).
Chicago Overcoat had its world premiere at the 45th Chicago International Film Festival, where it was voted into the “Best of the Fest”. It went on to win “Best Dramatic Feature” at the 8th Garden State Film Festival, then “Best Cinematography” at the 6th Midwest Independent Film Festival. The film received much critical acclaim during its festival tour. In Variety’s review Alissa Simon wrote: “This energetic calling-card pic boasts the most charismatic mafia murderer since Tony Soprano…” Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker wrote: “Well produced and directed…a very tense thriller.”
For information on how to rent or purchase Chicago Overcoat go to www.beverlyridgepictures.com
or follow the film on Facebook and Twitter.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Mob Month Panel and Book Signing: Ladies First: The REAL Mob Wives of Las Vegas
Mob Month: Ladies First: The REAL Mob Wives of Las Vegas
1/3/2012 • 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
The ladies take the stage as they share heartrending and sometimes hilarious stories of their relationships with the mob men in their lives. Panelists include author Wendy Mazaros, whose book Vegas Rag Doll deals with her marriage to Union racketeer and Chicago Outfit hitman Tom Hanley, and a surprise visit from a member of the Meyer Lansky family. Moderated by Peabody Award-winning investigative news reporter and author George Knapp.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
1/3/2012 • 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
The ladies take the stage as they share heartrending and sometimes hilarious stories of their relationships with the mob men in their lives. Panelists include author Wendy Mazaros, whose book Vegas Rag Doll deals with her marriage to Union racketeer and Chicago Outfit hitman Tom Hanley, and a surprise visit from a member of the Meyer Lansky family. Moderated by Peabody Award-winning investigative news reporter and author George Knapp.
Book sales/signing will be available at each event. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis. Entry wristbands will be issued starting at 6 p.m. from the Theater box office on day of event only. For more information about any of our Mob Month events, please call 702-507-3458.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
January is Mob Month
Join the Clark County Library in Nevada on Tuesday nights at 7 p.m. in January as they visit the multi-faceted culture of organized crime with ex-mobsters, law enforcement, authors, historians, and the witnesses who survived the Mob's expansive rise to power in 20th century America.
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Clark County Library
1401 E. Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89119
Room: Main Theater
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Did Richard Nixon Have a Gay Affair with Mob Connected Crony?
He carpet-bombed Cambodia, spewed out anti-Semitic slurs and crude misogynistic jokes in the White House and smeared his political opponents with ruthless 'dirty tricks' campaigns. And, of course, he lied to his country about his involvement in the Watergate scandal and went down in history as America's shiftiest, darkest President.
Given everything that Richard Nixon has been accused of, it's difficult to believe there could be any more skeletons left in his cupboard. But it seems there are.
A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th U.S. President had a serious drink problem, beat his wife and — by the time he was inaugurated in 1969 — had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello, then America's most powerful mobster.
Yet the most extraordinary claim is that the homophobic Nixon may have been gay himself. If true, it would provide a fascinating insight into the motivation and behaviour of a notoriously secretive politician.
Fulsom argues that Nixon may have had an affair with his best friend and confidant, a Mafia‑connected Florida wheeler-dealer named Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo who was even more crooked than Nixon.
The book, Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, is out next month — by coincidence at the same time as the UK release of a new film directed by Clint Eastwood about another supposed closet gay among Washington's 20th-century hard men. But while FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, played in Eastwood's film by Leonardo DiCaprio, allegedly had an affair with his squeaky-clean deputy Clyde Tolson, Nixon's supposed secret paramour was a very different character.
Bebe Rebozo was a short, swarthy, good-looking Cuban-American businessman with a history of failed relationships with women and close alliances with Miami's Mafia chiefs.
The veteran TV newsman Dan Rather recalled how Rebozo 'transmitted the sense of great sensuality', paying tribute to his 'magnetic' personality and 'beautiful eyes'.
Fulsom uses recently revealed documents and eyewitness interviews — including with FBI agents — to shed new light on long-standing suspicions among White House insiders that Nixon may have been more than just good buddies with Rebozo.
He claims Nixon's relationship with Pat, his wife of 53 years, was little more than a sham. A heavy drinker whom his own staff dubbed 'Our Drunk', Nixon used to call his First Lady a 'f***ing bitch' and beat her before, during and after his presidency, says Fulsom.
