I'm confused, can someone break it down simply. Is the Outfit viable? How many members, How many crews and locations? Which ones? What do the control, whos the leaders? All the rambling, speculation and arguing in past posts about this confused me. especially when subject veered off subject. Just wanted some straight forward information about them. Thanks.

I had posted a chart/ list in thread titled Chicago articles 2021 that may be of help to start. Also agree with threads derailing very pointless. I think that although much smaller obviously the outfit still exists and is viable. The members have for a long time but appears even more so now to have achieved status of quasi legit but with criminal pasts. Most members or associates have legit jobs or own companies work for city) municipalities and continue to hold connections to the legit world to use a term. The outfit has 2 large area crews, north and south. Now how the areas r divided I'm not sure. Some old Street crews may still exist, Grand Avenue Cicero Melrose park not really sure. With no major busts showing the evidence it is hard to tell. Probably easier to attach a name to crew now as the old crews seem to be a thing of the past. Sal delaurentis boss...Albert vena north street boss...James inendino south side street boss r the current top 3 of admin. If can't find chart I will repost. Hope this helps.

There have been a decent amount of busts over the last dozen years or so...

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/the-chicago-mafia
June 27, 2011
The Chicago Mafia
Down but Not Out

Unlike New York’s infamous Five Families, the Chicago mob consists of only one family, often referred to as the “Outfit.” It is organized under a variety of crews that engage in various criminal activities. A portion of the crews’ illegal gains goes to the Outfit’s top bosses.
A Roman Catholic priest and former prison chaplain who ministered to Chicago mob boss Frank Calabrese, Sr., was indicted earlier this month for illegally passing jailhouse messages from Calabrese and plotting with his associates on the outside—a sobering reminder of how deeply organized crime can reach into the community, even from behind bars.

“Members of the mob will go to almost any lengths to carry out their criminal activity,” said Special Agent Ted McNamara, a veteran investigator who supervises the La Cosa Nostra (LCN) organized crime squad in our Chicago Field Office.

Calabrese, Sr., was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for his role in 18 gangland slayings in the Chicago area dating back to 1970. His arrest—along with 13 others—was part of one of the most successful organized crime cases in FBI history, an eight-year investigation called Operation Family Secrets.

Because of the Family Secrets case—in which Calabrese’s son testified against him—“the Chicago mob does not have the power and influence it once had,” McNamara said. “But the mob still operates, and its members still represent a potentially serious criminal threat.”

Unlike New York’s infamous Five Families, the Chicago mob consists of only one family, often referred to as the “Outfit.” It is organized under a variety of crews that engage in various criminal activities. A portion of the crews’ illegal gains goes to the Outfit’s top bosses.

“New York gets most of the attention regarding LCN,” McNamara said, “but historically, going back to the days of Al Capone, Chicago LCN has always been a player, particularly in places like Las Vegas.”

Unlike their New York counterparts, the Outfit has traditionally stayed away from drug trafficking, preferring instead crimes such as loan-sharking and online gambling operations and capitalizing on other profitable vices. One of the reasons it is so difficult to completely stamp out mob activity, McNamara said, is that over time the crews have insinuated themselves into unions and legitimate businesses.

“Typically they get into running restaurants and other legal businesses that they can use to hide money gained from their illicit activities,” McNamara explained. “Over the years the Outfit has learned that killing people brings too much heat from law enforcement. Today they might not even beat up a businessman who doesn’t pay back a debt,” he added. Instead, they take a piece of his business, and then, over time, exercise more and more control over the company.

The Family Secrets case, which began in 1999 and resulted in the indictment of 14 subjects in 2005 for racketeering and murder, dealt a crushing blow to the Chicago mob. “Our goal now,” McNamara said, “is to keep them from gaining strength again. We’ve got them down, and we’ve got to keep them down.”

He noted that some of the mobsters currently in jail as a result of numerous prosecutions will be getting out in the next few years, and they will be under pressure to start making money again for the Outfit’s top bosses.

“As long as there is money to be made from criminal activity,” McNamara said, “these guys will never stop. So we need to continue to be vigilant and take the long view. The work we do on the LCN squad requires a lot of patience.”

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/12/04/feds-mob-crew-member-menaced-business-partner-from-jail/
Feds: Mob Crew Member Menaced Business Partner From Jail
December 4, 2015 at 6:42 am

CHICAGO (STMW) — An alleged member of the Outfit’s Cicero Street Crew, who was already accused once this year of threatening a government witness, made a second threat by email against a former business partner from jail, the feds claim.

But an attorney for Paul Carparelli denied the email contained a threat. Ed Wanderling said the intended recipient of the email is Carparelli’s “best friend,” who never even opened it.

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“He laughed about it when I told him,” Wanderling said.


Carparelli is described in court documents as a member of the Cicero Street Crew. He allegedly sent the email after admitting in May he conspired to travel across the country to collect on debts ranging from $90,000 to $200,000 by using violence.

The feds say Carparelli was in the process of closing a deli he ran with the business partner and had been trying to settle the finances. When his business partner stopped returning Carparelli’s phone calls and emails, Carparelli called him a “fink” in an Aug. 1 email, according to court filings.

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“You must be hanging around with george and johnny [sic],” Carparelli allegedly wrote in an apparent reference to government witnesses George Brown and John Rovito.

