The Chicago Way Ideas Week Tour

There's this thrill running up my leg — and I haven't had it too often — but it sure has been tingling like mad ever since I heard about Chicago Ideas Week.

According to the website, "Chicago Ideas Week will bring the world's top speakers, together with Chicago's best thinkers, to create an ecosystem of innovation, exploration and intellectual recreation."

Excellent. Bring a bunch of politicians to Chicago, have them mix with Chicago politicians, feed them, and then encourage them to make speeches about how smart they are, and if that's not an ecosystem, I don't know what is.

"Meet the Press" is in town to help kick off the week on Sunday. Former President Bill Clinton will be hanging around, so you'll probably see him prowling the Viagra Triangle. But the highlight will be Monday's fantastic tour (only 15 bucks) by former Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago's fabulous Millennium Park, though I prefer to call it Billennium Park, since it cost about $50 million an acre. Sadly, Daley's tour is not open to the media.

Daley is expected to explain how he created the park, and how great it is. The prospect got me so tingly, I wanted to contribute to this "ecosystem" of ideas. And eureka, I think I've found it:

The Chicago Way Ideas Week Tour.

Daley could begin by opening it up to the media, particularly the "Meet the Press" crowd and other foreign correspondents. They'd rather hear Daley/Obama mouthpiece David Axelrod entertain them with songs of hope and change, but it's time the national media understood the Chicago Way.

The tour would begin at the park's Clout Cafe — Park Grill — where Daley's political adviser Tim Degnan somehow became an investor. Another investor was Daley's friend and fashionista, trucking boss Fred Bruno Barbara, who once, according to federal testimony, served as driver to Chicago mob boss Angelo "The Hook" LaPietra.

Once we fill up on those bland Clout Cafe chicken sandwiches, we could set off on our tour. First thing would be to stand before that gigantic $40 million silver bean, and look deep inside of it, to see all the wonders:

Like Chicago's budget drowning in $600 million or more of red ink, and all those contracts to cronies over the decades that sopped up the cash, all those hungry parking meters, and all those kids who drop out of school each year.

Stare further into the bean and you'd see businesses that received city development bucks and kicked into former first lady Maggie Daley's After School Matters charity, and all those cops who still aren't on the street because all the money is gone.

Daley could point out the city sewers that were inspected by President Barack Obama's political godfather, former state Senate President Emil Jones, who is now chairman of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Jones spent decades as a political double dipper, crafting legislation and also inspecting city sewers. But legend has it that during all those years of sewer inspecting, Jones never smudged his camel-hair coat. Not even once.

We'd then drive down to Kenwood, to the president's home, the one that convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko helped him with, and then back across the city, to the federal criminal courts, where Rezko's confidant, Republican boss Big Bill Cellini, is standing trial on corruption charges.

After that stop, we'd need some sunshine and a happy place, and you know where we could find it? Stearns Quarry Park.

The quarry was in Bridgeport, at 29th and Halsted streets, a few blocks from the mayor's home, and it was where, decade after decade, city trucking bosses would dump their construction debris.

There was nothing illegal per se about the dumping. What was illegal was all the bribery and other crimes committed by city officials and trucking bosses in the city's infamous Hired Truck program. So City Hall covered up the quarry, to erase our political memory. And it worked.

"Today," proclaims the Park District website, "visitors to Stearns Quarry Park can go fishing in a pond that retains old quarry walls; stroll along a wetland area that drains into the pond; watch for birds and other wildlife attracted by the site's vast range of native plants; fly kites in an open meadow; or take in the views of the cityscape."

Ponds. Kite flying. Meadows. Nice.

Later, Daley might want to take the "Meet the Press" panel to Division Street. There in 2004, a slight, 5-foot-3-inch, 125-pound David Koschman, age 21, was reportedly slugged by Daley's muscular nephew, Richard J. Vanecko, 6-3, 230 pounds.

Koschman died, there were no charges, and according to the Sun-Times, the files went missing, the Rush Street police detail didn't see anything, and nobody knows nothing.

Official Chicago doesn't have any idea what happened, even during Ideas Week.

Thanks to John Kass

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GC-Global Capital Attempting to Foreclose on The Las Vegas Mob Experience

The hits just keep on coming at the Las Vegas Mob Experience, where a lender is now trying to foreclose on its property including artifacts provided by mob family members.

