As I already promised in the previous conco which I had with @LuanKuci and @Rush St in a different thread, here's one interesting story regarding one of the Outfit's biggest moneymakers during the time period when most of their rackets were on the downfall and also many important members were imprisoned, died of natural causes or were killed.

The 1970's was a quite tough decade for the Chicago Mob and their illegal operations, but their so-called semi-legal enterprises such as the garbage disposal “saga” continued during the following decades. Most of those same legit operations became quite successful mainly with the help of Chicago's corrupt politicians who were led by one made member of the Outfit known as Fred Roti. This shrewd and intelligent little criminal came from a long line of "Mafia" blood, meaning his father was former Outfit capo from the Chinatown area and leader for the whole South Side group named Bruno Roti Sr who died back in 1957. Roti Sr. inherited his position as representative for the South Side mob from his predecessor and original Capone member Phil D'Andrea.

The late Roti Sr. was quite known for his contacts in Chicago's politics and so his son Fred Roti occupied a position as the Alderman for the leading First Ward. Back in 1968, Roti was backed by the Mob and the Democrats to replace 1st Ward Alderman Donald Parillo, who had previously resigned. Roti won the special election and held the position for more than two decades. It was a time when many Democratic leaders and friends or associates of the Roti crime family became owners of hauling firms and divided the contracts between themselves. When Chicago’s Democratic Machine was at its highest level, politicians and other corrupted government people gave the ward controlled distribution of city services to give priority to those loyal to the party. For example, John P. Touhy was the chairman of the State Central Democratic Committee and at the same time he was owner of the McKay Contractors hauling firm. And so like his late father, Roti also decided to use his political power and expand his Mafia “privileges” to one of his blood relatives, who by coincidence was involved in the garbage business, known as Fred Bruno Barbara.

Fred Barbara was in fact Roti Sr.’s grandson and was also a long time resident in Chinatown who in 1975 started working as a simple garbage truck driver. Barbara was also related to the capo for the Chinatown area Frank "Skids" Caruso who in turn was the son-in-law of the late Bruno Roti Sr. So in other words Barbara was surrounded by family members who were high profile members of the Chicago Outfit and so his future in the garbage business was “crystal clear”. In just two years, Barbara bought two more garbage trucks and formed his first company known as A. Barbara Trucking Co. and so Fred Roti allegedly decided to help his nephew by pulling few strings here and there, thus giving him few city deals just to get him started. From this point on Barbara had no problems in getting city contracts for garbage hauling and the reality was that some of those deals may have been highly lucrative, meaning worth millions of dollars. Proof for that is when only a year later Barbara opened up another hauling firm known as the F. Barbara Trucking Co. at 3260 South Damien Avenue.

During the winter of 1979 the city of Chicago was struck by a huge snowy blizzard and all of the streets were blocked because of the huge amounts of snow. The city’s Acting Comptroller at the time was one Anthony Fratto, also long time associate and protégé of the Roti crime family, who ordered payments totaling $200,000 to 10 firms that allegedly did snow-removal work after the paralyzing blizzard. But someone informed the Justice Department that the city contracts were in fact fraudulent and so all of the payments had been held up. The investigators also learned that larger part of the payments were planned for four firms including Fred Barbara’s two hauling companies, John Touhy’s company and D & B Trucking, whose owner Edward Norton was fired for refusing to cooperate with the police investigation regarding the alleged frauds and as for the snow, it mostly melted by itself.

According to government reports, most of the firms were under federal investigation but the main difficulty or problem for the government was that not all of the hauling firms were under federal investigation and with that, it was hardly fair to withhold payment to all 10 firms on the chance that the Justice Department might get around to charging some of them with fraud. So two years later, in 1981 Fratto made a classic Chicago-style scandal and ordered all of the payments to be paid to the hauling firms.

Back in 1979, the Capo of Chinatown "Skids" Caruso was completely retired from all Mob business and was replaced by one ruthless Outfit member froma different crew known as Angelo LaPietra. Now Barbara and LaPietra also knew each other since the old days, and my personal belief is that during next few years Barbara has tightened his Outfit connections in the garbage business more than ever and according to some accounts by 1983 he was labelled by the feds as close associate of the Outfit under LaPietra's crew.

Frank “Toots” Caruso Jr was the son of former capo "Skids" Caruso and together with his cousin Barbara, they also got involved in the loan sharking business or the juice racket. In fact the most important racket for the new LaPietra crew were their juice operations and all members and associates of the former Caruso crew now worked for LaPietra. Since he already had a lot of cash, Barbara only gave large loans with high interest mostly to truck companies that needed quick large amounts of cash and also to politicians with bad habits such as gambling. After awhile Barbara was arrested together with Caruso on charges for trying to collect an illegal high-interest loan from an undercover FBI agent and so they were arrested at a bar in Lake Point Tower on December 6, 1982, together with two Outfit guys such as Joseph LaMantia who in turn was another member of the LaPietra crew. and LaMantia's son Aldo Piscitelli Jr.

Their previous plan was for them to meet the undercover agent in some local bar, who in turn was posing as someone refusing to repay high-interest from a $20,000 juice loan and so they feel into a trap when LaMantia allegedly had threatened the agent to "cut his heart out'' and to "stick his head with an icepick'' if the loan wasn't repaid. When the cops questioned Barbara regarding the situation, he had no identification and told the feds that his name was "Frank Bruno Russo,'' but later one of the officers found a gun in Barbara’s vehicle and took him to the station.

During the trial, Barbara's lawyer argued that his client never made a threat to the agent and that he was allegedly enjoying a video game at the bar. Prosecutors later added that Barbara’s firm was deeply involved in illegal gambling with the Outfit's Chinatown or 26th Street Crew. Barbara told the prosecutors "Show me my connection to organized crime. Did I turn the corner? You show me anything in the last 24 years that reflects to that nature." I believe that this is the prime example in which we can clearly see the political power and connections which Barbara possessed at the time, like when some of his friends in the political world such as the Mayor of Chicago at the time reacted and so Barbara together with his associates were all found not guilty.