Then Carparelli unloaded in an Aug. 11 email riddled with typos, records show.

“DOESNT MATTER IF I GET 6 MONTHS OR 6 YEARS WHEN IM DONE WERE GONNA HAVE A TALK,” Carparelli wrote. “SO PUT YOUR BIG BOY PANTS ON AND GET READY CAUSE YOUR NOY [sic] GONNA LIKE WHAT YOUR GONNA HEAR!!!!!! IN THE BIG PITCHER [sic] THE 1500 MEANS NOTHING. ITS THE POINT THAT MATTERS!!!!!! I’M NOT GONNA CALL OR EMAIL YOU ANYMORE ….. SEE YOU WHEN I GET OUT!!!!!! PARTNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather McShain revealed the allegation in a filing that asks U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman to sentence Carparelli to 135 months in prison. Wanderling said Carparelli is “lifelong friends and business partners” with the email’s intended recipient, who may attend Carparelli’s Dec. 21 sentencing hearing.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news...jpnu6uqvc6oiz4-story.html?outputType=amp
Reputed 'made’ member of Chicago Outfit given 6 months in prison for embezzling from union
By JASON MEISNER
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
JUL 22, 2019 AT 6:54 PM

Reputed Chicago mob figure John Matassa Jr. didn’t exactly sound wracked with guilt when he was asked Monday if he had anything to say before being sentenced for a union embezzlement scheme.
When his turn came to speak, Matassa, known as “Pudgy” for his considerable girth, rose from his seat, walked slowly to the lectern and said, “The only reason that I’m standing here is because my name is John Matassa.”

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U.S. District Matthew Kennelly, however, told Matassa he didn’t seem to get it.
“The reason you’re here right now is because you pleaded guilty to a felony to avoid going to trial,” Kennelly said before sentencing Matassa to six months in federal prison to be followed by six months on house arrest.

Matassa, 68, is a reputed “made” member of the Chicago Outfit who has been associated with some of the mob’s most notorious figures, including former reputed boss James “Jimmy Light” Marcello.
But his alleged mob ties were never alluded to in any public filings in the embezzlement case. In fact, in a recent sentencing memo asking Kennelly to impose about a two-year prison term, prosecutors said that Matassa had no criminal history and a “seemingly normal upbringing.”

In court Monday, Kennelly seemed to feign confusion when Matassa alluded that prosecutors had targeted him because of his name.
“I honestly don’t understand what was meant by (that)," the judge said before calling for a recess. “Does anyone want to try and explain it?”
When court reconvened, Matassa said he was simply referring to what he believes were decades of harassment from federal regulators during his career as a supervisor in various unions.
Kennelly asked Matassa if he was saying that he believes the Department of Labor simply “has it in for you."

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“That’s exactly what it is," he replied.
The former secretary-treasurer of the Independent Union of Amalgamated Workers Local 711, Matassa, of Arlington Heights, pleaded guilty in February to an embezzlement charge alleging he put his wife on the union’s payroll in a do-nothing job for four years while lowering his own salary to qualify for early retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration’s Old-Age Insurance program.

Matassa also spent thousands of dollars in union cash on expenses for himself, including restaurant meals, a cellphone, gas and car washes, according to records that were discussed in court Monday.
In addition to the prison time imposed by Kennelly, Matassa must also pay a total of $66,500 in restitution to the union and Social Security Administration.
In asking for a sentence of probation, Matassa’s attorney, Cynthia Giacchetti, said he was essentially a one-man show for the union, managing grievances, negotiating contracts and benefits and being on call morning and night, seven days a week.
Giacchetti also said Matassa has considerable health problems, including chronic heart disease, morbid obesity, diabetes and vertigo. His ailments prompted Matassa’s wife to step in to help him with his union duties and could make any prison term dangerous for him, Giacchetti said.

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During the hearing, Kennelly had pointed questions about the union itself, noting that it had only about 150 members and was composed of a strange conglomeration of workers from various industries — including food service, roofers and construction — in the Chicago area and Wisconsin.
The lion’s share of the dues that were collected — $40 per paycheck for each worker — went to pay Matassa’s salary, Kennelly noted.
Some members of the union’s board testified to a federal grand jury that they were unaware they were even trustees, Kennelly said.
“This is the weirdest union that I’ve ever seen,” Kennelly said.
In his comments to the court, Matassa said many of the witnesses were just scared after federal agents had gone “into their houses like storm troopers.”
“They go to the grand jury and they got amnesia,” he said.
Matassa’s conviction wasn’t the first time his association with labor unions has gotten him into hot water. In the late 1990s, Matassa was kicked out as president of the Laborers Union Chicago local over his alleged extensive ties to organized crime — a move Matassa fought for years.
“The guy’s hanging on to the carpet like a cat,” one union member told the Tribune at the time. “He’s just not cooperating at all. I just can’t wait until he’s gone.”
Matassa’s name surfaced in the historic Operation Family Secrets mob trial in 2007 when Outfit turncoat Nicholas Calabrese testified Matassa was a longtime member of the Outfit’s notorious Rush Street crew who reported to capo Vince Solano.
In fact, Matassa was among those indoctrinated as a made member of the mob at an October 1983 ceremony at a shuttered restaurant on Mannheim Road, Calabrese testified, according to a transcript available in court records.
Calabrese also testified that he and Matassa helped conduct surveillance in the late 1980s on a movie house operator who owed the mob money, according to the transcript.
When asked why they had been told to watch the operator, Calabrese replied, “I believe he was going to get killed.”
When Calabrese and Marcello were later imprisoned together in Michigan, the two had a code to signify when they were talking about Matassa, Calabrese testified.
“(Marcello) would take (his arms) and go like this, like he’s making a sign of a big stomach,” Calabrese testified.