The lender, GC-Global Capital Corp. of Toronto, charged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that it’s entitled to foreclose after The Experience defaulted on debt and GC-Global was defrauded by Mob Experience developer Jay Bloom – though Bloom claims he’s the one who was victimized when he was induced under false pretenses to give up control of The Experience this summer.

GC-Global says in the lawsuit that in January it was approached by Bloom a few months before the attraction opened and that by April 4, GC-Global had obtained $3.189 million in loans that had initially been made by several individual investors to the experience.

These loans were secured by property owned by a Bloom company called the Mafia Collection LLC and GC-Global claims in the lawsuit it has a first lien position "in all personal property of Mafia Collection and all proceeds therefrom, which includes all of the artifacts and exhibits used for the Mob Experience."

The suit says the Mob Experience’s parent company, Murder Inc., defaulted on the $3.189 million in debt and asks the court to require the defendants – Murder Inc., Bloom and three Bloom companies – to show cause "why the collateral should not be delivered to the plaintiff."

It also asks for "a writ of possession directing the sheriff of Clark County, Nev., to seize the collateral from those locations where there is probable cause to believe it is located or will be found."

Murder Inc., which is now controlled by former Bloom partner Louis Ventre, has not yet responded to the suit. But it’s expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and reorganization soon as it faces not just the GC-Global lawsuit, but lawsuits filed by creditors including contractors that built the tourist attraction at the Tropicana resort on the Las Vegas Strip. On top of that, the Mob Experience is $500,000 behind in rent owed the Tropicana.

As was seen in the bankruptcy of Eva Longoria’s Beso restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip, the outcome of which was determined by Beso landlord Crystals, Mob Experience contractors as secured lien-holding creditors and landlord the Tropicana likely will control the fate of the attraction at that location going forward.

GC-Global is represented in Wednesday’s lawsuit by attorneys with the Las Vegas law firm Kaempfer Crowell Renshaw Gronauer & Fiorentino.

Those attorneys said in the suit that after GC-Global obtained the Mob Experience loans and was told in June that the Mob Experience couldn’t make the loan payments, it learned "defendants, through Bloom, had either negligently or intentionally made numerous misrepresentations concerning the defendants and the Mob Experience."

"Bloom stated that there were no outstanding amounts due and owing to contractors for the tenant improvements at the Tropicana," the lawsuit said. "The actual amount due and owing to such contractors was in excess of $4.5 million."

It is expected that Bloom will deny such allegations in his pending response.

"Moreover, it became known that Bloom and the other defendants were commingling funds with questionable accounting practices, which included Bloom using the defendants’ funds for his individual expenses (including $50,000 for a down payments on his house purchase)," the lawsuit charged. Bloom has already denied similar allegations by Vion and Strategic in his responses to their litigation.

"Bloom controlled virtually every aspect of the accounting process, and thus could commingle funds with his other enterprises at will, without being detected," the lawsuit charges. "It became known that Bloom made many payments to (his company) Eagle Group which were used for unrelated LLC companies that Bloom controlled."

Bloom in other lawsuits has denied allegations that he looted the company and says Ventre is the one who has looted the company since taking over this summer – charges denied by Ventre.

GC-Global in its lawsuit reiterated assertions that when it was learned the Mob Experience couldn’t pay its bills this summer, Bloom gave up 95 percent of his interest in Murder Inc. under an arrangement in which investors agreed to pump an additional $160,000 into the company to keep the doors open.

Wednesday’s lawsuit says this was because "no investors or creditors of the defendants would agree to attempt to salvage the Mob Experience unless and until Bloom relinquished any and all control over the Mob Experience."

Bloom, however, insists he put 95 percent of his stake in Murder Inc. into escrow as part of a deal in which an additional $5 million would be raised for the attraction, something that never happened.

Wednesday’s lawsuit says that after Bloom left the experience, GC-Global entered into a forbearance agreement with Murder Inc. agreeing not to file suit or foreclose on its collateral.

That agreement expired Sept. 24 and with Murder Inc. still in default, Wednesday’s foreclosure lawsuit was filed.

