There was also another so-called “direct line” to Chicago, but this time it came straight from London, England, and was overseen by the European faction. Their main smugglers were two elderly women from Barcelona, Spain, identified as the Munoz sisters, Catalina and Rafaela, and one Corsican Mob associate known as Antonio De La Cruz. In fact, the Munoz sisters worked for the Armada clan and as for De La Cruz, he obviously worked for Giancana’s new business partner Francisci. Their route usually started from Barcelona to London and from there with a direct flight to O’Hare International Airport. These so-called European smugglers were known for transporting over 20 pounds of heroin, which was destined for the Chicago market, during one trip. This is also a proof that the market or the number of addicts was getting larger, which explains the larger amount of shipment during this period, rather than the previous years. But the problem was that the European smuggling squad did not last long, since one day they were “welcomed” by the federal agents after their arrival on Chicago’s airport and during the search, the feds managed to find 22 pounds of pure Spanish heroin, which was estimated around 10 million dollars. According to the report, they carried the 22 pounds in packets strapped to their waists beneath their underclothing. The most important thing for the Chicago Outfit was that the feds had no chance in determining if the smugglers had any syndicate connections and thanks to their loyalty, the receiving destination in Chicago was never learned. This shows that during this period the New York or Florida points were not the only solution to the smuggling problem but instead this time, they used almost every city which they felt was secure enough as a receiving point.
So no matter who transported the stuff, after the arrival, the most important thing was for the dope to be easily spread around the North, West and South suburbs with the help of Infelice, Coduto and Fiorito, who in turn divided the crew in two groups. The first dope ring was controlled by Infelice and included runners such as Mario and Chester Garelli, Frank Sarris, Ernest Brown, James McGarry and Robert Burks, and they mainly operated around the western suburbs and also around Chinatown and the South Side. The second dope ring was under Fiorito and Coduto and was formed by his wife Lucille Coduto and his nephew Joseph Coduto Jr., Louis Guido, Chris Cardi, Albert Sarno, Mike and Frank Carioscia and Frank Micelli. Since DePietto was still behind bars, his “replacement” slowly became Infelice, who in turn inherited all of the New York connections, including the Gambinos. So just like the old days, the boys were back in business and again started making millions of dollars out of the new European deal. In addition, this dope peddling group was another proof for the Outfit’s connection in this whole thing, by just looking at some of the members’ profiles. For example, Chris Cardi was an ex-policeman and together with his constant companion Al Sarno worked as musclemen and loan sharks for one recently deceased Outfit member known as Joe Gagliano who belonged to the Elmwood Park faction, which was believed to be still under the “watchful eye” of Tony Accardo.
So when ridiculous amounts of cash began to arrive in Giancana’s pockets, the Mob boss quickly began to feel just like in the good old days. Besides his huge residence in Cuernevaca, Mexico, he also bought two more lavish apartments in Mexico City and also lased few more on a long time periods at the most famous hotels in that same area, such as the Acapulco Towers. He even reportedly bought another huge and expensive residence in one quite exclusive area known as Colonia Las Delicas, which was located near Cuernevaca. He also bought or leased residences all around Southwest Europe, including Nice, Cote D’Azur, France and also in Majorca on the island of Palma, and on top of that, he constantly travelled all around the world together with one of his long time criminal associates Louis Lederer. Even though he reportedly said that he would never return to the U.S., according to some reports, during this period Giancana was seen a couple of times in Chicago, Los Angeles, Huston, Arizona and New York City. This indicates that Giancana still held a lot of influence, obviously because of his huge wealth, which I personally believe it was not accumulated only from his international gambling operations but instead it was the dope business which formed a huge part of that same wealth. In other words, Giancana lived like a true drug lord and also lived the life of his dreams, and the proof for his power were the constant visits from all kinds of people, including relatives, lawyers, businessmen, actors and mobsters, who often came for an advice or some business propositions. Besides his old pals from his own criminal organization, Giancana was also very often visited by members from other American crime families, such as Detriot, Philadelphia and New York. According to one Mob informant, in 1971, Giancana allegedly arranged for a meeting between him, also the infamous Jewish mobster from the New York area, Meyer Lansky, and Tony Caponigro, high level member of the Philly crime family and also close associate of the Genovese group. Regarding the topics of this alleged meeting, the informant stated that something “big” was going on but did not furnish any particular information on what was the subject. So I can only guess on what was the deal on that meeting, but I can only add that all three individuals, during different time periods, were suspects of being highly involved in the narcotics trade.