https://abc7ny.com/archive/7821987/
FBI phone taps played in Sarno trial
By abc7NY
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
In New York and in the movies, the code of silence is called "omerta." In the Chicago Outfit, wiseguys play by their own rules, and they don't have a fancy Italian nickname for keeping quiet. They're just supposed to do it.

For suburban mob boss Mike Sarno, the top defendant in the current Outfit prosecution, it is clear that the code of silence is sometimes tough to enforce.

When the I-Team showed up at Sarno's Westchester home a few years ago, he had no problem clamming up in front of the camera. But about that same time, the FBI was listening in on Sarno's phone calls, as agents investigated the mob bombing of a Berwyn video poker company and links between the Outfit and the Outlaws biker gang.

In one secretly recorded phone call with a longtime family friend, Sarno could almost be heard cringing.

KANTOWSKI : Mike, how are you doing?
SARNO: How you doin', buddy?
KANTOWSKI: Good, I'm sitting here with, ah, Frank Caruso, um,
Dominick Montagna and Frank Depollo.
SARNO: Oooh, oh you, oh boy.
KANTOWSKI: Trying to work this out.
SARNO: Alright.
KANTOWSKI: Uh oh, I'm in trouble.
SARNO: Talk to you later.

Caruso, a South Side Outfit boss, and the other names were unwelcome subjects of that phone call between Mike Sarno and his friend David Kantowski, who says he was a 25-year friend of Sarno's. An hour later, they talked again.

SARNO: Ok, well, listen, I, I, I just got to, I want to tell you something. I appreciate everything you are doing for me, buddy, but please stop with the names on my phone. Please.
KANTOWSKI: Ok.
SARNO: I know I'm paranoid, but I got good reason to be.
KANTOWSKI: I wasn't even thinking, Mike I, I apologize, I wasn't even thinking about that, God d------t.
SARNO: Well, listen ...
KANTOWSKI: Sorry buddy.
SARNO: I'll do the thinking for us with that stuff because, ah ... Believe me, it's a shame we got to be like that, but we do.

Kantowski is a Chicago real estate agent and is related to two of the defendants in the case, Sam and Anthony Volpendesto.

Mr. Kantowski told the I-Team late Thursday that he may be called as a rebuttal witness during the trial.

All day Thursday, prime government witness Kyle Knight was on the stand. He provided the bomb components for that Berwyn attack.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/platfo...chicago-paloian-ron-serpico-john-amabile

Ex-Melrose Park cop pleads guilty in gambling case
John Amabile, 33, was charged earlier this month as part of the investigation that also led to charges and prison time for Gregory Paloian of Elmwood Park.

By Robert Herguth and Jon Seidel on April 29, 2021 2:49 pm


Former Melrose Park police officer John Amabile walks out of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, Thursday morning, April 29, 2021. Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
A former Melrose Park police officer whose late grandfather was a reputed mob boss and whose brother is a former reality TV star pleaded guilty Thursday to his role in a gambling ring once run by a bookie now facing a prison sentence of more than two years.


John Amabile, 33, was charged earlier this month as part of an investigation that also led to charges and prison time for Gregory Paloian, of Elmwood Park.

A third individual, Ramiro Barajas, was also charged Wednesday as part of the same investigation, court records show.

Paloian admitted in January that he ran the ring from 2015 until 2019 in Chicago, Elmwood Park and Melrose Park. But federal authorities have said they “know now that Paloian was running a bookmaking operation as early as 2012 and continuing until shut down by the FBI.”


They also said the ring involved 60 gamblers, and that “a veteran police officer from a local police department” was among Paloian’s “most prolific agents.”

That turned out to be Amabile, who admitted Thursday to violating federal and state gaming statutes.

“Defendant recruited, managed, and supervised gamblers, and supplied them with log-ins and passwords which he acquired from Paloian so they could place wagers upon professional and collegiate sporting events” through a website, according to a plea agreement reached by federal prosecutors and Amabile, and accepted by U.S. District Court Judge Martha Pacold on Thursday.


The illegal gambling operation “accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in wagers, and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in winnings and losses for the gamblers, the agents and the bookmaker . . . and generated at least $100,000 in gambling proceeds for the defendant,” the agreement stated.

“On a regular basis, defendant met with his gamblers to settle-up, i.e., to pay out winnings and collect losses from them,” the document said. “Defendant shared winnings and losses with Paloian on a 50% basis and routinely spoke with Paloian by phone or text.”


Former Melrose Park police officer John Amabile walks out of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, Thursday morning, April 29, 2021. Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Notably, Amabile’s plea agreement alleges that Paloian maintained the gambling website Unclemicksports.com, drawing the most direct connection yet between the Paloian gambling ring and the one once run by Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice.

