Ben Kingsley associated with the Mob

OSCAR winner Sir Ben Kingsley is to star in the final series of The Sopranos - as himself. The 62-year-old was revealing nothing about the plot of the US Mafia series yesterday, only telling the BBC that the cast were a pleasure to work with.

James Gandolfini, who plays the head of the New Jersey mob family, was also keeping very quiet about the series. He told reporters: "I don't know what's going to happen and I don't want to know." But the show's creator David Chase told a US paper: "Ben Kingsley will star and he plays Ben Kingsley."

Yorkshire born Kingsley played English gangster Don Logan in the critically acclaimed movie Sexy Beast in 2001. He also starred as mobster Meyer Lanksy in the children's spoof gangster film Bugsy in 1991. He won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Ghandi in the 1982 film directed by Richard Attenborough.

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Apology Doesn't Sway Judge

Friends of ours: Al Capone, Michael Spano Sr.,
Friends of mine: Betty Loren-Maltese, Emil Schullo

Betty Loren-Maltese apologized in court Monday for allowing corruption to occur while on her watch as the former town president of the Chicago suburb of Cicero. But a federal judge determined her apology did not go far enough and resentenced her on a racketeering conviction to eight years in prison, the same jail term he doled out three years ago.

Loren-Maltese, 56, and five co-defendants were convicted of racketeering in 2002 for using a bogus insurance company to bilk taxpayers out of more than $10 million from 1992 to 1996.

A federal appeals court in September ruled that Loren-Maltese and her co-defendants should be resentenced because U.S. District Judge John F. Grady, who presided over the three-month trial, made an error in imposing the original sentences.

The appeals court opinion said that after Grady determined the amount of money Loren-Maltese and the others swindled from Cicero taxpayers to be $10.6 million, the judge wrongly rounded down the number to less than $10 million.

Prosecutors have spent years investigating the small, blue-collar suburb just outside the Chicago city limits that has been known as a haven for corruption since the 1920s, when Al Capone made it the hub of his bootlegging empire.

Among the others convicted with Loren-Maltese were alleged Cicero mob boss Michael Spano Sr. and Emil Schullo, one-time head of the Cicero police department. Schullo was scheduled to be resentenced today.

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St. Valentine's Day Massacre Reenactment

Friends of ours: Al Capone, Bugs Moran

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre is the crime that forever defined Chicago in the imagination of the world. On the morning of February 14th, Al Capone sent a Valentine to "Bugs" Moran and the north side mob ... a massacre leaving seven of Moran's men dead. Since Tommy Gun's Garage is Chicago's only south side speakeasy, and therefore part of the Capone gang, Tommy Gun's will reenact the massacre for audiences on February 9th - 14th.

This is not a romantic evening. After the dinner and show, guests are invited to watch what happened that morning at the garage of the SMC Cartage Company, 2122 North Clark Street. Vito, the MC, narrates the story, giving audiences a history of why this happened and who the seven unfortunate victims were.

Actors portray each of the seven victims, who believed that they were at the garage to pick up a shipment of hijacked Old Log Cabin Whiskey. After all the men "arrive" two of Capone's men pretend to be police officers and line up all the men to be handcuffed. In walk two more men and they all open fire on the actors. To achieve realism, each "victim" is equipped with blood bags that burst when the gun is fired.

This is Tommy Gun's 19th year reenacting the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Call 773-RAT-A-TAT for prices and reservations. Tommy Gun's Garage is Chicago's longest running audience interactive dinner theater show. A night at Tommy Gun's is a night in Prohibition-era Chicago, complete with singing, dancing, and musical comedy starring Vito and his gangsters and flappers. The evening of the massacres include the same dinner packages and show.

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6 Years in Prison for Embarrassed Riccitelli

Friends of ours: Victor Riccitelli, Gambino Crime Family, Anthony Megale

Prosecutors said he should have spent his old age planting gardens or visiting his grandchildren, but instead 72-year-old Victor Riccitelli was running gambling operations for the mob. Friday, a federal judge sentenced him to 6 years in prison for racketeering, flatly rejecting his argument that prosecutors sought to embarrass him by releasing transcripts of his conversations with an FBI informant.

U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton also found "somewhat preposterous" the argument that, when the convicted mobster was recorded discussing his Mafia induction ceremony and the hierarchy of the Gambino crime family, he claimed to have been repeating things he read in a book or saw on the HBO drama "The Sopranos."

Riccitelli, who has 29 convictions dating to the 1950s, became one of the most colorful characters in the landmark Mafia case federal prosecutors brought in 2004. He allegedly moved bulk cocaine - a fact prosecutors said he hid from his mob superiors - and was caught on tape negotiating deals while receiving treatment for colon cancer. "He started chemo in January of '04 and sold a kilo (of cocaine) in February of '04," Arterton said, later adding, "Mr. Riccitelli is a man of great stamina, it would seem."

He was also caught on tape trying to arrange a kidnapping, surprising prosecutors who said most criminals slow down in their old age. "Spend time with the grandkids, plant a garden - something other than plan a kidnapping," prosecutor Mike Gustafson said.

Riccitelli, who is already serving 13 years in prison on federal drug charges, told Arterton he was in the "wrong place at the wrong time." "All I know how to do is gamble. I had no education," Riccitelli said. "I leave my faith up to you."

While all of Riccitelli's co-defendants, including reputed Mafia underboss Anthony Megale, struck plea deals with prosecutors, Riccitelli became a thorn in the side of the Justice Department. He rejected plea deals, accused the FBI of selectively recording him and claimed no knowledge of the Gambino family. Only on the eve of trial, as prosecutors prepared to make public hours of taped conversations between Riccitelli and the informant, did Riccitelli admit his Mafia membership and plead guilty.

Soon after, prosecutors shocked Riccitelli when they released transcripts of his conversations anyway, revealing that he talked freely about the secretive world of the Gambino family. Riccitelli accused the Justice Department of overstepping its bounds and intentionally embarrassing him. "It's turning into something personal against Mr. Riccitelli or using him as a scapegoat to put on a dog-and-pony show against, as your honor calls it, the Mafia," attorney John Einhorn said.

Arterton agreed that he could serve the new prison sentence at the same time as his drug sentence but said she did not accept his argument of prosecutorial misconduct or his renewed efforts to distance himself from the crime family.

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Reputed mobster, Schweihs, blames court absence on ill heart

Friends of ours: Frank "the German" Schweihs, Joey "the Clown" Lombardo, James Marcello

Alleged mob hit man Frank "the German" Schweihs denied Wednesday that he refused to come to federal court in Chicago the day before as scheduled. Instead Schweihs said, he was unable to come to court because he was under the care of two doctors at the federal jail downtown. "They had me down in the dispensary with all kinds of wires hooked up to me. I was having trouble with my heart," he said.

Schweihs and 11 other men, including alleged Outfit bosses Joey "the Clown" Lombardo and James Marcello, are charged with a racketeering conspiracy that prosecutors say was based in murder and extortion. Schweihs was a fugitive for eight months before he was captured in December. During both of his court appearances in Chicago, he has complained of health problems.

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