The pair had separate bedrooms at the White House — and in Key Biscayne, the exclusive resort near Miami where Nixon holidayed, Mrs Nixon didn't even sleep in the same building. Rebozo, however, was in the house next door.
Fulsom claims one of Nixon's former military aides had a secret job 'to teach the President how to kiss his wife' so they would look like a convincing couple.
How much of this can we believe? Nixon died in 1994 and his reputation is pretty much irredeemable. As with Eastwood's Hoover film, there is no definitive proof, but plenty of 'supporting evidence'.
Fulsom quotes a former Time magazine reporter who, at a Washington dinner, bent down to pick up a fork and saw the two holding hands under the table. It was, the reporter judged, sufficiently intimate to suggest 'repressed homosexuality'.Another journalist related how, loosened up by drink, Nixon once put his arm around Rebozo 'the way you'd cuddle your senior prom date. Something was fishy there'.But who exactly was Bebe Rebozo, and how did a shady Florida businessman of unclear sexual leanings end up as the bosom friend of one of the most paranoid and buttoned-up political leaders of the 20th century?
Born two months before Nixon in 1912, Charles Gregory Rebozo was the son of a Cuban cigar-maker and, as the youngest of nine, was stuck with the nickname 'Bebe'.
He came from poverty but worked his way up through property speculation and then banking. According to the FBI, he had close links with Mob bosses such as Santo Trafficante, the Tampa Godfather, and Alfred 'Big Al' Polizzi, a stooge of Meyer Lansky, the Cosa Nostra's financial brains.
By the 1960s, an FBI agent was describing Rebozo as a 'non- member associate of organised crime figures'. He bought land in Florida with a business partner who was believed to be a front for some of the most powerful Mafiosi.
When Rebozo started his own bank in Florida in 1964, Nixon — then a lawyer — wielded a golden shovel at the ground-breaking ceremony and became its first depositor.
According to Mafioso Vincent Teresa, the bank was used by the Mob to launder stolen cash. It hardly seems possible that Nixon, who pledged to make fighting organised crime a priority of his presidency, could not have known of his best friend's Mafia links.
Nixon had just won one of California's U.S. Senate seats when he first met Rebozo in 1950. Fearing Nixon was facing a nervous breakdown, fellow Senator George Smathers suggested a holiday in Florida and enlisted his old school friend Rebozo to show the socially awkward Nixon a good time.
Their first jaunt together — in Rebozo's 33ft fishing boat — did not go well. Rebozo later complained that Nixon just sat reading papers and, according to his host, barely said half a dozen words to him.
Smathers said Rebozo later told him: 'Don't ever send that son of a bitch Nixon down here again. He's a guy who doesn't know how to talk, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't chase women... he can't even fish.'But Rebozo persevered — and according to a cynical Smathers, Nixon's rising stardom in Washington and the potential influence it offered 'had a lot to do with it'.
In months, the pair were inseparable, holidaying with Nixon's wife Pat — and without her. Rebozo became an 'uncle figure' to the Nixons' two daughters, Tricia and Julie. The dapper Cuban-American chose Nixon's clothes and even selected the films he watched at the White House.
On Nixon's solo visits to Key Biscayne, they swam and sunbathed, indulging in their shared passions for discussing Broadway musicals and barbecuing steaks.
Both men were also extremely secretive, and their relationship — described as the 'most important unsolved mystery in Nixon's life' — was kept so discreet that the New York Times did not mention it for nearly 20 years.
Observers noticed their intimacy became most apparent when they were drunk. An aide recalled them playing a game called King of the Pool at Key Biscayne: 'It was late at night, the two men had been drinking. Nixon mounted a rubber raft in the pool while Rebozo tried to turn it over. Then, laughing and shouting, they'd change places.'
They were seen together at the same British-themed hostelries in the Key: the English Pub, where they drank beer from tankards engraved with their names, and the Jamaica Inn, where they ate at a discreet booth.
Both spots were owned by another businessman with Mob links and the secret service asked Nixon to find another place to eat.
Why the President's minders didn't raise alarms about Rebozo's Mafia connections has puzzled experts, but they probably didn't dare. When a New York newspaper investigated Rebozo's Mob links in the 1970s, its staff suddenly found themselves under secret service surveillance.
A White House aide once dismissed Rebozo's role as 'the guy who mixed the Martinis', but he was far more important than that.