DelGiudice paid more than $10,000 a month for use of that same website, according to an indictment filed early last year. That indictment also named Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher as a defendant, though Urlacher was pardoned in January by then-President Donald Trump.


DelGiudice also pleaded guilty in February to running the sports gambling ring.

Although Amabile could face up to five years in prison and a substantial fine, the plea deal mentions six to 12 months as a possible range. The judge is expected to rule in August on Amabile’s sentence.

Amabile, who declined to comment after Thursday’s hearing, also has agreed to forfeit $100,000 which “constitutes proceeds of gambling activity,” court records show.

He resigned from the west suburban police department as the investigation came to light.

Amabile’s father Joseph is a former Melrose Park police lieutenant. Amabile’s uncle James is a former Melrose Park fire lieutenant who was convicted in a mob-related extortion case in 2015, sentenced to six months in prison and released from custody in 2016, according to interviews and records.


Amabile’s brother Joe became a minor celebrity after appearing on “The Bachelorette” and, subsequently, other reality shows.

Amabile’s late grandfather, also named Joseph, was a reputed “crime kingpin in the western suburbs,” and an acolyte of high-ranking hoodlum Sam Battaglia, before his death in 1976, according to interviews and published accounts. The grandfather was convicted of extortion in 1967 and sent to prison, according to his Chicago Sun-Times obituary.


Chicago Sun-Times obituary for Joseph Amabile, published Sept. 17, 1976. Chicago Sun-Times archive
Over the years, members of the family have donated to political campaigns benefitting Melrose Park Mayor Ronald Serpico — who has presided after a number of scandals and embarrassments within his police department during his many years in office.

In 2017, former Melrose Park police Detective Greg Salvi was sent to prison for a drug-dealing scheme that included stealing narcotics from his department’s evidence room.


In 2013, a motorcycle club started by Melrose Park cops disbanded after a reporter discovered members were wearing patches pledging support for the Outlaws, a notorious biker gang that’s been described as a criminal enterprise by federal authorities.

In 2009, former Melrose Park Police Chief Vito Scavo was convicted in a racketeering and extortion scheme and sent to prison.

Paloian was previously sentenced in 2002 to 41 months in prison for running a mob-connected bookmaking operation. Federal prosecutors also recently revealed that his name was on the prison contact list for imprisoned Cicero mob boss Michael “The Large Guy” Sarno, who had been arguing for compassionate release. A judge denied Sarno’s request earlier this month.


Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu wrote in a court filing that “Paloian has regularly sent money to Sarno’s prison account since he was imprisoned; these are no doubt the proceeds of his illegal gambling business.”

https://chicago.suntimes.com/platfo...cooperation-pays-off-with-light-sentence


Mob debt collector’s cooperation pays off with light sentence
By Andy Grimm and Jon Seidel on April 8, 2016 6:09 pm


George Brown provided valuable information about reputed mob figures such as Michael "Mickey" Davis (left), Pete DiFronzo (center) and Salvatore DeLaurentis. | File photos
A delinquent debtor once wet his pants at the sight of George Brown, a mob associate known for his 300-pound frame and mixed-martial arts skills. Brown left after collecting the man’s car as partial payment.


Soon after, FBI agents came calling for Brown, who decided to work as muscle for the feds, becoming a star witness in federal cases targeting higher-ranking members of the Chicago Outfit. For nearly two years, Brown allowed the FBI to listen in on his phone calls, and wore a wire in meetings with mob boss Paul Carparelli and other members of his crew.

Brown’s visit to the Wisconsin businessman with the soggy pants was just one of the collection calls described in a half-dozen federal indictments that took out Carparelli and a dozen other players from the already depleted ranks of Chicago’s mob. Friday, a federal judge extended credit for those good works to the hulking collections goon, shaving more than a year off the 38 months of prison time prosecutors had wanted and giving Brown a two-year sentence instead.

“I firmly believe I have become a changed man,” Brown told U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang, wearing an oversized gray shirt that was taut over his bulky shoulders, but inches too long for his arms.


“If anyone told me 10 years ago I would be cooperating with the U.S. Attorney and the FBI, I would’ve told them they were nuts.”

Brown, a single father of two, said he turned to Carparelli after suffering a shoulder injury that landed him on disability.

“Put it plain and simple, your honor, I was broke,” he said. “I started using narcotics, and I honestly believe it affected my judgment.”


Carparelli, a rising member of the Outfit’s Cicero crew, put Brown to work injuring others, specifically juice loan customers who fell behind on their payments. Brown testified that while his shoulder troubles left him unable to raise his arms above his head, he could still “kick at six-feet six.”

Brown and Carparelli had a falling out before Brown began working with the FBI, Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather McShain noted, but at the direction of case agents, Brown approached Carparelli and began recording their conversations.

McShain said Brown’s cooperation interrupted potentially violent schemes, including the planned “break-both-legs beating” of the nephew of Melrose Park Mayor Ronald Serpico, who owed Carparelli $300,000.


Carparelli was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison, in an extortion case built largely on recordings of his foul-mouthed conversations with Brown, including a rant in which told his trusted soldier, prophetically, “as long as you don’t steal from me, f— my wife or rat on me, you’re my friend 1,000 percent.”

