After the death of William Dauber, his old partner in the car theft business Albert Tocco once again became the prime player in the racket. Things were on the up and up in 1982, when Al Pilotto was jailed and Tocco succeeded him as boss of the Chicago Heights crew. During the Outfit’s history, this particular crew never took the leading role for the organization but it was always considered as one of the most powerful and low-key crime factions of the Chicago Mob. By now Tocco already ventured into a “new” scheme known as the garbage business but together with Joey Lombardo, he still had deep ties to the car theft operations, since it was one of his first big time organized crime ventures. One of their guys at the time was Charles Bills, a car theft operator who ran a south suburban chop shop and was responsible for the thefts of more than 700 cars per year. He mainly ran his operation from the Oak Lawn and Blue Island areas with the help of few other chop shop operators such as Donald Sanders and Jerry Rosenstein, the operator of Calumet Auto Wrecking with many connections to various Indiana chop shop owners and shady car dealers.
But this wasn’t Tocco’s or Lombardo’s main car theft operation, instead their prime “pot of gold” was their involvement or a joint operation in a huge, multi-million dollar auto-theft ring which was under the control of the Outfit and stretched in several Midwestern cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, Indiana and Iowa. Back in 1980, the car theft ring managed to steal 48,000 in Illinois and about 30,000 of them in Chicago, where the operation’s headquarters was based and distributed stolen auto-parts throughout the nation. Three of the most notable targets in the Chicago area were the M & M Auto Wreckers at 409 N. Pulaski Rd., M & J Auto Wreckers at 1463-65 E. 130th St., and the Ashland Auto Wreckers, at 9757 S. Commercial Ave. For example, in charge of the M & J Auto Wreckers & Sales was one of Lombardo’s guys known as Mike Chorak, who in fact operated one of the largest chop shop operations on the South Side. Back in 1980, the government wanted to arrest this guy so badly that some of the investigators gave him the famous “lock-step” tactic, a method which almost brought the former Outfit boss Sam Giancana on the verge of insanity. That same year, Chorak filed a suit against the State investigators in an effort to keep them at least 200 feet from his premises. The guy who oversaw Chorak was one member from the West Side area known as Thomas Covello who worked directly under Outfit “capo” Joey Lombardo. The other guy in charge was Chicago police officer Clement Messino who had connections to Tocco through his older brother Chris Messino who was also involved in the car theft racket but mainly worked as one of Tocco’s enforcers.
The hub of the alleged operations was divided in two so-called crews. One crew directed the few Outfit-owned salvage yards which were operated by Covello and one Ralph Mascio, Jr. From there the car thieves were directed to steal mainly particular models of cars in order to supply the yards with a constant supply of parts. Messino’s job was to take the role of a recruiter for the crew and to arrange the theft of specific automobiles through a large cadre of professional auto thieves, such as Joseph Hlavach, Antoine Turner and Vic Meadows. As usual, the cars would generally be stripped prior to any actual contact with the yards, although it was claimed that at times Covello ordered stolen cars directly and had them disassembled at the yards. Both Meadows and Hlavach were alleged to have been involved in the disassembly of automobiles on a sporadic basis. The thieves and disassembly crews would load the parts destined for the yards onto vans, the drivers of which often included Turner and Meadows, and transport the parts to Covello or Mascio during "non-business" hours. Once the parts were at the yards, all vehicle identification numbers would be removed or obscured and the parts would be sorted based upon type and, for body parts, colour. The thieves and the deliverers generally received check from Covello or Mascio, made payable to a false name which could be cashed at a pair of currency exchanges hospitable to the operation. In order to cope with the large influx of parts, the yards regularly transported stolen parts in trucks which were frequently driven by Meadows or Turner to a warehouse in Schereville, Indiana which was owned by M & J Auto Wreckers and those same parts were then sold to salvage yards both within and outside Illinois. According to some reports, the largest purchaser was claimed to be Piper Motor Co., Inc. of Bloomfield, Iowa. In accord with their standard practice, the yards would also receive payment in the form of checks issued to fictitious payees that could be cashed at the cooperating currency exchanges.
The second crew involved corrupt police officers who protected the auto-theft ring. Besides Messino, other corrupt key figure in the operation was Robert Neapolitan, who was employed as an investigator for the Cook County Sheriff's Police Department and also had to co-conspirators officers Robert Cadieux and Ronald Sapit. Cadieux’s and Sapit’s job was to encourage known car thieves to supply them with stolen automobiles and to establish a chop shop operation, while also soliciting bribes in the form of auto parts and cash in exchange for police protection. One of the activities of these corrupt police officers was the "fixing" of a case in which Cadieux attempted to sell the front end of a 1980 Cadillac Eldorado, and in the process of obtaining a new "clean" title for a 1977 Ford pick-up truck. In fact, Neapolitan conducted the affairs of the sheriff's office through a pattern of racketeering activities.
