Playing The Field: Chicago Mafia Looks To Future, Preparing To Give Reins Of Outfit To Fmr. “Players,” Cicero Street-Gang Alums

Much like the 42 Gang and the C-Notes of Chicago mob past, the 12th Street Players has substantially influenced the Outfit’s modern-day look and structure in more recent times, as a major section of the mafia in the Windy City is being run more like a high-functioning street gang than the sprawling, interconnected, and diverse racketeering enterprise that it once was, according to multiple sources on both sides of the law.

For all intents and purposes, the 12th Street Players are the present and future of the Chicago mafia, more ruthless gangsters and well-practiced thieves than deliberate, cagey racketeers. Over the last two decades, the Cicero-based 12th Street Players has served as a fertile Outfit breeding ground, “farm team” and feeder group to inject fresh blood into a once-aging, somewhat antiquated organization that in previous years was resistant to change and adding new members, several sources allege.

Between 2005 and 2010, then-Outfit boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno inducted more than two dozen men into the Chicago mob ranks, a good chunk of them one-time 12th Street Players and street-gang shot callers from Cicero and considerably more loyal to him and the Outfit’s Cicero crew than the mafia in general, per sources and law enforcement documents related to a number of probes into organized crime in the Chicagoland region.

Sarno was imprisoned in December 2010 on an extortion case and is currently in the middle of a 25-year stint as a guest of Uncle Sam, battling a variety of health problems linked to his weight that is alleged to have gone down to below 210 pounds right now after a peak pushing 350. The medical issues hasn’t slowed his duties as counselor-of-record to the Outfit’s Cicero crew and as he reportedly continues to receive a piece of gambling and loansharking profits and is sometimes leaned on to settle beefs, which he allegedly did with squabbling Cicero crew members in recent months, per sources and court filings.

Another batch of youngsters got buttons in Elmwood Park in the 2010s and along with Sarno’s boys in Cicero and the new lineage-rich acting leadership on the South Side, represent the new face of the Chicago Outfit, in the process of gradually assuming the reins of the organization from the aging OGs who have helmed the Outfit on a day-to-day basis for the last decade and a half. With Sarno’s counsel and pseudo-oversite from prison and his reputed underboss Salvatore (Sammy Cards) Cataudella as his boots-on-the-ground back-up mentor to the troops on Roosevelt Road, the 12th Street Player alums are now empowered at the highest levels of the Outfit, reshaping the Chicago mob’s image and way of doing business, according to sources.

The finesse of the DiFronzo era is long gone, claim these sources, replaced by raw, unabashed thuggery and a return to the organization’s street-crime roots. At the center of the “new mob’s” racket portfolio are the traditional staples of vast gambling networks, a robust narcotics-sales operations, shakedowns, juice loans and chop shops but conducted in a more aggressive, attack-first, then ask-questions-later manner.

Peppered into those endeavors are prostitution and pump-and-dump stock scams, internet pyramid schemes and Ponzis, as well as the 12th Street Players signature of old-school stick-ups, rip-offs, break-ins and burglaries. Besides the brute-force types ushered into the Chicago mob’s fresh-blood infusion of the past two decades, Cicero and Elmwood Park have also brought in more polished 21st gangsters with expertise in technology, white-collar and boardroom crimes and a portion of the initiates and their associates work for city municipalities in the area and exert great pull in political and police circles. There’s talk among Outfit brass of possibly merging Elmwood Park into Cicero crew in the following decade, after the older generation Elmwood Park buttons either retire or pass away.

The first major former 12th Street Player to gain notoriety in the Chicago media for his work in the Outfit was Paul (Paulie C) Carparelli busted for extortion and connected to Fat Mike Sarno, Sammy Cataudella and Chicago mafia don Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis, per court records and FBI intelligence records. Carparelli, 57, copped a plea and did three years in the feds, walking free in 2019. A number of the 12th Street Players bigwigs of that 1980s-90s era have murders on their respective rap sheets, making it so their reputations precede them wherever they go. One of those 12th Street Player heavyweights, 48-year old Bobby (The Tasmanian Devil) English, the undisputed 90s’ era King of the Players, is in the last stretch of a 20-to-25 year state prison bid for the killing of an Illinois Lottery winner in a 2009 home invasion robbery in Rolling Meadows.