Carparelli was given to 42 months in prison last month, though McShain said the government may appeal the sentence. Several of Brown’s associates also received prison time, including five years for Robert McManus, four years for Michael “Mickey” Davis, 46 months for Mark Dziuban and Frank Orlando, 38 months for Vito Iozzo and six months for James Amabile.

Brown testified about Outfit leaders, agreeing that Carparelli is an “idiot,” Solly DeLaurentis is “a major figure in the organized crime world,” and Pete DiFronzo is “the street boss of the entire organized crime structure in the city of Chicago.” Brown testified that breaking legs is “not a five-second thing … it’s not like the movies.” And when asked if the going rate for breaking legs is $10,000, he said, “that’s pretty much in the ballpark.”


Friday, Brown told Chang that whatever sentence he serves, he will live in fear that his former employers might send goons after him one day.

“I’m a marked man. I have a target on my back,” he said. “We can all agree that we’re dealing with people who have the means, the money and the time to retaliate.”

https://chicago.suntimes.com/platfo...fit-mobster-sentenced-panozzo-juice-loan
Reputed Outfit mobster gets 14 years for terrorizing suburban man over loan debt
Robert Panozzo pleaded guilty to having the man’s car and garage torched when he wouldn’t pay $100,000 in interest on “juice” loans.

By Jake Wittich on September 28, 2019 12:45 pm
An alleged Chicago mob associate was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison Friday for beating a suburban businessman and hiring someone to torch his garage and van when the man wouldn’t pay $100,000 in interest on loans.


Robert Panozzo Sr., 59, pleaded guilty June 19 to one count of extortion for trying to collect the $100,000, which he said was still owed as interest from a $40,000 “juice” loan he gave the man in 2005, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Judge Philip G. Reinhard handed down the sentence in federal court in Rockford.

Panozzo lent his victim the $40,000 in 2005 and gave additional loans to him, prosecutors said. A year later, they met at a restaurant in Palatine, where the man handed Panozzo an envelope with $25,000 in cash, which he thought was the last in a series of payments on the loans, prosecutors said. But Panozzo said $100,000 was still owed as interest.

“This is serious. I want my money,” Panozzo told him, according to court records.

Panozzo admitted in a written plea agreement that he had recruited Joseph D. Abbott to collect the debt, going to the man’s business in October 2006 to beat him.


The reputed Outfit mobster admitted that, while locked up on a separate conviction from 2006 to 2008, and throughout the next year after his release, Panozzo would leave voicemails with the victim demanding the money.

In 2009, Panozzo paid $1,000 to Abbott to set fire to the man’s Dodge Caravan on his driveway, and later paid Abbott more than $4,000 to torch the victim’s garage, prosecutors said. In July, Abbott was sentenced to more than six years in prison for conspiring to commit extortion.

Panozzo will serve his federal sentence simultaneously with an 18-year Cook County racketeering sentence he received in January.


In that case, Panozzo was charged with trying to rob a drug cartel stash house that was actually part of a sting operation. He and his accomplices were accused of carrying out home invasions, armed robberies, burglaries and prostitution.

Panozzo, who sources say is connected to the Chicago Outfit’s West Side Crew, also allegedly cut off the ear of a home-invasion victim. The reputed mobster was furious because he heard the man speaking English after claiming to only speak Spanish, authorities said. Panozzo allegedly stole more than 25 kilograms of cocaine and two cars in that incident.

Panozzo was also mentioned in the 2014 trial of former Chicago Police Officer Steve Mandell, who was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to kidnap, kill and dismember a suburban businessman.


Former North Shore banker George Michale, who was the star witness, said that Panozzo introduced him to Mandell over lunch at La Scarola restaurant on West Grand Avenue. The meeting was recorded by the FBI.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/inve...bcratox4m3dwbe-story.html?outputType=amp
As feds turn up heat publicly, Chicago Teamsters and Hoffa privately embroiled in power grab allegations

By TODD LIGHTY
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
AUG 08, 2019 AT 5:00 AM
As fresh criminal charges roil Chicago Teamsters, a quieter internal battle has been percolating involving the future of an 80-year-old Teamster local that represents concrete and dump truck drivers.
James P. Hoffa, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, shoved aside Local 786’s leadership team last month and put a trustee in charge. According to a July 22 letter obtained by the Tribune, Hoffa said the local’s leadership failed to act in workers’ best interests.

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“This is necessary in order to assure the enforcement of Local 786’s collective bargaining agreements, the prevention of substandard agreements and compliance with directives of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,” he wrote.
Local 786’s leadership says something else is at play — a grab for pension money and union power.

Anthony Pinelli, the lawyer for Local 786 who had been president, said Hoffa’s move was retaliation for the chapter’s refusal to merge with Local 731, whose leader, Terrence Hancock, is close to Hoffa.
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“This wasn’t a proposed merger between two locals. This was a hostile takeover,” Pinelli said.