According to some reports, Barbara also had gangster qualities and the love for violence. In one accident, one of Barbara's truck drivers accused his boss of hitting him with a big piece of wood while they were at Barbara's trucking offices in July 1988. Another proof for Barbara’s deep involvement with the Outfit was his presence together with LaPietra, James DiForti and other Outfit hoodlums in a car while watching the bombing of a certain restaurant in the Elmwood Park area. According to some newspaper reports, Barbara was a “self-made man” receiving huge respect from his Mob associates.

During the mid 1980’s the whole Outfit top administration was imprisoned, including Barbara's capo LaPietra, but still Barbara’s "lucky star" in the garbage business shined like never before. In 1988 the city of Chicago has decided to award Barbara with a multimillion-dollar ash hauling contract, or in other words 10 million dollars depending on the amount of waste which was planned to be hauled (or 25 million dollars in today's cash). With this Barbara became the number one garbage hauler in the “Windy city” but with all the glory came huge enviousness from the low bidder minority companies which obviously and unfairly were overlooked because of Barbara’s connections to Outfit member Fred Roti.

The first question which was asked was on why the contract was awarded to the highest bidder when there was a legitimate minority owned firm? The opposition also added that the Barbara Trucking had controversial history involving its hauling contracts with the city because of Barbra’s close association with Alderman Roti. Suddenly Barbara’s close associates came on the scene such as Streets and Sanitation Commissioner John Halpin who defended the awarding of the contract to Barbara by saying that even though the bid was higher, Barbara was the person who more closely fulfilled the requirements of the contract and when it came to garbage, he was the man to find the dumps. Even Barbara himself came out to defended the awarding of the contract to his company by saying that he had nothing against the other firms but instead the problem was that they were trying to perform a city job in which they had no experience or capability.

But no matter if Barbara escaped the "hand of the law", still two "small secrets” came out of the whole problem and that was his association to Alderman Roti and also some records showed that Barbara was one of Washington's highest political contributors. In no time this became a huge scandal when some West Side activists declared open war on City Hall following the decision by Mayor Eugene Sawyer's administration to award the multi-million ash hauling contract to Barbara. "We are not stupid," said Nancy Jefferson, chairman of the Midwest Community Council, followed by her comment regarding the legit firms being created by people from the local community, Jefferson said all of those stuff at a press conference attended by at least 50 West Side activists and businessmen, including Joseph Banks, executive director of the Midwest Community Council, who said "This is a time when we want to see contractors from our community get contracts." But as always, in the end nothing ever changed and the money stayed with Barbara while the whole Outfit was laughing and already divided the money.

As I already said that Roti's name was already used too many times in the newspapers and investigations and so the FBI prepared for a plan to strike the Chicago Outfit straight in the “heart of corruption” which was Fred Roti himself. In 1990 Barbara’s main connection to his multi-million dollar business 1st Ward Alderman and Mafia member Fred Roti and four other Chicago Democrats were indicted for numerous acts of corruption, including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, bribery, and extortion. On January 15, 1993, Roti was found guilty and was sentenced to four years incarceration and served three years in a minimum-security prison in Oxford, Wisconsin followed by six months in a work-release program with the Salvation Army.

From this point on Barbara “unexpectedly” started slowly seeing the bottom of his lucrative garbage business which seemed to drop out in 1996. Barbara allegedly lost 30 percent of his city contracts that year, which was around 14 million dollars (or 28 million dollars in today's money). This happened when City Hall gave a competitor, Waste Management Inc., a contract to run a recycling program in which Chicago homeowners put glass, bottles and paper into blue plastic bags. A year later, Barbara sold his garbage hauling companies the Fred Barbara Trucking, Shred-All Recycling garbage transfer station, Envirotech landfill in Downstate Morris and American Disposal Services, Inc. According to some reports the sale was widely reported to be $58.5 million (or around 100 million dollars in today's cash) although some sources said that the deal may have been far richer.

Few years ago or maybe even today, some members of the Barbara family are still in the garbage business with the help of Barbara's son Anthony who runs City Wide Disposal Inc. and is a private garbage collector. The older Barbara runs a company called Fred Barbara Investments and also has an industrial park in Kankakee and other real estate investments in Florida and Texas. Now if we compare Barbara in the garbage business with old time Outfit guys like Red Dorfman, Willie Daddano, the Fratto bros, Charlie English and maybe even with Outfit boss Sam Giancana, these mobsters looked like flies compared to what Barbara really achieved which was something that was never done before by any other member of the Outfit, obviously with the right backing.

Cheers

....in addition here are some pics of Barbara (including the one which @LuanKuci already posted in a different thread) and of Fred Roti...

....including some pics of Barbara's long time friend Joe LaMantia and one from Aldo Piscitelli Jr (with a Al Capone tattoo)....

Either of the Belushi brothers could have played Shorty in a movie. I know they were known for comedies but they both were capable of playing serious leads in drama films as well. Being from Chicago born and raised would have made them a very good choice.

Especially Jim Belushi Lol

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In addition I forgot to mention that Barbara's father Anthony was also Chicago Outfit associate from the Chinatown area.

Here's Roti Sr.'s 1957 obituary in which Anthony is mentioned as his son-in-law by being married to Sr.'s daughter Josephine, same as Frank Caruso who in turn was married to Sr's other daughter Catherine:



And also one article from 1980 in which Anthony Barbara was also mentioned as Fred Roti's brother-in-law:

Great research and write up, thank you

Thanks and you're welcome.