When Nixon became President, Rebozo got his own office and bedroom at the White House, and a security clearance that allowed him to go in and out without being logged by the secret service. Using a false name, says Fulsom, Rebozo even got into Nixon's hotel suite during a trip to Europe.
The President's closest colleagues complained at the way Rebozo monopolised Nixon's time. General Alexander Haig, his last chief of staff, is said to have imitated Rebozo's 'limp wrist' manner and joked that Rebozo and Nixon were lovers.
According to Fulsom, Henry Kissinger resented the way Rebozo would fly on Air Force One, the Presidential plane, wearing a blue U.S. Navy flight jacket bearing the President's seal and with his name stitched on it.
Away from Nixon's side, Rebozo surrounded himself with glamorous women and threw Miami parties that descended into orgies, but was it all a front?
Aged 18, Rebozo reportedly enjoyed an 'intense' affair with a young man, Donald Gunn. He later wed Gunn's teenage sister. The marriage lasted four years and, according to his wife, was never consummated.
Rebozo didn't marry again until middle age, when he entered what Newsweek magazine described as an 'antiseptic' alliance with his lawyer's secretary. 'Bebe's favourites are Richard Nixon, his cat — and then me,' the lady complained later. A fellow Miami resident told Nixon biographer Anthony Summers that Rebozo was definitely part of the city's gay community.
Summers and co-writer Robbyn Swan, however, question whether there is enough evidence to suggest Nixon was gay. 'They held hands on occasion, and both men had problems with consummating physical relationships with women, but we found no evidence that Nixon was actively homosexual,' Summers told me this week.
Physical or not, Nixon's attraction to Rebozo has struck many as politically reckless. Nixon expert Professor Fawn Brodie couldn't understand how he would be 'willing to risk the kind of gossip that frequently accompanies close friendship with a perennial bachelor'. After all, she added, Nixon was, in public, a virulent gay-hater.
When Walter Jenkins, a trusted aide to President Lyndon Johnson, was caught providing sexual favours to a retired sailor in a YMCA lavatory, Nixon denounced him as 'ill'. People who suffered this 'illness', he added, 'cannot be in places of high trust'.
Rebozo was certainly in a position of 'high trust', and not only because he was a key fundraiser. He was with Nixon when he announced his successful run for President and again in June 1972 when Nixon learned that five men hired by the White House to break into the Watergate building had been arrested.
'We were swimming at Key Biscayne in front of my house,' Rebozo recalled. 'They came out and told him. He said: "What in God's name were they doing there?" We laughed and forgot about it.'
Rebozo also ended up being investigated by the Watergate committee, which found that a £64,000 cash contribution from the industrialist Howard Hughes that was meant for the Republican Party was actually in Rebozo's safe deposit box.
It also emerged that both Nixon and Rebozo's personal wealth had soared during Nixon's first five years in the White House, Rebozo's rising nearly seven-fold from £432,000 to nearly £3million.
Rebozo escaped prosecution — allegedly because of a White House deal — and he stood by his disgraced friend. He was at Nixon's bedside during his final days.
When Rebozo died in 1998, he left more than £12million to the Nixon memorial library, whose executive director eulogised him as a 'consummate gentleman' on whose 'wise counsel, shrewd political insight and ready wit' Nixon relied.
Typically, Nixon had been rather less charitable — he always described Rebozo as just a 'golfing partner'.
Thanks to Tom Leonard
Given everything that Richard Nixon has been accused of, it's difficult to believe there could be any more skeletons left in his cupboard. But it seems there are.
A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th U.S. President had a serious drink problem, beat his wife and — by the time he was inaugurated in 1969 — had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello, then America's most powerful mobster.
Yet the most extraordinary claim is that the homophobic Nixon may have been gay himself. If true, it would provide a fascinating insight into the motivation and behaviour of a notoriously secretive politician.
Fulsom argues that Nixon may have had an affair with his best friend and confidant, a Mafia‑connected Florida wheeler-dealer named Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo who was even more crooked than Nixon.
The book, Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, is out next month — by coincidence at the same time as the UK release of a new film directed by Clint Eastwood about another supposed closet gay among Washington's 20th-century hard men. But while FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, played in Eastwood's film by Leonardo DiCaprio, allegedly had an affair with his squeaky-clean deputy Clyde Tolson, Nixon's supposed secret paramour was a very different character.
Bebe Rebozo was a short, swarthy, good-looking Cuban-American businessman with a history of failed relationships with women and close alliances with Miami's Mafia chiefs.