Sam Giancana with the love of his life Phyllis McGuire
But like any other highly lucrative dope peddling “game”, somewhere down the line, somebody always manages to screw things up for everybody around, obviously because of greed. Even though during this period Carl Fiorito was looked upon as a “veteran” gangster, who “made his bones” and once shared the same space with the Outfit’s top echelon, still according to some reports, allegedly he was considered by some of his associates such as Coduto, as very illiterate and “slow” individual, which became the main reason for many back-stabbings. For example, now I’m going to show you one recorded conversation between Fiorito and Cudo, where the latter tries to convince his “boss” that there was allegedly too much “heat” and things were going pretty slow…
CODUTO: Hello.
FIORITO: What do you say, Diavolo?
CODUTO: What's happening?
CARL FIORITO: Not much.
CODUTO: Yah.
FIORITO: Did you do any good, like the last time?
CODUTO: No, i, Madonna-- I saw you Saturday.
FIORITO: Yah, I know.
CODUTO: You know, over there.
FIORITO: Yah.
CODUTO: And, uh, well that guy did he tell you.
FIORITO: No, he told me there's a lot of trouble.
CODUTO: Well, ah, their just looking for me, ah, I had to go into court a couple of weeks ago.
FIORITO: Yah you?
CODUTO: Yah.
FIORITO: For what?
CODUTO: Ah. They nailed me-- they wanted to nail me for that fine again. And I had to hire a lawyer to go in, and . . . we got it all straightened out. We got the time straightened out, everything.
FIORITO: Hmm, huh.
CODUTO: They wanted to add four hundred and, ah seventeen more days. They wanted to hire, ah, they wanted to nail me for the fine.
FIORITO: I didn't know that. I know that's the first time I heard that?
CODUTO: Yah.
FIORITO: How about that other thing. The one, you know that, the last time I saw you.
CODUTO: Nothing, I, I, doing, I know nothing. Carl, they're like bees. (According to the government, this may refer to narcotics agents.)
FIORITO: Huh?
CODUTO: They're like a bunch of bees.
FIORITO: Yah?
CODUTO: Yah.
FIORITO: You can avoid that.
CODUTO: Might as well just cool it and leave it. You know. About that, but that other guy ain't got nothing anyway. Nobody's got nothing.
FIORITO: No just, huh?
CODUTO: No, if, ah, anything happens I'll get in touch with ya.
FIORITO: Alright.
CODUTO: It should be about a week or ten days. I don't know.
FIORITO: Okay, take it easy.
CODUTO: Okay.
FIORITO: Alright, I'll see you then, Hey.'
As I previously stated that Coduto has told Fiorito that because of the constant federal raids, the operation was on the downfall and that he was nabbed for something and he might “cool out” for a bit. But in reality, Coduto was stealing Fiorito’s customers behind his back by convincing them that his product was the best. Here’s one conversation between Coduto and one of Fiorito’s runners known as Paul Moore…
CODUTO: How do you like my stuff? I said, '
MOORE: It's good. No doubt about it. It is the best we've ever bought.
CODUTO: You are making more off of mine than Fiorito's aren't you?
MOORE: I never said I was dealing with him.
CODUTO: Yeah, Carl on the North Side.
MOORE: Well, it is true that we are making more off of your stuff than anybody else's.
CODUTO: Well, it is not all Fiorito's fault. He cuts the stuff with sugar and screws it up a lot of times, but we actually got the same source, the same guy.
MOORE: And sometimes if our guy doesn't have stuff I will duke (supply) him myself.
CODUTO: Sometimes the source will screw Fiorito because he is not too sharp. He doesn't know what he is getting. But when we go into buy our stuff we go in with $150,000 to $200,000 at a crack. So, our guy wouldn't screw us. Besides, we would go over and pick him up and bring him over here and chop his head off if he did that to us. He can't do that to us.