The suit raises the question of who actually controls some of the Mob Experience artifacts, charging: "Bloom indicated that all of the artifacts were paid for and held free and clear. That representation also turned out to be false. Bloom declined to disclose to the plaintiff, prior to the funding, that other entities or parties may hold the same security in the collateral as the plaintiff." Bloom has already denied similar arguments by Vion and Strategic in his answers in that accusation.

Wednesday’s lawsuit lifts to at least 11 the number of suits filed in the past year over the Mob Experience finances and to six the number naming Bloom personally as a defendant.

Attorneys for Bloom, his wife Carolyn Farkas and four Bloom companies, in the meantime, filed court papers Tuesday complaining that two creditors of the attraction, Vion Operations LLC and Strategic Funding Source Inc., have been using Ventre in a scheme to place Murder Inc. into bankruptcy.

Such a bankruptcy, Bloom’s attorneys complained, would strip Murder Inc. note holders of their interests in the company.

Vion and Strategic in August sued bloom over a deal in which they funded the attraction with $3.1 million as part of a $4 million receivables factoring deal. Under this contract, Vion and Strategic are entitled to 10 percent of the company’s receipts over time up to $4 million.

Bloom’s attorneys said in court papers Tuesday this lawsuit is improper as there has been no breach of the factoring agreement in which Vion and Strategic Funding have already received nearly $86,000 of the $4 million, representing all of their entitlement under their factoring agreement, according to Bloom, and therefore Bloom says there is no breach by Bloom or the other defendants as alleged by Vion and Strategic.

Bloom’s attorneys complained Murder Inc. was not named as a defendant in that lawsuit as part of the plot to put the experience into bankruptcy, because if Murder Inc. had been sued, a bankruptcy would stay the litigation against it.

"Despite failing to name the actual party to the agreements – Murder Inc. – as a defendant, plaintiffs are placing all of the blame on Bloom in is personal capacity for the alleged breach of these agreements, omitting from their claim both the actual parties to the agreement and their agent, Ventre, as co-guarantor," Tuesday’s court filing charged.

Bloom’s attorneys reiterated their charge that as part of their scheming together with Ventre, Vion and Strategic Funding submitted a "fraudulent email" to the court as an exhibit aimed at discrediting Bloom’s choice of a Canadian company to take over management of the attraction.

This allegation was denied by Vion and Strategic Funding, whose attorneys said that what looks like an altered email was actually the result of a simple cut-and-paste error, although Bloom has said the section of the e-mail deleted was from the middle of the e-mail's contents, not the top or bottom, making it unclear how a cut and paste could cause such an "inadvertent" modification as Vion and Strategic suggest.

It’s unclear if this false email charge will gain any traction as it wasn’t commented on last week by Clark County District Court Judge Gloria Sturman during a hearing in which she ordered that an accounting of the experience be performed to help her sort out the charges and countercharges in the case and decide if Ventre should be removed as manager.

Despite the lawsuits, infighting among investors and the possibility of a bankruptcy, the Mob Experience remains open at the Tropicana in a scaled-down format with the museum portion open but the interactive part closed.

Thanks to Steve Green

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Where's Robert P. “Bobby” DeLuca Sr.

Where’s Bobby?

That’s the question that has been on the minds of mobsters, law-enforcement officials and followers of organized crime since four mobsters and mob associates were indicted last week on federal racketeering and extortion charges for shaking down several strip clubs and collecting $25,000 from a woman they threatened at work. But the indictment makes no mention of Robert P. “Bobby” DeLuca Sr., a major player in the New England La Cosa Nostra for more than three decades.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors noted that “made members” of the mob have cooperated with them in their investigation, and they have and will continue to rely on them in the prosecution of Edward C. Lato and Alfred “Chippy” Scivola Jr., made members of the New England mob, along with mob associates Raymond “Scarface” Jenkins and Albino “Albie” Folcarelli.

“During the course of this investigation, the FBI has developed additional witnesses, including formally initiated or made members of the New England La Cosa Nostra, who will testify that the [mob] exists, and will further testify about the activities of its members,” the papers say.

The prosecutors, William Ferland and Sam Nazzaro, also wrote that “these witnesses” will testify about the secret mob initiation ceremony in which the “made men” take a blood oath of loyalty to omerta, otherwise known as La Cosa Nostra’s code of silence. Part of the oath requires the mobsters to engage in acts of violence, including murder, when called upon by ranking members of the criminal enterprise.