Pinelli also said Local 786’s pension is fully funded and Hancock saw that as an attractive benefit for his members. “Our accounts are flush and theirs are not,” Pinelli contended — a point that Local 731 disputes.
The International Teamsters dismissed any notion that Local 786 was singled out for retaliation.
“The former officers of Local 786 were removed as a result of the union’s trusteeship process, and it is not surprising that they would be unhappy with the decision,” said International Teamster spokeswoman Kara Deniz. "A trusteeship is always a last resort to ensure that members’ interests are protected.”
Hancock declined an interview. In an emailed statement issued through a public relations firm, he said Locals 731 and 786 voluntarily agreed to merge, and that the appointment of the trustee was a separate matter.
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“For the last few years, there have been serious charges against Teamsters Local 786 from many local unions that predated any consideration of a merger,” Hancock said. "The International was engaged in a review of those charges and compliance with its determinations when the two locals began a merger discussion.”
At first glance, a merger of the two Chicago locals seemed a fit, with both representing workers in the construction industry, among others. Local 786 represents 1,400 concrete and dump truck drivers, while Local 731 represents 6,200 excavating workers and iron workers.

Merger talk began several years ago when John Coli Sr. was president of Teamsters Joint Council 25 and Hancock was his vice president. The Joint Council is the umbrella organization for 25 Teamster locals in northwest Indiana and Chicago that represent more than 100,000 workers.
Coli, a longtime Teamster boss and nationally known union figure, left the Joint Council in July 2017 around the time he was indicted on federal corruption charges.
Earlier attempts to clean up the union were met with pushback from Coli and other Chicago Teamsters. An internal investigation turned up allegations of rampant corruption, including mob influence, kickback schemes and bribery. But union leaders abruptly halted their inquiry in 2004. The investigators’ main report detailed accusations involving six Chicago locals and the Joint Council.
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Last month, Coli pleaded guilty to shaking down Cinespace Chicago Film Studios in exchange for not having his Teamsters strike at a studio where shows like “Empire” and “Chicago Fire” are filmed. Coli is now cooperating with the federal investigation.

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Last week, federal authorities indicted Illinois state Sen. Thomas E. Cullerton on corruption charges, alleging he pocketed about $275,000 in salary and benefits from the Teamsters despite doing little or no work. Court records state that Coli conspired with Cullerton in 2013 to give the newly elected senator a do-nothing job.
On Monday, the exiled officers of Local 786, including Pinelli, asked the International Teamsters to remove the officers now in charge of the Chicago-area Joint Council and replace them with an independent trustee in the wake of the federal charges.
“How do you bless this kind of conduct and yet take over Local 786?” Pinelli asked in an interview.
Hancock said the Joint Council acted when it learned of Cullerton’s alleged conduct. “That’s why our board terminated the employment of Mr. Cullerton three years ago when it was brought to our attention that he was not adequately performing in his position,” said Hancock in his first public comments since Cullerton’s indictment.
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In addition, Local 786 is now raising concerns about how Hancock came to power in Joint Council 25, alleging that it was orchestrated by Hoffa, son of former Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, who was reported missing in 1975 and hasn’t been heard from since.
With Coli on his way out during summer 2017 amid the federal heat, a first vote was taken and former Teamster Becky Strzechowski won. One week later, a second vote was taken, and Hancock won.
Local 786 alleges that Hoffa brokered a deal to settle the conflicting votes and "assisted Hancock in illegally seizing control” of the Joint Council.
Hancock said Local 786 did not raise the issue at the time and the election followed Teamster rules. Deniz, the International Teamsters spokeswoman, said Hoffa had no role in Hancock’s victory.
Since becoming Joint Council president, Hancock continued to push for a merger between locals 731 and 786, Pinelli said.
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Local 786′s executive board voted unanimously against a merger this February. Pinelli summed up the chapter’s stance in an email to union officials: “A labor organization that has existed for more than 80 years, has the best Ready-mix contracts in the country, and has built model benefit funds … is being asked to just turn out the lights and walk away on its members under threats of punishment.”
Hancock responded with a letter of his own, saying the Local 731 pension was well-funded and accusing Local 786 of spreading “false information” to sway votes.
In March, Hoffa weighed in, telling Local 786 leaders that he had received “credible allegations” that they had failed to enforce collective bargaining agreements, and had undercut wages and benefits for other Chicago-area Teamster locals. He said other Teamsters brought charges that Local 786 entered into substandard contracts governing road construction.
Hoffa ordered a hearing panel to consider the charges April 13 in Chicago. More than 500 Teamsters attended.

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Leaders of five locals said Local 786 undermined them. According to a transcript of the hearing, Local 786 sought to increase its membership by offering owner-operators of trucks arrangements where they did not have to pay into pension plans and other union funds. As a result, this led to a decline in industry standards and a loss of dues-paying members, the union leaders alleged.
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After the hearing, Local 786′s then-president, Michael Yauger, told Hoffa that it was “no secret that allegations against this Local” have been made by Hancock. Yauger called on Hoffa to investigate Hancock for allegedly violating the Teamsters’ constitution.
“We have not acted in any way to harm or injure the Local 786 Trust Funds or our members’ benefits,” Yauger wrote. “The allegations of dishonest conduct are all part of the grand scheme by Joint Council 25 to be in charge of all construction and material supply.”
Yauger retired from the union shortly after sending the letter to Hoffa. Pinelli, who succeeded Yauger as president, said he plans to sue to try to remove the trustee who’s now overseeing Local 786.
“Hoffa made his decision based on no facts,” Pinelli said. “To a person, our drivers are not happy.”

https://chicago.suntimes.com/platfo...ammer-lee-anglin-vows-i-ll-repay-victims
Out of prison, Chicago Outfit-tied scammer Lee Anglin vows: I’ll repay victims
By Frank Main on July 27, 2018 3:22 pm

Lee Anglin is back in town.