For an IDOC mugshot of English and an article go here...

https://www.lotterypost.com/news/229819

Great piece. Thanks for sharing it.

hold on, when the f was sarno BOSS. this needs to stop. 2005-2010 allegedly, me thinks difronzo was BOSS then or lombardo, maybe tornabene or marcello but not sarno. michael sarno was very active and ran a violent street crew, he was not the #1 overall boss of the outfit ever and i am still not convinced cataudella is underboss. where these false hoods started i dont know but its nonsense. sarno wasnt indicted as BOSS. he was indicted as the leader of a street crew. it would appear however that sarno was lining up many young and new associates to be part of his and cataudellas expanding crew/operations. this i dont doubt.

however if this expansion is true, at least in numbers/members it is almost like the very beginings of the outfit itself, history repeating. young violent street thugs being recruited by a small group of more experienced veteran mafia members and career criminals attempting to carve out criminal space from a variety of different ethnic gangs across the city.

The Tazmania Devil has facial tattoos. Not sure what the Outfits policy is on those.

Vito you're a bit confused or misinformed. The FBI had Mike Sarno as the boss by the mid to late 2000s. Al Tornabene and Joey Lombardo were never the boss but Al Tornabene did take over as acting for a brief time before James Marcello succeeded John Monteleone. The FBI had sources telling them Mike Sarno and Sal Cataudella were in the number 1 and 2 spots. Sal Cataudella could still be underboss but we haven't had any intel saying that and it's really anyone's best guess at this point. We don't have confirmation of John DiFronzo ever taking over as the boss. In the late 1990s he was the acting boss but he was reluctant to assume the actual boss spot and we know that from Frank Calabrese Sr and Joe Fosco. That's the falsehood or at least unconfirmed rumor we should stop with.




Yeah it's weird that he was mentioned in the article. Scott Burnstein doesn't say anything about him and the outfit so it is peculiar he's written about but I know where Scott Burnstein got info on him from and I know why he wrote it and I'll say it's very on par for that goofball. We can write of 90%of what he publishes. I'll add this off with Taz not Tasmanian Devil was a 12th St Player but I can assume you he's a nobody now.

Fosco is using personal feelings (hate) when it comes down to the EP crew, especially regarding DiFronzo. This means that Fosco is also not credible and he is known like that by many.

Joe Fosco wasn't a member so he isn't the best source for organizational information but in this specific case what he says is backed up by a member source.

Operational too

i very well may be confused, it has become part of my life the last year or so. but i suppose then i am suffering from same confusion most everyone who follows the outfit is also suffering from. difronzo being boss appears to be an accepted fact across the board most everywhere you look. media, law enforcement, internet forums etc. all have difronzo as being boss/#1 covering the period you claim sarno held this title. i mentioned lombardo, tornabene and marcello because they have also once been mentioned to have held this position but we know now this was not the case. i would think if when operation family secrets came down and the fbi had lombardo and marcello dead to rights the fbi would have made a big show of the fact they had pinched 2 top leaders. however the family secrets indictment states nothing of the sort. at best, and it has been years since i read it in full the indictment has lombardo as grand ave crew boss/capo and marcello holding same position but for melrose park. no mention of either being BOSS, UNDERBOSS, STREET BOSS and def not consigliere. further to that, when the fbi, the very same one that is claimed had sarno as boss in around same time period did eventually bring down an indictment against sarno et al again not one mention in the fbi's own indictment of sarno being #1 overall boss of the outfit. even more interesting is there is absolutely no mention of salvatore cataudella at all , even if only to call him an unindicted co conspirator or something of the like. does none of that strike anyone as odd? when the fbi had sarno cooked and facing heavy time he is referenced as; cicero street boss, cicero crew leader, cicero powerhouse you pick the term or moniker. but nothing states he was BOSS or cataudella as underboss. cataudella could very well have been sarnos # 2 on the street around time of indictments, but for this guy i see that as cataudella being #2 in the sarno street crew not the outfit as a whole.
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/chicago/press-releases/2009/cg052809a.htm

a link to said indictment.