So by judging this previous conversation, besides taking over his operations, Coduto also badmouthed Fiorito in front of his underling. But the thing was that Moore was loyal to Fiorito and later during another conversation he told Coduto…
MOORE: It is not a very good idea with all this heat for you to be duking Carl on the North Side.
CODUTO: Who? Me?
MOORE: Yeah. Last week you said you were duking him.
CODUTO: Only small stuff.
But there was one huge problem, and that was neither Fiorito nor Coduto could’ve possibly predicted the upcoming trouble. The main problem was Coduto’s greed, meaning he gave too much information to one simple associate who in turn was about to become a government informant. So one thing led to another and by the beginning of 1971, Moore got pinched by the feds and he started “singing” big time, and because of Coduto’s “big mouth”, the informant had more than few “aces up in his sleeve” for the government. On February 22 and 23, 1971, the top ring leaders such as Fred Coduto, Frank Carioscia and Louis Guido were arrested by federal agents and charged with violations of the federal narcotics laws. One week later, Fiorito was also arrested by the feds, mostly because of the constant mentioning of his name during the conversations between Coduto and the informant and also his own recorded conversations.
They were all indicted by a federal grand jury and held in custody until they were able, in mid-March, to post bond. Later that month, separate warrant applications were made to the Parole Board requesting the arrest of the defendants on the ground that they had violated the terms of their mandatory releases in that they had violated the federal narcotics laws and associated with persons having criminal records. In plane words, some of the guys made the same old mistake by dealing heroin while being free on bond, which again shows that these fellas were straight dope dealers. I mean all of them worked under the auspices of the Outfit as burglars, loan sharks, gamblers, or even murderers but by the end of the day, they were “addicted” to selling dope. I’ll say it again that Accardo might’ve been right in staying out of the dope business because this was another example where you can see that most of these dope peddlers were not thinking straight. For example, Fred Coduto’s brother was previously killed over the dope business and now he was about to implicate even his nephew or in other words, his late brother’s kid Joseph Jr. My personal opinion is that the most dangerous thing that they did was jeopardizing their own lives, since they were highly connected to members of the Chicago’s main crime syndicate which was still the Outfit. In the end, since he was considered the leader of the operation, Fiorito received 12 years in prison, and as for Coduto and the rest of the gang, they all received 10 years sentences. On April 20, 21, and 23, 1971, the court held mandatory release revocation hearings in Chicago for the petitioners Coduto, Guido, and Carioscia, respectively, but on May 3, 1971, the board of parole revoked the mandatory releases of all three petitioners.
Thanks to Paul Moore, the government again managed to create a so-called “domino effect” by slowly dismantling the whole dope peddling ring. In other words, Moore gave up every possible individual which he had contact with regarding the dope racket and the feds simply used their undercover agents. The problem was that Moore knew too much about the operation of the dope ring, including their main courier Tony Legato, who in turn quickly became the government’s next main target. On August 11, 1971 the FBI in Miami, Florida received a tip from their cohorts at the Chicago offices that two fellas with an orange shopping bag would attempt to board an airplane leaving for Chicago that afternoon at 4:00 p. m. from either the Miami or Fort Lauderdale airport. The information was quickly relayed to officials of Delta Airlines who in turn alerted all ticket agents and other personnel. At approximately 3:30 p. m., Legato together with his associate Abe Migdall appeared at the Delta Airlines ticket counter in the Fort Lauderdale airport where they validated return tickets to Chicago under different names. The problem for the feds was that neither of the suspects had an orange shopping bag and so the whole operation went on hold. After few minutes, the two suspects went to the man’s room and came out walking past the agents, while carrying a bright orange shopping bag in which a gift wrapped package was visible and that’s when they got arrested and were taken into custody. After entering not guilty pleas, the two defendants were tried by a jury and found guilty as charged and so both received concurrent 10 year sentences under each count and, in addition, were fined $10,000.
