It seems like most the high ranking members have all been in prison fairly recently.

Barney's been on the streets a little over 4 years now.
Dom Cefalu has been out since Nov. 2009
Crea is the boss that's been out the longest. he got released in summer of 2006.


Seems like these bosses aren't all so great at avoiding convictions. Hopefully they can all continue to slide by quietly and build their families back up.

A lot of them here in Chicago have avoided time... seems to have basically settled down, you don't hear anything these days.

This is *purely* conjecture, but I have wondered at times if the feds have entered into an agreement with the remains of the Outfit to leave them alone in exchange for information pertaining to other organized crime elements.

In this day and age it is a hell of a lot more relevant to the feds when a massive drug shipment may be coming in, or heaven forbid when some Russian mobsters may be shipping nuclear materials somewhere, than any gambling information.

The remains of the Outfit could potentially be in a unique position for knowing about that kind of thing.

Just an idea I wonder about now and again.

The other possibility is the feds are just bored and don't really give a s##t if a few old men own a casino in Aruba or not.

An article same out a year or two ago that alleged the feds have two very high ranking Outfit members who have been giving them information for years. Naturally, some wonder if these informants are John DiFronzo and/or Joseph Andriacchi; considering they've avoided legal troubles for so long and didn't get indicted in the Family Secrets case.

Not sure exactly what potentially puts the Outfit in a unique position to know about a massive drug shipment or nuclear materials. It has almost no involvement in the drug trade, let alone nuclear materials.

I don't know that i'd even consider those Outfit guys major players anymore. It seems like most of them are geriatric now and I wonder how much they actually are doing out there.

Anyways, any New York or Jersey guys who have been out for a long time?

Yeah, they were the smart ones. Got their money, got the f##k out, kept their kids away from it.

I am reluctant to name names, but I am really just thinking of a few key people... what I'm saying is, they have an extremely unique vantage point on the underworld. Nothing like they did in the 60s, but they would still know what's going on, would have a unique vantage point into the situation... it seems plausible to me, and I'm not the only one.

The party is over with mafia-style organized crime in general. The smart people are always attuned to when it's time to leave the party. Chicago was a wildly succesful crime family, and got away with a lot. They seem to have been disinvesting in criminal activities for a long time now.

Probably having something to do with not wanting to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

Right. What would put them in a unique position:

80-plus years of dominating the underworld in Chicago. We talked about this on ANP one time. It's pretty much accepted that the Outfit kept drugs out of Bridgeport. This is in an era of little to no Outfit violence. What we determined was that the Outfit wouldn't have scared the gangs with violence so much as its ability to use its political connections to wreak havoc on the drug trade, if it so desired. I'm not saying we're right, but Joe and another very knowledgable poster and I all basically thought it seemed like a plausible theory.

Magnify that kind of capability and knowledge by 100 and you begin to get a picture of the world these people were exposed to. One of the people you mentioned was with the Outfit since the heyday, when they were in collusion with the CIA and untold other schemes. Those connections don't fade overnight.

Do I think these people are involved in extremely heavy stuff right now? No. Do I think they hear things? Yes.