also nowhere in any case law pertaining to the compassionate release of sarno due to health problems appeal says anything about sarno being top boss in chicago. documents do not say the main reason they will not release him is that sarno continues to function as outfit boss even while imprisoned. they do not state he continues to do so through his underboss salvatore cataudella. the docs ref sarno as once being the leader of a violent street crew with no mention yet again of cataudella at all. and since when did any outfit boss,ub, sb, capo continue to hold power and exert influence while serving a long prison sentence? i will concede that times have changed and sarno looks to have carved out some territory and lined up loyalists during his time as cicero crew boss (2002-2009). but another question since when did the boss/#1 also actively run his own street crew? leaders in the outfit have long held dual roles, think john cerone being both underboss and running elmwood park. or sam carlisi being underboss and still being involved with melrose park through james marcello. so i guess sarno could have been STREET BOSS, the position albert vena currently holds and been the leader of a cicero street crew, but not BOSS.

James Marcello was identified as the boss during family secrets and Michael Sarno's case didn't mention LCN at all from what I remember which is becoming more common in these mafia cases. We all know there's a magnitude of false information about Chicago and we can see it at play basically anytime it's brought up. I know it's believe he had been Boss and I'm not saying John DiFronzo wasn't boss ever but I can't think of any primary source saying he was. There's no question the succession went from John Monteleone to James Marcello to Michael Sarno after that it's murky maybe John DiFronzo maybe Albert Vena maybe and probably Salvatore DeLaurentis.

I don't think it's odd Sal Cataudella wasn't named in Michael Sarno's indictment. We see indictments all the time where people don't get named. Just because Sal Cataudella was Sarno's Underboss doesn't mean he was involved in the crimes related to Michael Sarno's case either.

I'm not sure what influence or power Michael Sarno allegedly has and I obviously don't take most of what Scott Burnstein writes seriously.

I think we get into rumorville when we start talking about current positions like Albert Vena's and others.

From the point when Monteleone became boss until his death, both the Chinatown and Cicero crews were constantly "in charge" of the Outfit, especially when they took over all southern suburbs and Lake County, after the "deaths" of the Chi Heights and North Side crews. For example, in 1995 or 96 the capo of the Cicero crew Spano Sr once said to one informant that Monteleone is his boss (Spanos boss) and also boss of the whole Outfit. The Cicero-Chinatown reign was disrupted with Tornabene and Marcello, mainly because Cicero's Spano Sr was indicted the same year when Monteleone died and later was sent to jail, and so he wasnt able to take the leadership. Thats why they eiminated both Chiaramonti and Zizzo (before or during the Family Secrets trials), which signaled the end of Aiuppas and Marcellos south Cicero-MP crew, and so the powerful Sarno- Toots Caruso Jr group was back in action. Now, if in 2006/07 Solly D or Jimmy I (i dont remember) was labelled as capo for the Cicero crew and Toots Caruso Jr also remained in that same position for the Chinatown boys, then it is quite possible that Sarno was the boss. Sarno was very similar to his predecessor Monteleone by keeping the close connection between the two leading crews. I personally dont know what happened after Sarno's imprisonment, although again it is quite possible that the Cicero-Chinatown group was still in charge, meaning if Sarno was previously the boss then he probably placed someone from his own group as leader of the Outfit (for example either DeLaurentis, Cataudella or Caruso). It happened several times in the past like Giancana and Battaglia, Accardo/Ricca and Cerone, or Aiuppa and Carlisi etc.

Is there really anything left to lead ?

Lucrative legitimate enterprises + money donations aka legal corruption, mainly operated by legit associates and family members