He might not be a household name, but he certainly is well known in Chicago’s underworld.

His colorful resume includes stints as: a debt collector for loansharks, a politically connected newspaper publisher, a restaurant and bar owner in business with the Chicago Outfit, a crooked real-estate investor and scam artist and a legal adviser to his fellow prison inmates.


Anglin was released in May after more than 12 years behind bars for stealing millions of dollars from investors in a real-estate scheme.

After getting out, the 47-year-old South Sider’s plan was to move to Utah. He says he wants to get far away from the temptations of Chicago and his former criminal associates.

“I am no longer interested in strip clubs and party nights,” Anglin says.

He got approval from a federal judge to go to Utah, his fiancée’s home state. But then he found out he’d have to stay in prison for several more months before the federal Bureau of Prisons could process his paperwork.


So he decided to come home. He began his three years of probation with a stay at a Salvation Army halfway house in Chicago. Earlier this month, he moved to the south suburbs. He’s living with his fiancée in a modest brick house in Lansing for now.

In a series of interviews with the Chicago Sun-Times, Anglin spoke about growing up on the South Side and how he connected with legendary Chicago figures such as former Ald. Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak (10th) and mob boss James “Little Jimmie” Marcello. He talked about life in prison and his intention to repay the millions of dollars prosecutors say he pilfered from investors.

And he described how, for him, the worlds of commerce and crime in Chicago intersected.

“I led a normal businessman’s life in the corporate world by day and a criminal lifestyle at night,” says Anglin.


Video by Maria de la Guardia
Anglin, who’s Italian-American, grew up on the Southeast Side, in Hegewisch. He says he learned to box and, as a teenager, began collecting gambling debts for loansharks.


Vrdolyak, who was the most powerful politician in the neighborhood, was his idol.

“I was always grabbing buddies of mine and, in the middle of the night, tearing down political signs from opposing candidates,” Anglin says.

He says he saved enough from various hustles to be able to buy an Italian restaurant when he was just 18.

A few years later, when the Hegewisch News went bankrupt, Anglin says that, with Vrdolyak’s encouragement, he bought the weekly newspaper in 1990 and used the publication to support Vrdolyak and other 10th Ward politicians.


Former Ald. Edward Vrdolyak (10th) at Chicago’s federal courthouse in 2016. | Santiago Covarrubias / Sun-Time­s
“I was losing money on the paper because it was so biased,” Anglin says, and he laughs. “But that was made up with illegal earnings from bookmaking and loansharking.”


Vrdolyak, a part-owner of the News, wrote a law column for the paper. He’s now facing federal charges that accuse him of obstructing an IRS investigation.

Anglin says he opened another newspaper, the Midway Times, in 1993 in partnership with then-Ald. James Laski, who later served as Chicago’s city clerk before going to prison for corruption in the scandal that engulfed the city’s Hired Truck Program.

The purpose of the Midway Times was to oppose then-U.S. Rep. Bill Lipinski, D-Chicago, according to Anglin, who at the time was in his early 20s. He says Lipinski pressured him to close it.


The following year, 1994, Anglin declared personal bankruptcy. Later, he ran a weekly newspaper chain in the south suburbs and northwest Indiana called the Journal News Group, which went bust in 2002.


Lee Anglin in his office at the Journal News Group in 2000. | Brian Jackson / Sun-Times
While he was running newspapers and writing outrageous columns, Anglin says he also was rehabbing houses and buying restaurants, bars and other businesses, some of his enterprises in partnership with the Outfit.

He says he ran a bookmaking operation at a bar in Melrose Park and split the proceeds with Marcello, a mob underboss authorities have said controlled the west suburbs, who’s now doing life in prison after being convicted in the landmark Operation Family Secrets mob trial. He says he also partnered in a restaurant venture with the sister of the late reputed mob hit man Anthony “Tough Tony” Calabrese.

“You ask me what my association with the Outfit is,” Anglin says. “Well, to me, it’s none. I did business with them.”


He says that, since he’s been out of prison, some Outfit guys have reached out to him.

“I’ve had a few messages sent to me from the guys saying, you know, ‘Congratulations on getting out,’ ‘best wishes,’ things of that nature,” he says. “I have not responded to any of them. I don’t plan on it. There’s really nothing to communicate with them anymore.”

Anglin says he was always a “stand-up” guy, refusing to help the FBI prosecute Outfit bosses.

Anglin says Vrdolyak urged him to run for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives. Anglin won the Republican primary in 1994 but lost in the general election.

It was more than a decade afterwards that Anglin’s property deals landed him in prison. He was convicted of bilking dozens of people out of more than $10 million between 2004 and 2006. The scheme worked like this: He advertised in newspapers to find investors to buy securities that supposedly were backed by real estate. Sometimes, though, the property didn’t exist. Other times, the buildings were little more than abandoned structures, according to prosecutors.


