Now what are we going to do right here is go back again to the 1980’s, when different factions of the Chicago Outfit extorted the garbage disposal business in a very different way. During the early 1980’s, Outfit member and union leader Angelo Fosco was the president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America and became the fifth highest paid union president in the nation. He was the son of legendary union boss and Outfit associate Peter Fosco, who died back in 1975 and was immediately succeeded by his blood protégé. The younger Fosco continued his father’s work by providing jobs to Outfit members and associates and generally followed directions straight from the Outfit’s top administration. Even though this case wasn’t directly connected with the garbage business, it is worth mentioning because the garbage workers and street sweepers, which were over 50,000 members, were also affected by this next scheme.
Angelo Fosco directly operated under the auspices of Outfit boss Tony Accardo and together they extorted millions of dollars from the unions. In 1981, through manipulation of a union insurance fund, the two bosses managed to scheme more than two million dollars, a kind of theft which was easily compared by the investigators to "purse snatching". Accardo and Fosco conspired through the use of kickbacks and phoney commissions to steal millions from insurance and welfare funds of the union. Two other Outfit members involved in scheme were James Caporale, who acted as official for the union’s Chicago District Council, and Alfred Pilotto, a local union president in Chicago Heights and high profile member of the Mob. The crew has set up an insurance company to obtain the business of the laborers union but all of the major decisions were cleared through Accardo, whom everybody referred to by the alias “Joe Batters”. In reality, this was another cruel “joke” which was made by the Outfit towards the thousands of honest workers. As additional info, Tampa crime boss Santo Trafficante was also involved in the scheme.
Sooner or later the government realized about the scheme and charged the racketeers for stealing 2 million dollars through the use of kickbacks and fake commissions. Outfit boss Tony Accardo and 10 other men, including Fosco, Caporale and Pilotto, have been on trial for seven weeks in the U.S. District Court in Chicago. The prosecutors started using names such as “purse snatcher” in reference of the old man Accardo. But the name-calling was not new to Accardo because the long time reputed-boss of the Chicago crime syndicate has been accused of a lot of things in the many years since he landed a job as bodyguard for Al Capone in the late 1920s. So instead, seemingly amused by the purse snatcher reference, Accardo slapped the back of his attorney, Carl Walsh, and smiled.
Tony Accardo
Accardo's involvement in the money management of the unions was regarded by the prosecutors as a natural extension in view of the large sums of money in various funds of the Mob’s traditional grip on corrupt unions and their bosses. Key prosecution witness Joseph Hauser, a convicted insurance swindler, has testified that he set up an insurance company to obtain the business of the laborers union but that the whole operation was controlled by Accardo. Only two of the defendants testified in their own defence during the trial but old man Accardo was not among them and has kept a low profile and every time he left the courthouse, he was seen walking out with a wide grin because he knew that this was nothing for him but instead it was just a simple bump during his long time criminal career. As expected, in June, 1982, Accardo and Fosco were acquitted of all charges, as for Pilotto and Caporale, they were convicted and sentenced to jail. Accardo was the prime boss and Fosco was too lucrative so somebody had to take the fall. Plus their advancing age did nothing to lessen their interest of being on the top in the world of organized crime. As additional info, in 1986 Fosco received a salary of $146,000.
During the time period between 1980 and 1988, the two most corrupt public officials in the Chicago Heights area were its finance commissioner Nick LoBue and the mayor Donald Prisco. The two men were also business partners who owned currency exchange in Chicago Heights that was allegedly used to funnel payoffs to themselves in the form of checks made out to fictitious people. The alleged bribes involved exotic gold coins, plain cash and checks disguised as commission payments, but the single most important item of value was garbage by the truckload and the more there was to pick up and haul away, the greater the demand for payoffs. LoBue and Prisco received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to influence the way on how many highly lucrative contracts were awarded for collecting and disposing of garbage in the Chicago Heights area. So when public officials get on that kind of level of corruption, usually the presence of mobsters is inevitable.