The veteran TV newsman Dan Rather recalled how Rebozo 'transmitted the sense of great sensuality', paying tribute to his 'magnetic' personality and 'beautiful eyes'.
Fulsom uses recently revealed documents and eyewitness interviews — including with FBI agents — to shed new light on long-standing suspicions among White House insiders that Nixon may have been more than just good buddies with Rebozo.
He claims Nixon's relationship with Pat, his wife of 53 years, was little more than a sham. A heavy drinker whom his own staff dubbed 'Our Drunk', Nixon used to call his First Lady a 'f***ing bitch' and beat her before, during and after his presidency, says Fulsom.
The pair had separate bedrooms at the White House — and in Key Biscayne, the exclusive resort near Miami where Nixon holidayed, Mrs Nixon didn't even sleep in the same building. Rebozo, however, was in the house next door.
Fulsom claims one of Nixon's former military aides had a secret job 'to teach the President how to kiss his wife' so they would look like a convincing couple.
How much of this can we believe? Nixon died in 1994 and his reputation is pretty much irredeemable. As with Eastwood's Hoover film, there is no definitive proof, but plenty of 'supporting evidence'.
Fulsom quotes a former Time magazine reporter who, at a Washington dinner, bent down to pick up a fork and saw the two holding hands under the table. It was, the reporter judged, sufficiently intimate to suggest 'repressed homosexuality'.Another journalist related how, loosened up by drink, Nixon once put his arm around Rebozo 'the way you'd cuddle your senior prom date. Something was fishy there'.But who exactly was Bebe Rebozo, and how did a shady Florida businessman of unclear sexual leanings end up as the bosom friend of one of the most paranoid and buttoned-up political leaders of the 20th century?
Born two months before Nixon in 1912, Charles Gregory Rebozo was the son of a Cuban cigar-maker and, as the youngest of nine, was stuck with the nickname 'Bebe'.
He came from poverty but worked his way up through property speculation and then banking. According to the FBI, he had close links with Mob bosses such as Santo Trafficante, the Tampa Godfather, and Alfred 'Big Al' Polizzi, a stooge of Meyer Lansky, the Cosa Nostra's financial brains.
By the 1960s, an FBI agent was describing Rebozo as a 'non- member associate of organised crime figures'. He bought land in Florida with a business partner who was believed to be a front for some of the most powerful Mafiosi.
When Rebozo started his own bank in Florida in 1964, Nixon — then a lawyer — wielded a golden shovel at the ground-breaking ceremony and became its first depositor.
According to Mafioso Vincent Teresa, the bank was used by the Mob to launder stolen cash. It hardly seems possible that Nixon, who pledged to make fighting organised crime a priority of his presidency, could not have known of his best friend's Mafia links.
Nixon had just won one of California's U.S. Senate seats when he first met Rebozo in 1950. Fearing Nixon was facing a nervous breakdown, fellow Senator George Smathers suggested a holiday in Florida and enlisted his old school friend Rebozo to show the socially awkward Nixon a good time.
Their first jaunt together — in Rebozo's 33ft fishing boat — did not go well. Rebozo later complained that Nixon just sat reading papers and, according to his host, barely said half a dozen words to him.
Smathers said Rebozo later told him: 'Don't ever send that son of a bitch Nixon down here again. He's a guy who doesn't know how to talk, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, doesn't chase women... he can't even fish.'But Rebozo persevered — and according to a cynical Smathers, Nixon's rising stardom in Washington and the potential influence it offered 'had a lot to do with it'.
In months, the pair were inseparable, holidaying with Nixon's wife Pat — and without her. Rebozo became an 'uncle figure' to the Nixons' two daughters, Tricia and Julie. The dapper Cuban-American chose Nixon's clothes and even selected the films he watched at the White House.
On Nixon's solo visits to Key Biscayne, they swam and sunbathed, indulging in their shared passions for discussing Broadway musicals and barbecuing steaks.
Both men were also extremely secretive, and their relationship — described as the 'most important unsolved mystery in Nixon's life' — was kept so discreet that the New York Times did not mention it for nearly 20 years.
Observers noticed their intimacy became most apparent when they were drunk. An aide recalled them playing a game called King of the Pool at Key Biscayne: 'It was late at night, the two men had been drinking. Nixon mounted a rubber raft in the pool while Rebozo tried to turn it over. Then, laughing and shouting, they'd change places.'