DeLuca is an expert on mob initiations. In 1989, he was one of several mobsters, including then-mob boss Raymond J. “Junior” Patriarca, whom the FBI captured on tape during an induction ceremony in a house outside of Boston. DeLuca was one of the mobsters who, that day, became a “made man,” or full-fledged member of La Cosa Nostra.

The recording was the first time the FBI had ever recorded a mob induction, and it has been played at countless mob trials to show that the Mafia does indeed exist.

DeLuca’s star rose quickly in the mob. Once a small-time hood, the now-inducted wiseguy hitched his wagon to Boston-based mob boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme. But the high times were short-lived. In 1996, DeLuca was sentenced to 10½ years in federal prison for his role in the shakedown of Paulie Calenda, a Cranston businessman and mob associate.

The jury was convinced at the colorful trial, featuring sobbing strippers, mob informants and gangland thugs, that Gerard T. Ouimette, a feared mob enforcer, threatened Calenda for a $125,000 extortion payment. The panel also concluded that Ouimette was acting under orders from DeLuca.

The court papers filed last week do not identify the cooperating mob witnesses in the recent sweep, but they have fueled plenty of speculation that DeLuca has switched allegiances and is now working for his longtime nemesis: the Justice Department.

It’s ironic that some believe DeLuca is now a government informant, an accusation he cast about 10 years ago against fellow mobster Anthony M. “The Saint” St. Laurent Sr.

The indignity of being called a turncoat so infuriated St. Laurent that he solicited a Taunton, Mass., man to kill DeLuca. St. Laurent, 70, who is in a wheelchair and has been seriously ill for more than a decade, was charged and convicted of orchestrating the murder-for-hire scheme. He was just sentenced to seven years in federal prison.

At a recent news conference announcing the indictment and arrests, Peter F. Neronha, the U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, refused to identify DeLuca or anyone else as witnesses for the government. Instead, he said, that he would only discuss what was in the indictment.

Jim Martin, Neronha’s spokesman, issued a standard “no comment” to a series of questions about DeLuca.

Is DeLuca cooperating in the federal investigation? Has he joined the federal witness protection program? Are the federal authorities concerned about the safety of the mobster, his wife and two small children?

“No comment,” he said.

The same questions were posed to state police Supt. Steven G. O’Donnell, a longtime mob investigator who has tracked DeLuca’s criminal activities for more than 20 years.

“I can’t tell you if he’s cooperating or not,” he said. “I have no concerns for Bobby’s safety or anybody’s safety” who chooses a life of organized crime. “That’s the world they live in.”

In North Providence, there is no sign of DeLuca, his wife, Gina, a former hairdresser, or their two young children. At first, nobody thought much about not seeing him around. Each summer, he would travel to Saratoga Springs in August for the annual horse races, but this summer he never returned to his old haunts.

In June 2009, Gina DeLuca bought the large, 4,746-square-foot colonial-style house for $340,000 from Christina Schadone, wife of Rep. Gregory J. Schadone, D-North Providence. On Aug. 1, less than two months ago, the house next to Greystone Elementary School, was placed on the market for $335,000.

The furniture has been cleared out and little more remains than steel-brushed appliances and a chandelier in the front foyer.

Paul M. Martellini, the acting police chief in North Providence, said he knew that the mobster lived at the address, but his department has received no reports of foul play involving the DeLucas. He checked the department records and said that police responded to the house on the morning of July 1 for a false alarm. At the time, he said, the family was living there.

“We have had no contact with him other than the alarm,” Martellini said. “We didn’t know that he hasn’t been around.”

After DeLuca wrapped up his federal prison sentence, he returned to Rhode Island and spent a few years in the state prison system.

Over the past six years, DeLuca, now 66, has worked at the SideBar & Grill, a small restaurant and nightclub at the corner of Dorrance and Pine streets. The establishment’s owner is lawyer Artin H. Coloian, once a top aide to ex-Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.

Coloian hired DeLuca back in 2006 when he was in a work-release program at the Adult Correctional Institutions. He remained a fixture at the restaurant after he completed his prison sentence. He was often seen hanging out with Coloian or puffing a cigar as the two strolled down Dorrance Street.