Back in 1977, the Fitzpatrick Brothers Disposal Service, Inc. and a landfill operation business called Fitz-mar, Inc. based in Steger, Illinois, which was all a legitimate enterprise, meaning still no mobsters involved, submitted a bid for the 1977 residential trash pickup contract with Chicago Heights. The company was owned by Martin and Harold Wondaal and the everyday proceedings were managed by Charles Fitzpatrick. At the time, Charles Panici was the mayor of Chicago Heights and John Gliottoni, Lou Marshall and Nick LoBue served as commissioners on the city council and so the manager of the disposal company Charles Fitzpatrick was approached by Commissioner Gliottoni with a solution that in order to secure the contract, the company would have to make a nice payoff. Unexpectedly, the owners strongly refused to make the payoff and so the contract was given to another disposal company.
In April, 1980, the Fitzpatrick Brothers, again submitted a bid for the residential trash pickup contract, but this time they were approached by Donald Prisco, another high level member of the city council who in fact told them the same old story which was that the only way they could obtain the city garbage hauling contract was by making cash payments to certain public officials. With no other choice, Martin Wondaal and Charles Fitzpatrick agreed to this arrangement and so on April 22, 1980, the City of Chicago Heights awarded its 3-year garbage hauling contract to Fitzpatrick Brothers. It was agreed that the commissioners would get $20,000 to $30,000 on the residential trash pickup contract and from this point on, Wondaal and Fitzpatrick became “money slaves” to Prisco and LoBue for their work in securing the garbage hauling contract.
But the thing is that sometimes there’s really no big difference between these corrupt public officials and the gangsters. Now, besides taking huge bribes and giving away lucrative city contracts for certain services, the council decided to give other different contracts but for the same service. So, more contracts for the same services meant more bribes or more cash to fill in their pockets. Like for example, on February 12, 1981, the Fitzpatrick Brothers Company again submitted a new bid, but this time it was to obtain the city’s contract for picking up bulk garbage items, a service which was not included in the previous contract. As usual, before the city council could vote on the contract, this time the company had to pay additional bribe money to Prisco and LoBue and on top of that, they also had to take care of Ernest Molyneaux, the superintendent of streets and public improvements for Chicago Heights, who expected to receive at least $1500. In return, LoBue and Molyneaux always inflated their ratings of Fitzpatrick’s bid so that their proposal received the highest average rating. With their support, on April 27, 1981, the Chicago Heights city council voted to accept Fitzpatrick Brothers' bid.
Again, during the spring of 1981, the City of Chicago Heights began seeking bids for the operation of its municipal landfill. It was already expected for Wondaal and Fitzpatrick to obtain the landfill contract with their Fitz-mar Corp., but this time there was new “surprise” which they would have to make higher payments. The deal was that in the next two years Prisco would receive weekly checks for $500 or more from Fitz-mar and additional $20,000 in gold coins, upfront. The scheme went like this, every time when Prisco demanded a large payment from the garbage company, he usually suggested that the funds be generated by disguising the withdrawal as a purchase of equipment. For example, Prisco received the bribe through Lee Wichowsky, a dealer in heavy equipment and close friend. Fitzpatrick wrote the checks on his Fitz-mar account to Wichowsky who in turn cashed the checks and turned over a substantial portion of the proceeds to Prisco. In November, 1981, the City of Chicago Heights had entered into a contract with Fitz-mar to operate the landfill for the next eight years. During 1982, things went really “good” for both sides, meaning the garbage companies worked their asses of, while the corrupt public officials celebrated “New Year” every day because with these simple criminal tactics, the council managed to form an endless flow of dirty cash.
But during that same year the formation of the Chicago Heights criminal faction has changed after a whole decade. After the imprisonment of Al Pilotto, who was the boss of that same area and one of Accardo’s so-called “fall guys” in the previous case, the next in line for the top position was Albert Tocco. This guy was a murderer mainly involved in extortion, auto theft and gambling but he also had few legitimate enterprises under his rule, such as the restaurant business and of course the garbage business. By the end of 1982, Tocco decided to make his garbage operations his largest legit income and so one day, оn recommendation from Nick LoBue, he visited his “old friend” Martin Wondaal and informed him about the Mob’s invasion of the garbage business in the south suburbs. After hearing the “great” news, Wondaal immediately agreed to sell Tocco his garbage company. I believe that even though the garbage business is very lucrative operation, Wondaal was still happy for two reasons, no more pressure and no more dealings with corrupt public officials.