They were seen together at the same British-themed hostelries in the Key: the English Pub, where they drank beer from tankards engraved with their names, and the Jamaica Inn, where they ate at a discreet booth.
Both spots were owned by another businessman with Mob links and the secret service asked Nixon to find another place to eat.
Why the President's minders didn't raise alarms about Rebozo's Mafia connections has puzzled experts, but they probably didn't dare. When a New York newspaper investigated Rebozo's Mob links in the 1970s, its staff suddenly found themselves under secret service surveillance.
A White House aide once dismissed Rebozo's role as 'the guy who mixed the Martinis', but he was far more important than that.
When Nixon became President, Rebozo got his own office and bedroom at the White House, and a security clearance that allowed him to go in and out without being logged by the secret service. Using a false name, says Fulsom, Rebozo even got into Nixon's hotel suite during a trip to Europe.
The President's closest colleagues complained at the way Rebozo monopolised Nixon's time. General Alexander Haig, his last chief of staff, is said to have imitated Rebozo's 'limp wrist' manner and joked that Rebozo and Nixon were lovers.
According to Fulsom, Henry Kissinger resented the way Rebozo would fly on Air Force One, the Presidential plane, wearing a blue U.S. Navy flight jacket bearing the President's seal and with his name stitched on it.
Away from Nixon's side, Rebozo surrounded himself with glamorous women and threw Miami parties that descended into orgies, but was it all a front?
Aged 18, Rebozo reportedly enjoyed an 'intense' affair with a young man, Donald Gunn. He later wed Gunn's teenage sister. The marriage lasted four years and, according to his wife, was never consummated.
Rebozo didn't marry again until middle age, when he entered what Newsweek magazine described as an 'antiseptic' alliance with his lawyer's secretary. 'Bebe's favourites are Richard Nixon, his cat — and then me,' the lady complained later. A fellow Miami resident told Nixon biographer Anthony Summers that Rebozo was definitely part of the city's gay community.
Summers and co-writer Robbyn Swan, however, question whether there is enough evidence to suggest Nixon was gay. 'They held hands on occasion, and both men had problems with consummating physical relationships with women, but we found no evidence that Nixon was actively homosexual,' Summers told me this week.
Physical or not, Nixon's attraction to Rebozo has struck many as politically reckless. Nixon expert Professor Fawn Brodie couldn't understand how he would be 'willing to risk the kind of gossip that frequently accompanies close friendship with a perennial bachelor'. After all, she added, Nixon was, in public, a virulent gay-hater.
When Walter Jenkins, a trusted aide to President Lyndon Johnson, was caught providing sexual favours to a retired sailor in a YMCA lavatory, Nixon denounced him as 'ill'. People who suffered this 'illness', he added, 'cannot be in places of high trust'.
Rebozo was certainly in a position of 'high trust', and not only because he was a key fundraiser. He was with Nixon when he announced his successful run for President and again in June 1972 when Nixon learned that five men hired by the White House to break into the Watergate building had been arrested.
'We were swimming at Key Biscayne in front of my house,' Rebozo recalled. 'They came out and told him. He said: "What in God's name were they doing there?" We laughed and forgot about it.'
Rebozo also ended up being investigated by the Watergate committee, which found that a £64,000 cash contribution from the industrialist Howard Hughes that was meant for the Republican Party was actually in Rebozo's safe deposit box.
It also emerged that both Nixon and Rebozo's personal wealth had soared during Nixon's first five years in the White House, Rebozo's rising nearly seven-fold from £432,000 to nearly £3million.
Rebozo escaped prosecution — allegedly because of a White House deal — and he stood by his disgraced friend. He was at Nixon's bedside during his final days.
When Rebozo died in 1998, he left more than £12million to the Nixon memorial library, whose executive director eulogised him as a 'consummate gentleman' on whose 'wise counsel, shrewd political insight and ready wit' Nixon relied.
Typically, Nixon had been rather less charitable — he always described Rebozo as just a 'golfing partner'.
Thanks to Tom Leonard
Monday, December 26, 2011
Are F.B.I. Staffing Levels Dedicated Fighting the Mob Not High Enough
Is the N.Y. FBI allocating far too little to fight the five Organized Crime Families?
The answer is a definite Yes, according to a story by mob expert Jerry Capeci, editor of Gang Land News.