It was a beautiful scheme which generated a lot of cash and made the crime bosses, such as Tocco, Joey Aiuppa and Jack Cerone, very happy on daily basis but the problem was that the government had enough and somebody decided to do something, but this time they hoped to be done for good. The investigation was started mainly because of the numerous killings which occurred during the 1970’s and also because of the high car theft rate which occurred during the same time and still continued to grow. The first problem which occurred in December, 1982, was the arrest of Mike Chorak on warrants charging him with possession of stolen auto parts and altering a vehicle identification number. The stolen auto unit also confiscated front end and doors of an $18,000, 1980 Lincoln Continental that had been stolen from a Lansing restaurant parking lot but as usual the vehicle identification number on the doors had already been altered. Facing an unavoidable prison term, Chorak deep inside knew that once he tried to muscle the government and now it was their turn, so the once loyal criminal decided to cooperate with the feds.
The so-called undercover operation, named “Operation Chisel”, lasted for almost two years until the Outfit got wind of the situation and sent a “message” to Chorak by killing one of his closest associates Robert Subatich. This guy was a 44 year old unemployed iron worker who drove a $20,000 car and was also involved in the car theft business. Story goes that once Subatich stabbed Chorak with a knife over some woman but in the end everything was good because they were close friends. Well their friendship was terminated when on January 2, 1983 the police found Subatich’s dead body in the trunk of his luxury automobile parked in a remote parking facility at O'Hare International Airport. The Outfit eliminated Subatich out of fear from becoming an informant because they knew that his buddy, who was singing like a canary, was going to rat on his partner and by now Lombardo didn’t need anymore rats running around. So two months later, the government managed to do a very “good” job on protecting their witness, because on March 3, 1983, two of Chorak’s family friends scaled a fence to enter his office after Chorak's wife, Laura, became worried when he failed to return home from work and didn’t return his phone calls. So they found him lying behind the counter of his office, with one bullet hole in the abdomen and another one in the back of his head. It was a pure example of a Mob execution. In those days, the Chicago Outfit was still infiltrated deeply within the justice system and it was still sort of a gambling move for some of the individuals who decided to step forward and tell their stories and at the same time to stay alive.
No matter what, the feds used some of the previous information given by the late Chorak, plus their previously collected data, and that same year they still managed to indict the whole car theft crew, including the corrupt cops, minus the Outfit’s administration such as Tocco or Lombardo. In fact this was a RICO/theft prosecution because it was built around an FBI electronic surveillance and following a three-week jury trial, six defendants were found guilty on all RICO charges. One year later, Thomas Covello received eight years and five years probation, Ralph Mascio was convicted of six counts of interstate transportation of stolen goods and was sentenced to four years imprisonment also followed by five years probation, Victor Meadows was convicted on two substantive counts, in addition to the RICO charge, and received three years, also followed by five years probation and Antoine Turner was sentenced to five years conditional probation. The jury acquitted Joseph Hlavach and Clement Messino on all seven substantive counts but each received a four year prison sentence on the conspiracy count. In the end, Hlavach's was suspended in favour of five years probation. As for Robert Neapolitan, the jury also found him guilty of a RICO conspiracy and he was sentenced to a period of one year incarceration and his two co-conspirators police officers Robert Cadieux and Ronald Sapit, besides pleading guilty, they also testified during the trial and later both were acquitted. This was a huge kick in the head for the Outfit’s car theft empire because the feds managed to break the backbone of a $4 million-a-year Chicago-based ``chop shop`` ring.
By now auto-theft had still been a Class III felony with a maximum penalty of two to five years in prison and possession of a stolen car was a Class IV felony carrying a one to three year sentence. But in 1985, some government investigators made a conclusion that the auto-theft cost the American population an estimated $5 billion a year, including $1 billion in law enforcement costs. The six-county Chicago metropolitan area alone had 54,075 thefts back in 1983, or 87.5 percent of the statewide total, compared with 48,254 in 1982. So some government “law-makers” decided to make new laws and decided to defeat forever this so called “menace of society”. And so President Ronald Reagan signed the Motor Vehicle Theft Law Enforcement with the purpose to increase the federal penalties and make it tougher for stolen parts to be marketed in the United States and abroad. In 1985, under a new federal statute, major auto theft offenders-rings of thieves and chop shop operators faced prison sentences of up to 20 years and forfeiture-of financial assets and property if convicted. In Illinois, a person convicted of car theft or possession of a stolen auto must be sentenced to a minimum of three years in prison under an amendment to the state criminal code that upgraded the crime’s severity. In addition, the legislation made it a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to tamper with the vehicle identification numbers on dashboards. The law also deals with transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and one interstate auto theft had carried a maximum penalty up to 20 years and seizure of assets if the government can prove an auto theft ring was a continuing enterprise operated by organized criminals.