Before Tocco’s purchase of the garbage company, on June 1, 1983, Chicago Heights renewed its contract with Fitzpatrick Brothers to provide garbage disposal service for another three years. Immediately after that, Tocco purchased the company that same day, and renamed it Chicago Heights Disposal. Almost a year later, on April 3, 1984, the city executed a new contract doubling the frequency of garbage collection each week, doubling the amount of compensation to Chicago Heights Disposal, and extending the term of the contract to April, 1990. Obviously all of this happened with the help of the city council in return for large portion of Outfit money. The bribes from Tocco to the council were taken care of by LoBue who owned a private and legit enterprise known as Arken Extermination Services. On the other hand, Tocco owned few legitimate establishments and so he allegedly called the Arken firm but in reality no exterminating services were ever rendered at the locals. Nevertheless, for the next three years Tocco issued monthly checks for $1800 to Arken on the account of his company the Chicago Heights Disposal and LoBue frequently picked up the monthly check in person and the checks were subsequently deposited into Arken's account. After that LoBue received a corresponding check for approximately $1800 drawn on Arken's account and the company recorded these checks as commissions to LoBue. Sometimes Tocco cashed to bribe money to Prisco who also owned a similar legitimate enterprise known as Alpha Pest Control. Also with the council’s help, in 1986, Tocco purchased his own dump site for $25,000, south of the Chicago Heights area, and story goes that he was the only bidder for the land.
Now Tocco wasn’t some guy with good intentions, nor with good manners, and so he ran the company under the threat of violence with the help of one of his chief musclemen Clarence Crockett, who worked as employee at the garbage firm. These guys were not businessmen and so they turned the company’s offices into a gang hangout. Crockett was the principal collector of protection money for Tocco's $500,000-a-month extortion club whose members included car thieves, gamblers and brothel keepers. According to a secretary who worked for the crime boss, Tocco babbled on the phone all day long with all kinds of individuals, including Mayor Panici, Bloom Township supervisor Robert Grossi, Rick Smith, then-police chief of South Chicago Heights and many different members of the Chicago Mob. Once Mayor Panici called Tocco at his office and disguised his voice in an attempt to conceal his identity.
From this point on, the garbage company wasn’t the same anymore because most of the daily garbage routes resulted with almost no pickups and cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in labor and fuel. Another trick on which the Mob used was reducing the number of garbage trucks and also used less crews and fuel for the job. During this period, Tocco’s men divided up routes, rigged contract bids, and harassed other garbage haulers and also customers in order to quash competition, keep their prices high and maintain the cash-flow and soon the crew had monopolies on trash collection all over the South Side and suburbs. The crew also falsified paperwork and tampered with waste scales, sometimes to skim profits from the business, and sometimes to hide dirty money in it. Many Outfit associates often received no-show jobs at the garbage firm, which gave them a legit job to put on their tax return and explain their income. Sometimes they received $1,000 a week, plus health benefits, without doing any single work.
Business was good until April, 1988, when Tocco received confidential information that the feds prepared for his arrest on extortion and murder charges. In a matter of few days, Tocco needed quick cash and so he raised money by selling his lucrative trash hauling business and immediately fled the country. It was believed that Tocco visited Greece, where in January, 1989 he was arrested by Interpol and was brought back to the U.S. to face trial. During the trial, Tocco faced a great shame when his former model wife Betty Tocco was called to testify. During her testimony, Betty mentioned LoBue's name along with Prisco’s. Her testimony proved that LoBue and Prisco were accepting bribe money from Tocco in exchange for their help in keeping the garbage hauling license. Although suspected in numerous gangland killings he was never convicted for murder but would be convicted on many other charges in 1990 and sentenced to 200 years in prison or in other words, to life. In 1991, Nick LoBue and Donald Prisco pleaded guilty to accepting $50,000 and $250,000 from Tocco's garbage-hauling company and landfill operations during the 1980s. Unlike LoBue, Prisco did not agree to cooperate with the government, and was sentenced to 2 1/2-year prison sentence. Also sixteen other public officials would be charged and convicted with bribery and extortion, including Enrico Doggett, city administrator and Joseph Christofanelli, director of economic development of the industrial community, who both pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud charges and decided to cooperate with the government. Even though Tocco's trial was a hard kick in the face of organized crime, in reality it brought to light just a glimpse of the widespread corruption in Chicago’s city government.