The site reports that the number of agents investigating New York wiseguys is at an all time low. One agent, the site reports, calls it “dangerously low.”
Still, Gangland reports that “G-men and women from other federal agencies have jumped into the fray to fill the void against the thousands of wiseguys and associates of the infamous Five Families.”
An example, according to the site, were the arrests last week by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Diplomatic Security Services (DSS) agents with the State Department arrested three wiseguys and four associates of the Gambino and Bonanno crime families on racketeering charges.
Gang Land reported that the FBI has reduced the number of squads that investigate the Five Families to three and the number of agents trying to keep tabs and arrest 700 made men and 7000 associates to about 45.
“It’s pretty obvious that there are other people locking up people that we used to lock up,” one veteran agent who has worked on mob squads for more than a dozen years told Gang Land. The agent called the number of FBI agents going after the mob “dangerously low.”
“In terms that the numbers-crunching bureaucrats can understand,” said the agent, “it’s impossible for 45 agents to do the work that 65 or 70 – or even more – were doing without losing effectiveness.”
“Across the U.S. the mob’s influence and power is not what it used to be, even in cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But New York is different,” the agent said, according to Gang Land News. “They are still a viable force here. But for some reason the organized crime emphasis here is on non-traditional OC, not the LCN,” which is FBI-speak for La Cosa Nostra.
FBI spokesman Jim Margolin told Gang Land News: “The FBI’s allocation of resources isn’t etched in stone. We continually monitor and assess how best to deploy agents and other resources. We’re continuing to address the threat posed by organized crime in New York, including the five La Cosa Nostra families. But we have to do that with finite resources, spread across all of our investigative programs.”
Thanks to Tickle the Wire
The answer is a definite Yes, according to a story by mob expert Jerry Capeci, editor of Gang Land News.
The site reports that the number of agents investigating New York wiseguys is at an all time low. One agent, the site reports, calls it “dangerously low.”
Still, Gangland reports that “G-men and women from other federal agencies have jumped into the fray to fill the void against the thousands of wiseguys and associates of the infamous Five Families.”
An example, according to the site, were the arrests last week by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Diplomatic Security Services (DSS) agents with the State Department arrested three wiseguys and four associates of the Gambino and Bonanno crime families on racketeering charges.
Gang Land reported that the FBI has reduced the number of squads that investigate the Five Families to three and the number of agents trying to keep tabs and arrest 700 made men and 7000 associates to about 45.
“It’s pretty obvious that there are other people locking up people that we used to lock up,” one veteran agent who has worked on mob squads for more than a dozen years told Gang Land. The agent called the number of FBI agents going after the mob “dangerously low.”
“In terms that the numbers-crunching bureaucrats can understand,” said the agent, “it’s impossible for 45 agents to do the work that 65 or 70 – or even more – were doing without losing effectiveness.”
“Across the U.S. the mob’s influence and power is not what it used to be, even in cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But New York is different,” the agent said, according to Gang Land News. “They are still a viable force here. But for some reason the organized crime emphasis here is on non-traditional OC, not the LCN,” which is FBI-speak for La Cosa Nostra.
FBI spokesman Jim Margolin told Gang Land News: “The FBI’s allocation of resources isn’t etched in stone. We continually monitor and assess how best to deploy agents and other resources. We’re continuing to address the threat posed by organized crime in New York, including the five La Cosa Nostra families. But we have to do that with finite resources, spread across all of our investigative programs.”
Thanks to Tickle the Wire
Friday, December 16, 2011
Fifteen Chicago Men Charged in Gun-Running Probe
Fifteen Chicago men were charged in grand jury indictments or criminal complaints filed earlier this week in either U.S. District Court or Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago with violating state or federal firearms laws.
The charges were announced yesterday by Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), together with Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Garry F. McCarthy, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (CPD); and Anita Alvarez, Cook County State’s Attorney.
Thirteen of the defendants were arrested yesterday at various locations in and around Chicago, without incident, by members of the Chicago FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs and officers from the CPD. Two other defendants MARCUS JEFFERSON and TERRILL SMITH, avoided capture and are now the subjects of a nationwide manhunt.