For example the next year, in 1986, government prosecutors tested their new laws on the previously mentioned Tocco’s car theft crew which operated in the Oak Lawn and Blue Island areas. The boss of the theft ring 45 years old Charles Guy Bills received 10 years in prison and his partners in crime Charles Soteras received 12-year term, Donald Sanders was sentenced to eight years in prison and ordered to pay $30,000 and as for Jerry Rosenstein, he was sentenced to five years in prison. Another of Tocco’s associates in the chop shop business, who also fell into the government’s web, was south suburban criminal Ora Curry. He was the principal figure in a suburban chop-shop ring which was operated by at least 80 individuals and the whole operation grossed more than $300,000 a year. According to one story, some immigrants from Middle East countries, unknowingly bought stolen cars from Curry and within weeks, the cars were alleged to have been stolen again by Curry’s associates but this time the cars were cut up and the parts were shipped to nearby states for resale. Now this guy made a lot of money for Tocco because besides being involved in the chop shop racket, he also operated an alleged scheme involving insurance claims for nonexistent losses such as auto thefts. In just one year, Curry managed to fraudulently obtain $117,352 in payouts from four insurance companies and on top of that, he even received money for disability insurance. He was a pure example where the human eye has no limits, like for example even with all of those illegal incomes he even had the guts to peddle cocaine on the streets of Chicago.
Ora Curry
Now, this kind of a scumbag was on Tocco’s most favourite list, which made him very happy but not for long. One of Curry’s so-called mentors in the chop shop business was John Pronger, brother of the late Robert Pronger who was killed by the Outfit back in 1972. Now, besides being big player in transporting stolen auto truck parts from Hammond, Indiana to all over Illinois, John Pronger was also big in the narcotics business. From time to time, while doing his work like driving or transporting a stolen car, Pronger usually also had few kilos of cocaine stashed in some of the stolen vehicles. There are some reports which also indicate that by now Pronger was leaving the chop shop business and was entering the world of narcotics. By now most of these guys bought their kilos of cocaine from one South suburban narcotics trafficker known as Dante Autullo Jr. Cocaine was the main party drug during the 1980’s and obviously it was a big business and so a very “unusual” phenomenon occurred when many of the current or former Outfit-connected chop shop owners or car thieves at the time, again got involved in the narcotics racket.
I don’t know what to say, but looks like there was always something between organized car theft and narcotics which connected the two businesses. But as I previously said, the problem was that these guys had long time connections to the Outfit and at the same time they shared tables with some of these quite dangerous individuals. But the thing was that these so-called murderous members of Chicago’s “secret” criminal society lived by their own rules and since the 1970’s, one of those rules was “don’t get caught dealing”, a rule which was punishable by murder and a method which we saw in many of the previous examples. Now don’t get me wrong, guys like Pronger or Curry didn’t fully belong to the organization but instead they only fronted or paid street tax for their chop shop operations and some of them were not even considered an associates of the organization, but simple co-workers for some of the members or real associates of the criminal brotherhood. So if guys like Pronger or Curry were caught dealing drugs, then high level criminals such as Al Tocco might get in trouble also. Not just with the government but also with their superiors within the organization or the bosses, who still lived by the old ways and very often ordered the murders of their own members. So to avoid that kind of situation, Tocco was forced to order the murders and again, to make few new examples.
Al Tocco
And that’s what really happened. On April 28, 1988, former suburban Crete chop shop owner and Outfit associate turned drug dealer Eugene Bell was found strangled to death near Miami, Florida. Also in June that same year, another former chop shop operator turned drug dealer turned up dead. This time it was Sam Mann, another known Mob associate from the Dolton area, who was beaten to death probably by few men with baseball bats. If these guys were killed by some Colombian drug traffickers or “sicarios” for example, their bodies would’ve been so mutilated that probably some of the victim’s heads, arms or legs would’ve been missing because that was their so-called “signature” with the purpose to create fear or send messages to their rivals. So according to the style of the two killings, I strongly believe that they were both Outfit related.