In fact, during this period Paul Moore might’ve been one of the most important informers regarding the dope racket in the Chicago area. In other words, he single handedly brought down the old dope peddling ring by slowly bringing the feds up the ladder. As I previously said that even though some of these dope peddlers such as Chris Cardi and Ernest Infelice were not considered as legit members of the Chicago Outfit but still, they were in everyday contact with “made” members of Cosa Nostra. My point is that they were the last line of defence for the actual members of the organization, who in turn with the help of their code of silence, they managed to successfully distance themselves from the product and whole operation. For example, in September, 1971, Cardi and one of his associates Virgil Cimmino were arrested for selling a pound of heroin in three transactions to an undercover agent but previously the agents had a quite rough time in catching these two felons. The problem was that Cimmino had been slow to deal with, meaning the undercover agents were "burned" a couple of times by selling them flour or sugar rather than heroin. So the undercover agents were forced to complain directly to Cardi, who in turn assured them that they would get their stuff and so the heroin was delivered shortly thereafter. The next month both dope peddlers, meaning Cardi and Cimmino, together with their close associate Albert Sarno, were taken to trial and sentenced to 10 years in prison, each.
Albert Sarno and Chris Cardi
As you can see, it did not matter on who took over the dope business on the Outfit’s behalf, by the end of the day everyone got arrested. Even though they were considered an international criminal organization, still the Outfit’s special system for dealing narcotics began to destabilize, which was the main reason for the many arrests. The “middle men” began to suspect their runners for being informants, or the other way around, and to tell you the truth I don’t blame them at all. Also, many of their dope connections on the east coast or even around Europe were being hunted down by the police and so for the gangsters to purchase a kilo of heroin, was getting tougher and tougher. So since the whole situation became too “hot”, many of the high level Outfit associates began to acquire the product by themselves or some even began to sell it directly on the streets. In fact, it was a desperate move to maintain the old dope peddling ring, which by now it still lasted for more than two decades. For example, in 1972, Ernest Infelice and the Garelli brothers at the same time went to New York and Florida to “cop”, or in other words, to purchase narcotics but failed on a couple of occasions. There are many reports during this period where various undercover agents were continuously being swindled by the dope peddlers by constantly receiving flour, sugar, or even brick and ground glass, which clearly indicates that the gangsters were having trouble in receiving their dope shipments. Even if they really received a package of heroin, it was probably mixed and the quality of the product was on its lowest level.
For example, one of Infelice’s runners Robert Burks was previously arrested by the feds for selling dope to an undercover agent and in no time, he began informing on his own crew. In January, 1972, Burks arranged a deal with the Garelli brothers to purchase a half a pound of heroin, which was financed by the feds, but all he got was bag filled with ground glass. So Burks immediately complained to Infelice that the Garellis had given him glass but Infelice played dumb by saying that he couldn't understand it and that he knew the brothers wouldn't give "bad stuff." But by April, Infelice somehow managed to receive heroin from some of his sources and so he unknowingly made a huge mistake by informing Burks about the shipment. The next transaction, which occurred the next month, was also a disaster since Burks received two packages of heroin alright but the problem was that the dope was mixed almost down to nothing. So Burks again complained to Infelice, who in turn again tried to play dumb by saying “You know that we wouldn't do you like that, that we wouldn't give you no bad stuff”. So the feds clearly had a problem in catching these fellas while dealing the good stuff, so they’ve decided to “pull the plug” of the operation, by arresting all suspects, including Infelice, the Garelli brothers, and few of their main runners such as Frank Sarris, Ernest Brown and James McGarry. The government already had enough evidences, meaning they had Burks as their “star witness” and on top of that they had recorded conversations since Burks also wore a wire during the meetings. During the trial, the defence had a good argument mainly because Burks’ testimony was uncorroborated and on certain occasions when he was equipped with a "Kel-set" the machine malfunctioned, and so the court found the tapes to be very poor in quality, with long periods of hissing and silence. But in the end, the Judge took the justice in his own hands and said “I believe him”, regarding Burks testimony and was persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendants. In other words, the trial judge was determined that Burks' testimony was credible in spite of his difficulties in recollection upon cross-examination and so every defendant was sentenced to jail including Infelice who in turn received 10 years imprisonment, and also the rest of the crew who’s sentences ranged between 5 and 10 years.