Six of those arrested were charged in separate federal grand jury indictments with felon in possession of a firearm and/or distribution of a controlled substance. Those charged federally are identified as MARCUS JEFFERSON, age 31; MAURICE MARTIN, age 41; CARLOS MENDEZ, age 33; KEITH MURRAY, 45; TERRILL SMITH, age 23; and BRUCE WEATHERSPOON, age 30; all residents of Chicago. An additional defendant, RAMON FAVELA, age 38, also of Chicago, was arrested and subsequently charged in a criminal complaint with possession and distribution of a controlled substance.
Eight others were charged in criminal complaints filed in state court with unlawful sale of a firearm or unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. The state defendants are identified as AARON BASSETT, age 22; COREY BRAMLETT, age 19; TRIMELL COLLINS, age 27; GREGORY FREEMAN, age 23; DAVID HILL, age 22; CORNELIUS LEE, age 28; JAMES TOOMER, age 27; and CARLOS WILLIAMS, age 39, all residents of Chicago.
According to the grand jury indictments and criminal complaints, all of those charged were involved in the illegal possession or sale of firearms, including handguns, shotguns and assault rifles on Chicago’s west and south sides, since April of 2010. These weapons are alleged to have been purchased outside of Illinois, transported to Chicago where the defendants took possession of them, then eventually sold to undercover operatives for amounts ranging from $ 250.00 to $1600.00.
The investigation leading to the filing of the charges announced today is part of an ongoing and coordinated effort by the FBI and CPD’s Organized Crime Bureau and Gang Investigations Division to identify those responsible for illegally supplying firearms to Chicago’s criminal element, which are often used in street violence. During the course of this investigation, which incorporated sophisticated physical and electronic surveillance techniques and controlled undercover purchases, 48 firearms were recovered.
In announcing these arrests, Mr. Grant recognized the continued partnership with law enforcement at every level in combating violent street gangs. Said Mr. Grant, “The charges announced today reaffirm the FBI’s role in helping to stem the tide of violence in the City of Chicago and surrounding suburbs brought about by street gangs vying for control of lucrative drug trafficking locations.”
Additionally, the FBI is grateful for the assistance and support provided by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois State Police Forensic Laboratory, the Cook County Sheriff’s Intelligence Unit and the Illinois Department of Corrections.
“Gun violence is one of the toughest problems we face in the fight against crime,” said Superintendent McCarthy. “Chicago Police will continue collaborative efforts with our law enforcement partners in order to stop the influx of illegal firearms onto our City’s streets, and to keep these deadly weapons out of the hands of criminals responsible for drug and gang related violence in our communities,” he added.
“Today’s arrests are crucial in our ongoing efforts to target and cut off the flow of illegal weapons onto our streets which is driving the violence plaguing so many of our communities,” said Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. She added “The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office stands united with our partners in sharing all of our resources to continue to target and aggressively prosecute this type of gun trafficking.”
Those charged federally appeared in U.S. District Court in Chicago late Wednesday and Thursday, at which time they were formally charged. Two of the defendants were ordered held without bond, pending their next court appearance, which is scheduled for Monday, December 19. The remaining defendants were released on house arrest and electronic monitoring. If convicted of the charges filed against them, all seven federal defendants face a possible sentence ranging from 10 years to life in prison.
Those charged in state court appeared at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse yesterday, at which time they were formally charged. All eight defendants were ordered held on bonds ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 and all face sentences ranging from three to seven years in prison.
The Chicago FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs is comprised of FBI special agents and officers from the Chicago Police Department.
The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
The charges were announced yesterday by Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), together with Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Garry F. McCarthy, Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (CPD); and Anita Alvarez, Cook County State’s Attorney.
Thirteen of the defendants were arrested yesterday at various locations in and around Chicago, without incident, by members of the Chicago FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs and officers from the CPD. Two other defendants MARCUS JEFFERSON and TERRILL SMITH, avoided capture and are now the subjects of a nationwide manhunt.
Six of those arrested were charged in separate federal grand jury indictments with felon in possession of a firearm and/or distribution of a controlled substance. Those charged federally are identified as MARCUS JEFFERSON, age 31; MAURICE MARTIN, age 41; CARLOS MENDEZ, age 33; KEITH MURRAY, 45; TERRILL SMITH, age 23; and BRUCE WEATHERSPOON, age 30; all residents of Chicago. An additional defendant, RAMON FAVELA, age 38, also of Chicago, was arrested and subsequently charged in a criminal complaint with possession and distribution of a controlled substance.