The next murder contract was placed on John Pronger and the main reason was back in 1985, when one day the cops tailed Pronger while driving a pickup truck which was previously reported stolen. Later he parked at the garage of O’Hare Airport and took a flight to Florida. The feds decided to watch the pickup truck until Pronger returned from his trip. A couple of days later Pronger did return, entered his truck and started driving. Suddenly a whole team of federal agents stopped his car, arrested him and surprisingly for the feds, they also found a kilo of cocaine and a stack of $24,000. So he was charged with possession of kilogram cocaine and a car theft at the same time but Pronger's case did not come to trial nearly 21/2 years after his arrest and the seizure of the cocaine. Later he was found guilty but his sentencing hearing was delayed until June 2, 1988. Shortly after Pronger decided to appeal his conviction and so the Illinois Appellate Court in July set a $400,000 appeal bond. But Pronger's ex-wife received some good cash from “somebody” and posted the necessary 10 percent of the bond which permitted Pronger to go free. In fact, this was an old trick made by the Outfit where they pay the convict’s bond so he or she can walk the streets for at least awhile so the Outfit’s hitmen can do their job. On August 16, 1988, Pronger stayed at the home of his ex-wife Christine in Schererville at 2547 Spring Hill Drive in fashionable Scherervlle subdivision, south of Hammond, Indiana. At 3 a.m. somebody rang the doorbell and 64 years old Pronger went to the door to see who it was. As he got near the front door, the individual from the other side fired one shot through the door thus wounding Pronger in the left wrist. Then the gunman kicked the door open and fired another shot from a 357 Magnum handgun loaded with dum-dum bullets into Pronger’s chest, thus making him the second brother killed on the orders of the Chicago Outfit.
And so, the same mistake was done by Ora Curry also, meaning while he stole and transported vehicles, he also transported cocaine, but he was lucky. In August, 1986, Curry and his wife Rose were accused for multiple counts of income tax evasion and mail fraud Curry and his wife grossly understated their taxable income for the years 1979 and 1980. Some of the alleged unreported income was first derived from a substantial money trail developed by IRS investigators which indicated hidden profits from the sale of parts from stolen and stripped cars. The court ordered a $50,000 bond, which he later paid without any problem, and waited for sentencing on September 12, 1986, before U.S. District Judge Brian Duff. But while he was free on bond awaiting sentencing, drug agents arrested Curry on charges of selling cocaine to an undercover agent. Also while he awaited his sentencing, the feds managed to destroy Curry’s chop shop empire by arresting 88 of his associates for selling stolen vehicles to undercover state agents in a “sting” operation in Will County. Even though John Evon and Thomas Moriarty, prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department`s Strike Force against Organized Crime, had urged U.S. District Judge Brian Barnett Duff to impose a lengthy prison term, arguing that Curry had sold cocaine and weapons and carried out his business as a chop-shop dealer through a pattern of threats, on September 13, 1986, the judge sentenced reputed chop-shop operator Ora Curry to 18 years in prison, fined him $10,000 and ordered $174,000 in restitution. In fact, I believe that the prison sentence has saved Curry’s life from the hands of the Outfit. Even though he was a drug dealer, after this, there was no doubt that Curry`s conviction managed to hurt Tocco’s chop shop activities from McHenry to Will County.
The government’s attacks on Tocco’s territory continued when the feds arranged a lot of sting operations around the area, by posing as chop shop owners and car dealers. The operation really opened in October 1987, and the undercover agents spread the word around many junkyards, auto dealers and taverns about their chop shop operation. In a very short time period, the word spread with the speed of light among car thieves who started bringing stolen vehicles to the shop to be stripped and resold. In just few months, during 1988, 33 criminals sold 63 stolen autos and 2 stolen boats to undercover agents who had set up fake chop shop in the south suburbs. While the undercover cops paid from $300 to $5,000 for the cars, usually models such as BMWs Cadillacs, Porsches, Buicks and Corvettes, all of the illegal sales were recorded often on videotape by other federal agents, while hidden in vans or apartments, usually right across their targets. Insurance industry officials credited the undercover investigations with helping to reduce the number of auto thefts in Chicago between 19 and 25 percent for the first half of 1988.