After the death of the Outfit’s union boss Angelo Fosco and the imprisonment of Alderman Fred Roti in 1993, the Outfit started to feel the huge downfall of their operation within the garbage disposal industry because of the many reformers and criminal indictments which have given a big strike to the Outfit’s operations. But the Outfit has never quit and still kept strings attached to their quite lucrative “pot of gold”. Proof for that was the Outfit’s boss John DiFronzo’s involvement in the garbage hauling business. During the mid 1990’s Peter DiFronzo, brother of John, became the owner of D&P Inc., which was a waste hauling firm in the Melrose Park area. Now the DiFronzo’s so-called “scheme” was always the same old scheme by donating huge amounts of cash to various politicians through political fundraising events.
For example, DiFronzo has given unsolicited contributions of unknown amount of cash to the Leyden Township Committee Fund, where he and many top political faces only exchanged pleasantries and nothing else. Because of the brothers’ “alleged love” for parks, they've managed to contribute various donations to the mayors of Elmwood Park, Melrose Park, Schiller Park and Franklin Park. Other beneficiaries and close friends of the DiFronzo crime family included Alderman William Banks from the 36th Ward and State Senator Jimmy DeLeo, a known member of the “bloody” West Side Bloc, State Representative Angelo Saviano of Elmwood Park, Peter Silvestri an Elmwood Park mayor and a Cook County commissioner, Melrose Park Mayor Ronald Serpico, village president of Franklin Park Daniel Pritchett and River Grove Mayor Tom Tarpey. In fact the company was an active political contributor on the Northwest Side, where they were based, and the surrounding suburbs. When some of the public officials were asked about the situation, everyone said, with innocent looking faces, that they had no knowledge of D&P or JKS ever being involved in criminal activity. For example State Rep. Angelo Saviano reportedly said “State casino regulators are making these people out like they're John Dillinger. That's just not the case. Whatever their past is, it's the past. If they want to donate to myself and the Northwest Side mayors, we're confident they're a reputable company. The Italian Mafia is gone, I don't see it happening around here.'' The D&P also has given more than $16,000 to political funds connected to Rosemont Mayor Donald E. Stephens. Later Stephens has maintained that he was unaware of any problems with the company, which in reality was almost true.
Another “scheme” on which the brothers made additional income was with the help of another DiFronzo-owned company, which was known as the JKS Ventures Co. Now this firm also did legitimate snow plowing, waste hauling, materials and construction work but at the lowest possible prices. For example the company took $200,000 from Leyden Township, $130,000 from Melrose Park, $70,000 from Elmwood Park, and $50,000 from River Grove, such a low prices which eliminated every possible rival. Like in Rosemont where the firm was retained to provide some waste hauling services which totalled less than $20,000. According to some public records, the contracts were awarded after determining that D&P had submitted the lowest cost projection for the work. This way his company had contracts to haul garbage from many big stores and government buildings around the Chicago area and by the mid 2000’s, the D&P Inc. was known as a top waste hauler with reports of received city contracts up to $300,000. There were dozens of well-known companies and governments who were clients of the DiFronzo companies, including Allstate Insurance, the Chicago Park District, Cook County's courts, the University of Illinois, Dominick's, Jewel, Sears and Walsh Construction.
On paper the company was ran by Josephine DiFronzo, the wife of Pete. But everybody, including the rats in the sewers, knew that D&P was really under the auspices of her husband and his brother John, the Outfit’s top administration. Back in the old days, the DiFronzo started up on the West Side area and looked upon big time mobsters such as Charles Nicoletti and Sam Battaglia. Later some of the members from that crew were transferred to the newly formed Grand Avenue group which was headed by Joey Lombardo under the auspices of the Outfit’s top elder statesman Tony Accardo and the chief executive Joseph Aiuppa. During their criminal careers, John DiFronzo foe example has more than two dozen arrests, and he was convicted and later released in 1993 in a scheme to infiltrate an Indian casino. Pete DiFronzo did time in Leavenworth in the 1960’s for a warehouse heist and their younger brother Joseph was imprisoned on federal drug charges. And so by the late 1980’s or early 90’s John DiFronzo became the new top guy of the organization, which was formed since the era of Al Capone. As for his brother Pete, he became a liaison between his older brother and other high profile members of the Outfit. And so the old habits never vanished because according to a 2005 report from an Illinois Gaming Board hearing officer where not only alleged that the firm was controlled by high level made members of the Chicago Outfit but it also said that the D&P Inc. was conducted by obtaining contracts through illegal payoffs or intimidation. Today, in 2016, some say that John DiFronzo is retired from the organization because of serious health problem, others say that he took the late Accardo’s role as the Outfit’s elder statesman and few say that he is in fact still the boss of the Outfit.