They said Anglin ran a Ponzi scheme in which early investors were paid off with money put in by later investors, who then were left with nothing.

Anglin didn’t admit guilt but accepted a conviction. He says prosecutors exaggerated his investors’ losses, which he pegs at around $5 million — about half of what he was accused of stealing.

For more than four years, Anglin was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago as he awaited trial. He says he hung out with Marcello and other mobsters in the federal high-rise jail. Marcello “had a lot of power” in the jail, according to Anglin.


“I was given a television chair next to him, which is unheard of, and I watched a lot of baseball and comedies with him,” Anglin says. “Him and I would eat dinner every night together. We did not eat the food they gave us. We ate a lot of pizza.

“It was easy to get things like cellphones, drugs, liquor, etc.,” he says. “For me, it was phones and food I wanted. I had an endless supply of beef and meatball sandwiches and pizza coming to me. The guards there are on the take, big time, and you can own one for just a few thousand dollars.”

Anglin says Marcello warned him not to play poker with inmates who weren’t in their inner circle. “He looks me in the eye and says, ‘We do not play poker with these people. If they do not pay, we have no choice but to resolve the issue, and right now we have too many issues.’


“I am 6 feet tall and was 300 pounds at the time, and here he is, about 5-foot-6 and 165, and some say it’s fear, some say it’s respect, but everyone just listens to him,” Anglin says.


James “Little Jimmie” Marcello (left) at Chicago’s federal courthouse in 1992. | Sun-Times files
In 2010, Anglin was sent to prison. He says he spent a lot of his time there — first in Minnesota and later in Colorado — studying the law and helping inmates with their appeals.

“I called it Burrito Law,” he says. “Guys kept wanting to feed me burritos, thanking me.”

Anglin calculates that his work led to inmates getting a combined 224 years knocked off their sentences.

One inmate he helped was Stacey Peltier, who was serving a 292-month sentence for possession of a gun and drugs when he met Anglin in prison in Minnesota. Anglin researched Peltier’s case and thought he’d been wrongly sentenced as an armed career criminal. Peltier filed an appeal and was freed from prison in May 2017, getting seven years shaved off his sentence, court records show.


“Lee was better at the legal jargon than I was,” Peltier says from his home in North Dakota. “I kept trying myself but could not get the courts to agree with me.

“He is one of my best friends now,” Peltier says. “If it wasn’t for him, I’d still be sitting in there.”

He says that he and Anglin worked together to try to ease the racial tensions among inmates.

“He organized the whites, and I organized the natives,” says Peltier. “The natives and the Spanish stick together. We would squash a lot of stuff.”


“Time Bandit” wanted poster. | FBI
Scott Carlberg, the “Time Bandit” convicted of robbing banks in Chicago’s south suburbs, says Anglin also helped keep the peace at the Metropolitan Correctional Center before he went to prison.


“One of the most endearing qualities about Lee was his uncanny ability to navigate to less tumultuous and safer waters,” Carlberg says by email from prison.

Carlberg says he passed messages between Anglin and Marcello in the downtown Chicago jail.

“I can tell you Mr. Marcello holds Lee in the highest esteem,” says Carlberg, who was dubbed the Time Bandit because he would order tellers to count to 300 before calling the police.

Now that Anglin is free, he vows to repay his victims, some of whom have expressed anger at him in letters filed in federal court. In one, written in 2009, a victim said Anglin was an “entrepreneur, thief [and] liar” who was “preying on honest folk.”


The man said, “I had to go back to square one and I was in the financial poor house.”

He wrote that he “would greatly appreciate recouping my financial loss.”

Anglin insists that’s going to happen.

“I have no worries about paying it back,” he says.

And: “I will continue with investments.”

He says he has stayed in touch with some of his investors and that some want to continue to do business with him.

He says the government froze millions of dollars of his assets and that he hopes to negotiate a settlement to recover some of that in September after completing a drug-counseling program.

Anglin says he’ll also continue to help hundreds of inmates with their legal problems. He plans to work for his former attorney Gerardo Gutierrez, who says he’ll be a clerk in his office.


“I like Lee and am willing to help him in any way I can,” Gutierrez says, noting that Anglin needs a job as a condition of his probation.

Eventually, Anglin says he might try to take the bar exam and become a lawyer, though he recognizes that, as tough as that would be without going to law school, he might have a bigger problem with the requirement that he’d need to show he’s a person of “good moral character.”

Asked about that, Gutierrez says, “I never shoot down a person’s dreams. There are people who have committed felonious crimes, turned their lives around and have gone on to become lawyers. It’s not impossible but very improbable.”


Lee Anglin and fiancée Jenni West at their home in Lansing. | Maria de la Guardia / Sun-Times
More than anything, Anglin says, he wants to be a family man. He says he plans to move with fiancée Jenni West to Utah one day.


“Being dragged through everything helped change who I am,” Anglin says. “It certainly humbles you a lot.

“I’m a different person now. I want to be home. I want to enjoy family. I want peace and quiet. I don’t want to be running nightclubs and owning them and hanging out in them. I don’t want to be having backroom meetings and exchanging envelopes and dealing with, you know, illegal gambling and all those things. I’m done with all that.”

Thanks to all, I appreciate the info!