The undercover tactics of the feds even transferred right inside the federal prisons, where many dope peddlers served their sentences but in a true “Mafia-style”, they still somehow oversaw their main racket. For example, imprisoned dope ring leader and murderer Louis Gudio still oversaw his dope business with the help of his new wife Mary Guido, since his previous one testified for the government against him and his crew. So this time, Louis Guido managed to “hit the jackpot” by picking the “right” woman in his life, meaning the one who was about to resume his heroin business, while he wasted his own life in prison. Another individual that helped in continuing Guido’s operation was his brother-in-law John Skeva, who in turn was connected to another street dealer and old associate of the Guido gang, known as Joe Russo. This guy also came from a long line of blood-related dope peddlers, with his own network for distribution of the product. Russo’s connections were one state employee was identified as Frank G. Duran, who in turn was a veteran inspector of licenses issued to physicians and other professionals for the Illinois Department of Registration and Education, George Halpin, deputy regional director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and also Charles Petracek, who worked in a Cicero club as a bartender and was the crew’s main “runner”. As you can see, the crew was quite organized and according to some reports, they managed to distribute between 30 and 40 kilos of heroin a month. Even though they operated quite carefully and “under the radar”, still the crew’s main problem was at the start of this “new venture’, which was Louis Guido. Somewhere down the road, the feds realized that the “head” of this whole operation was in fact the imprisoned Guido. So they quickly devised a plan by infiltrating one of their own undercover agents as a prison inmate, so he can get closer to their target. While in prison, Louis Guido unknowingly approached the DEA agent and proposed the purchase of white heroin from his wife Mary and his brother-in-law John Skeva. In a matter of days, the whole crew was arrested and later convicted for conspiracy, transportation and selling of narcotics.
So usually when there are too many problems or complications within one highly organized criminal organization, the situation might get quite dangerous since their main goal, which is money, is about to be stopped. That same year, or 1972, was quite interesting for the Chicago Outfit, in every possible meaning, since a lot of situations occurred, which almost completely destabilized the whole Italian dope peddling ring. The two main problems were the near end of the Vietnamese War, which clearly disrupted the Far East drug route, and also that same year, under diplomatic pressure from the United States, Turkey completely banned opium production and so the infamous “French Connection” finally collapsed. The next thing which occurred was the death of the so-called “peacemaker” and top boss of the syndicate Paul Ricca, who in turn was quickly followed by the main overseer of the dope racket on the south suburbs Frank LaPorte. On top of that almost every high level member of the Melrose Park or Taylor Street areas was in jail or dead. For example, Phil Alderisio was dead, Sam Battaglia was literally rotting in jail, and as for Fiore Buccieri, he was gravely ill from cancer. So it was obvious on who was going to inherit the “throne” which was Tony Accardo and his remaining cohorts from the First Ward faction, such as Gus Alex and Pat Marcy, who in turn quickly reinstalled his own associates in the empty positions such as Joseph Aiuppa, Al Pilotto and Jack Cerone. In other words, Accardo was quickly taking control over the whole organization and there was no space for any “old problems” such as Richard Cain and other similar faces.
Back in 1971, Cain was released from prison and story goes that he was not welcomed back with opened arms by some of his peers. Story goes that Cain was placed under Marcy and Alex, the two crime bosses who previously had some use from him before he screwed up his job at the Sheriff’s Office. So Cain decided to join his old boss Sam Giancana down to Mexico in 1972, who in turn quickly gave his old associate an overseas job as his main representative in Madrid, Spain, and also gave him the financials to open up a front, something like a casino, for their dope peddling and prostitution rackets. But the problem was that both Giancana and Cain did not realize that things were changed back home, meaning from this point on more and more members from the Chicago syndicate were forbidden to deal with narcotics. In other words, Giancana was slowly getting blocked from selling his product with the help of his organization. Proof for that were the recent murders of Outfit-related dope peddlers such as Robert Pronger, a known chop shop operator, and also Guido Fidanzi, another Outfit enforcer, loan shark and alleged dope peddler, who planned to get involved in the narcotics business, on the orders of Richard Cain, with the help of the car theft out-of-state transportation business. If the story is true, than this was a pure “slap in the face” to Giancana and Cain, sincerely from their cohorts back home. So the next year became quite “colourful” for the Outfit’s “hit list”, many members who were allegedly involved in narcotics or were doing any kind of problems for that matter, were getting “clipped” one by one.