Now I don’t want my story to sound like just another Quentin Tarantino gangster movie scenario but let’s make another turn but this time again to 1990’s. During the decade, history again repeated itself when in 1998, the son of Willie Daddano, William Jr., opened up a waste hauling firm in DuPage County and same as his late father, he began infiltrating the garbage industry. Daddano Jr. was listed as manager of the National Facilities Maintenance, LLC and had connections to Chicago area Teamsters through Local 714, including chief steward Nick Boscarino. Daddano Jr. and Boscarino were also involved in a company known as "O.G. Services," which did business with Local 714 employers. Story goes that Jr. acquired the hauling company from a partner of deceased Outfit figure Ben Stein who was extorted by his late father Daddano Sr. So the Outfit already worked its way into the Teamsters union, which included garbage truck drivers, thus allowing the organization to dictate which companies the drivers would work for. According to some sources, Daddano Jr. was a quite smart guy, meaning he knew how the scheme and had connections in taking city deals under the government’s radar and did it for quite a long period.
Back in the old days, Daddano Jr. was arrested on few crimes such as aggravated battery and for possession of gambling equipment and in a “Chicago Outfit Organizational Chart” published in 1997, the Chicago Crime Commission listed Daddano Jr. among the “members and associates” of the Chicago Mob. Also, he served many times as front man for the Outfit and so in 2004, Daddano Jr. has gained a lot of attention from Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan who according to her, Daddano Jr. was described as "reputed member of organized crime." The allegations came from Jr.’s connection to Rosemont Mayor Donald E. Stephens through Mob associates Nick Boscarino and Joseph Salamone and state documents show one local firm, with alleged organized crime connections and with campaign funds linked to Mayor Stephens. Boscarino was a partner with the mayor’s son in different cleaning company, which had contracts for the Rosemont convention center and the Allstate Arena. When Stephens was asked by the newsmen about his alleged organized crime connections, he immediately denied any Mob ties by saying "If Nick (Boscarino) is a hood, I don't know it. Show me something that's really Mob, and I'll resign."
William Daddano Jr.
Even after the “tremendous” allegations, the company’s business remained untouched for the next seven years, until December 17, 2011 when the firm was officially closed down. In 2012, Daddano Jr.’s previous partner and the late Ben Stein’s protégé Richard Simon was the owner of a cleaning company known as the United Maintenance Co. and with the help of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the company was awarded a $99.4 million O’Hare Airport janitorial contract. The United offices were based in the same South Loop building where the previous garbage hauling firm used to have its location. After that, Daddano Jr.’s name popped up in every news article around the country and so many union airport workers were holding a prayer vigil outside the Mayor’s house, while asking him to reconsider the decision to hand custodial work at O’Hare International Airport to a new company. But nothing ever changed and the decision remained. According to 2014 investigative report, Daddano Jr. through his sister’s name Mary, who spells her last name “Daddono”, still acquired all kinds of contracts in different places around the Melrose Park area, some regularly, and some probably with the help of corruption and under the threat of violence.
I personally believe that the Chicago Outfit or organized crime in general, will never leave the garbage industry for one simple reason and that is the easy creation of a monopoly on garbage collection which always is going to remain attractive because the business itself is legal, and public contracts return big profits. Compared with something like running day-to-day operations in a casino or a brothel, the physics of taking trash from one place to another are no mystery and the most beautiful thing is that there's always a demand for the service. In the old days when the Outfit was considered a large criminal organization, the garbage racket provided relatively little in the way of revenue compared with the more traditional criminal enterprises such as gambling, loan sharking, extortion, prostitution or narcotics. But today, times are different and so in the eyes of the racketeer, the garbage business is one of the rare best things out there.