Coloian, who has defended DeLuca in the past, insisted that his client is not cooperating with the federal authorities, but he refused to say whether he’s still employed at his restaurant.

“I’m not obligated to tell you who my employees are or are not,” he said, adding that he would not disclose the last time he saw the mobster.

Thanks to W. Zachary Malinowski

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Ken Burns: Prohbition

Ken Burns: Prohibitionis a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.

The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse. But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated. Especially among the young, and most especially among young women, liquor consumption rocketed, propelling the rest of the culture with it: skirts shortened. Music heated up. America's Sweetheart morphed into The Vamp.

Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun, encouraged neighborhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permitted government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social contract all across the country. With Prohibition in place, but ineffectively enforced, one observer noted, America had hardly freed itself from the scourge of alcohol abuse – instead, the "drys" had their law, while the "wets" had their liquor.

The story of Prohibition's rise and fall is a compelling saga that goes far beyond the oft-told tales of gangsters, rum runners, flappers, and speakeasies, to reveal a complicated and divided nation in the throes of momentous transformation. The film raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago – about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, the proper role of government and finally, who is — and who is not — a real American.

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Las Vegas Dinner with Real Mobsters

If you've ever wondered whether retired gangsters such as Henry Hill and Frank Cullotta know which fork to use at dinner, here's a chance to find out at point-blank range.

Next Tuesday, Hill and Cullotta will join their pal Tony Montana for a good old Italian feast at the restaurant inside the Royal Resort on Convention Center Drive. Tickets to what the mob wishes was their last supper are on sale at the hotel.

For Hill, who turned on his former compatriots in the Lucchese crime family in a life story that later became the subject of Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," the dinner is a chance to get together with friends, entertain some mob aficionados and make a little scratch in the process. No longer in the Witness Protection Program, he lives quietly in Southern California and spends much of his day painting and drawing. And maybe looking over his shoulder once in a while.

The motivation for the dinner is simple. Even a retired wiseguy has to earn a living -- and a legal one, unless he wants to return to prison.

"No. 1, I kind of enjoy it," Hill says. "I like to sit down with some of my fans, tell stories and let them get up close and personal with me. I don't get rich, but it pays my gas money to Vegas and back.

"It's a legitimate hustle."

For years as a loyal member of Lucchese capo Paul Vario's crew, Hill would have sprinted from legitimate work. He was too busy committing a long list of felonies, serving prison time and generally living the life of successful mob associate. Even after he testified against his old friends, he had difficulty staying out of trouble. But he has obviously slowed down as he has gotten older. He is 68 and has struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. In the Witness Protection Program, he also had difficulty earning a legal living. Federal authorities weren't keen on him surfacing for book signings and spaghetti dinners with fascinated fans.

"I was forbidden to do it by the Witness Protection people and the FBI," he says. "But I had to earn a living."

And unless you're an undertaker, there aren't a lot of square employment possibilities for guys with expertise in burying bodies.

His celebrity as a former hoodlum not only helps keep a roof over his head, it's taking him to the Sands convention center in October for a signing at the World Gaming Expo. Later this year, he'll meet fans in England.

He also gets to Las Vegas to play the slots. But times have changed for the former big-tipping gangster. He mostly plays quarters and observes wryly that it's a long way between drink comps at some Strip properties that cater to high rollers.

Cullotta, meanwhile, is the former Anthony Spilotro pal and admitted killer who eventually testified against his childhood friend. The fact Spilotro was looking to eliminate him might have been a motivating factor for Cullotta.

Of the three, Montana has remained most under the radar. The former Chicago Outfit and Spilotro associate is also the former proprietor of a dandy Italian restaurant at the Boulder City Hotel. Montana knows his marinara as well as he knows his mobsters.

Hill says of his new running mates in organized-crime marketing, "We're like the Three Amigos."

You know, only with felony records.

Speaking of felonious fellows, I hear former Gambino soldier Andrew DiDonato, also the author of a tell-all biography, will make an appearance at the mobster meatball fest.

While some locals will surely be repulsed by the concept, Hill notes, "A lot of people are fascinated with it. They're fans. To tell you the truth, I enjoy meeting them and seeing them have a good time."

Between his painting and public appearances, Hill sounds like he's finally found his niche outside the underworld.

"What can I say?" he says. "It keeps me out of trouble."

Thanks to John L. Smith

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