Eight others were charged in criminal complaints filed in state court with unlawful sale of a firearm or unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. The state defendants are identified as AARON BASSETT, age 22; COREY BRAMLETT, age 19; TRIMELL COLLINS, age 27; GREGORY FREEMAN, age 23; DAVID HILL, age 22; CORNELIUS LEE, age 28; JAMES TOOMER, age 27; and CARLOS WILLIAMS, age 39, all residents of Chicago.
According to the grand jury indictments and criminal complaints, all of those charged were involved in the illegal possession or sale of firearms, including handguns, shotguns and assault rifles on Chicago’s west and south sides, since April of 2010. These weapons are alleged to have been purchased outside of Illinois, transported to Chicago where the defendants took possession of them, then eventually sold to undercover operatives for amounts ranging from $ 250.00 to $1600.00.
The investigation leading to the filing of the charges announced today is part of an ongoing and coordinated effort by the FBI and CPD’s Organized Crime Bureau and Gang Investigations Division to identify those responsible for illegally supplying firearms to Chicago’s criminal element, which are often used in street violence. During the course of this investigation, which incorporated sophisticated physical and electronic surveillance techniques and controlled undercover purchases, 48 firearms were recovered.
In announcing these arrests, Mr. Grant recognized the continued partnership with law enforcement at every level in combating violent street gangs. Said Mr. Grant, “The charges announced today reaffirm the FBI’s role in helping to stem the tide of violence in the City of Chicago and surrounding suburbs brought about by street gangs vying for control of lucrative drug trafficking locations.”
Additionally, the FBI is grateful for the assistance and support provided by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the Illinois State Police Forensic Laboratory, the Cook County Sheriff’s Intelligence Unit and the Illinois Department of Corrections.
“Gun violence is one of the toughest problems we face in the fight against crime,” said Superintendent McCarthy. “Chicago Police will continue collaborative efforts with our law enforcement partners in order to stop the influx of illegal firearms onto our City’s streets, and to keep these deadly weapons out of the hands of criminals responsible for drug and gang related violence in our communities,” he added.
“Today’s arrests are crucial in our ongoing efforts to target and cut off the flow of illegal weapons onto our streets which is driving the violence plaguing so many of our communities,” said Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. She added “The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office stands united with our partners in sharing all of our resources to continue to target and aggressively prosecute this type of gun trafficking.”
Those charged federally appeared in U.S. District Court in Chicago late Wednesday and Thursday, at which time they were formally charged. Two of the defendants were ordered held without bond, pending their next court appearance, which is scheduled for Monday, December 19. The remaining defendants were released on house arrest and electronic monitoring. If convicted of the charges filed against them, all seven federal defendants face a possible sentence ranging from 10 years to life in prison.
Those charged in state court appeared at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse yesterday, at which time they were formally charged. All eight defendants were ordered held on bonds ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 and all face sentences ranging from three to seven years in prison.
The Chicago FBI’s Joint Task Force on Gangs is comprised of FBI special agents and officers from the Chicago Police Department.
The public is reminded that a complaint is not evidence of guilt and that all defendants in a criminal case are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Top Ten Messages Left On Rod Blagojevich's Answering Machine
10.Hey, it's Conrad Murray. 14 years? I didn't get that for murder
9.This is your hairstylist. Make sure to condition after each delousing
8.Do you want the cell closer to the espresso machine or jacuzzi?
7.Congratulations, I hear you're going to Vail. Wait, nevermind
6.Hey, it's your cell mate. Do you like the top or bottom?
5.Sorry, I must have the wrong number. I was trying to reach Todd Blagojevich
4.Hey, it's Dave. Tonight's Top Ten List is about you. Nice work
3.It's 2011, why do you still have an answering machine?
2.This is President Obama. I'm granting you a full pardon. Nah, I'm just screwing with you
1.It's the warden. The inmates are asking how much you want for your seat
9.This is your hairstylist. Make sure to condition after each delousing
8.Do you want the cell closer to the espresso machine or jacuzzi?
7.Congratulations, I hear you're going to Vail. Wait, nevermind
6.Hey, it's your cell mate. Do you like the top or bottom?
5.Sorry, I must have the wrong number. I was trying to reach Todd Blagojevich
4.Hey, it's Dave. Tonight's Top Ten List is about you. Nice work
3.It's 2011, why do you still have an answering machine?
2.This is President Obama. I'm granting you a full pardon. Nah, I'm just screwing with you
1.It's the warden. The inmates are asking how much you want for your seat
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