But at the same time, according to numerous police reports, some of the organized car thieves became even more professional in doing their job. For example, you have pulled into the local shopping center in your new and shiny car and you are paranoid about getting scratches on this $20,000 purchase so you park toward the back of the lot where it is less likely to get dinged by someone’s car door. You lock it and then head for the supermarket with your shopping list. The problem is the two car thieves who watched you park have a shopping list too and your car is on it. An unscrupulous body shop owner needs your car's front end and is willing to pay $1,000; a fraction of its worth to get it. The thieves are grateful that you put your car in that dimly lit rear parking area because it makes their work less obvious. They don't need much time to take your car, maybe 30 seconds to enter and another minute or so to break the steering and ignition lock, and get it started. Just to be safe, one thief follows you into the supermarket with his beeper device in case you leave abruptly and he has to alert his colleagues. This hypothetical scenario suggested by police experience tells you something about latter-day car theft and it underscores the fact that today’s car thieves are typically slick, quick, techy professionals who still steal from shopping list and then some of them even left a note which generally said “If we want it, we’ll get it”. Back in the days, if a Toyota and a Cadillac were parked in the same lot, a thief would push the Toyota out of the way to get to the Caddy but today, the thief is just as likely to take the Toyota and maybe the Cadillac, too. Even the chop shops had more work to do because by now, more and more of those small, economy cars were on the road and that meant more and more cars for repair or replacement parts.
During the late 1980’s and early 90’s, many of the Outfit’s top bosses which were involved in the car theft business, such as Al Tocco, went to prison or died from natural causes. After the imprisonment of Albert Tocco, the leadership of his crew and remaining operations, including the car theft racket, was taken over by one Outfit member known as Dominick Palermo who in turn was also quickly imprisoned in 1991. Later, the Chicago Heights crew was allegedly absorbed by the so-called South Side crew which by now was headed by John Monteleone, allegedly one of the top Outfit bosses at the time. By now I mostly use the word “allegedly” because from this point on, up until this day, the Chicago Outfit is considered one of the most mysterious criminal organizations in the U.S., meaning the feds do not own much information on the group’s current hierarchy.
Chopped up Porsche
Also the so-called street tax was getting “out of style” and many of the organized car theft rings became independent, again, and so during the 1990’s the organized car theft rings were not as they used to be but they were certainly not out. During that same time period, many options for the car thieves became limited. For example, with the introduction of sophisticated “smart keys” in 1997 or today’s fingerprint ignition, hot-wiring a car is no longer an option for the car thieves. This mostly came out from the pressure of the consumer groups and insurers over the manufacturers to make their cars more secure. So with the help of the improved lock design, for the thieves it was no longer possible to unlock a car door with a piece of wire or by jamming a screwdriver into the lock and turning. But as I previously mentioned, as the protection for the cars evolved, so did the thief’s methods.
Today, many of the professional car thieves get inside the cars, with the help of all kinds of hand-made electronic devices, such as the usage of radio-scrambling devices to stop the car locking when a driver presses the remote control button. Usually unaware that he has left his car unlocked, the driver walks away while the thieves start to operate. According to numerous sources, all of these kinds of illegal devices can be found on the internet such as auction sites or in some cases they can be ordered straight from unscrupulous locksmiths and manufacturers but to be fair, they are not very easily available. It was demonstrated many times around the world that by using these so-called hand-made gadgets, it is possible for one car thief to take over an automobile’s onboard controllers and switch on lights, or even activate the brakes and operate the locks and engine. As I previously mentioned, to start the car many of the professional car thieves started using all kinds of hand-made electronic devices to exploit the “keyless” ignition systems which are now used in most of the high-class vehicles and so during the years, thousands of wealthy owners around the world with keyless BMWs, Range Rovers and Audis have become victims of the auto-theft racket.
Also some of the less professional car thieves discovered other ways to illegally gain access to vehicles such as acquiring car keys illegally through outright theft or by posing as legitimate vehicle owners seeking a replacement from a dealership or locksmith. Before a dealer or locksmith can make a duplicate key for the customer, the customer himself must provide a vehicle’s registration or title information showing that the customer is, in fact, the owner of the vehicle and to make things easier, the National Automotive Service Task Force has created a data exchange system that allows locksmiths and dealerships to access key codes and immobilizer reset information provided by automobile manufacturers. But the program was always blamed because of many examples of fraud, as well as organized group activities which resulted in numerous investigations. Some of the investigations were conducted on criminal activities where a rental vehicle will be returned with a good key in the ignition and a blank key along with it. The thieves then return to the rental lot later with the other good key and simply drive off with the car. Or, they will place a GPS tracker in the car and when it is re-rented, follow it to a destination and then steal it once it is parked. Or other cases where thieves use stolen identities or even create completely fraudulent new ones with phoney credit histories, and then walk into new car dealerships and secure loans for high-end vehicles. The vehicles are then shipped to a foreign seaport where they can be sold at a premium.
Even with all the good news about the decline in vehicle theft, no vehicle is theft-proof and if your car was ever stolen, then you know that overcoming the loss can be a major hassle but it’s a “must-be”. As for the Chicago Outfit, I really don’t know if these days they are still involved in the racket, but I’m sure of that the golden days of Fiore Buccieri and later of Al Tocco, are long gone.
