The Chicago Outfit: Still Chugging Along in 2016

The Chicago Outfit is most famous for Al Capone, who was only boss for about seven years. The FBI used to called it the Capone Mob.  They thought it died when he went to prison and when they found out it was still active, they called the unit tasked with looking into the Chicago Outfit “the reactivation of the Capone Mob.”

The fact is the Outfit ran smoothly under the watchful eye of Tony Accardo aka Joe Batters for decades without the press of Capone.

Today the Outfit continues to move along just below the surface of respectable business.  The days of controling the city are over, but they still have power and influence.  People hear about some cartel or some gangbangers and they talk about the mafia losing control.  The mafia was never in the same low level businesses as the fly-by-night crime groups.  The mafia is about making money.  Unions, Trucking, Carting, Gambling and Shylock are what they specialize in handling.

Ideal Motors Dealership was what R.J. Serpico and his father called the used car business they opened in Melrose Park, Illinois. The business was started with a 300k loan from Michael "Mickey" Davis.  Mickey Davis was a longtime associate of Outfit Bosses Peter and John DiFronzo so the Serpico’s knew this was no ordinary business loan. They agreed to payback the principle in 3 years and pay 300 dollars a car they sold as interest for the loan.

The problem with the whole car lot was the senior Serpico was a bad gambler.  He owed Outfit Bookies thousands of dollars and he dipped into the car lot money to finance his losing streak.

Micky finally had enough, so he went to speak to R.J. Serpico and he showed him how much his father owed the bookies.  He then asked him to pay the loan back because it was not the deal he lent them the money for when the asked.  

R.J. Serpico fired his father and made Mickey his partner after the meeting.  

R.J. Serpico came up with 60k in cash and a car that he gave Mickey but that was not enough.

One day R.J. Serpico could not take it and he just walked away from the car lot, giving it to Mickey.  Mickey still wanted his cash because that was the deal.

Mickey reached out for some leg breakers and another associate recommended Paul Carparelli who wanted to move up in the Outfit ranks.

The only problem in this whole deal was George Brown, a 300lbs MMA fighter and Union bodyguard who had flipped and was wearing a wire against Paul Carparelli.

The FBI knew when Carparelli met with Mickey.  They had him on tape planning to have George Brown stage a fender bender with R.J. Serpico so he could break his legs.

The FBI stopped the whole thing before they could finish the job.

Paul Carparelli would get 3 ½ years.  Mickey would get 4 ½ years and George Brown the informant that started the investigation got just under 2 years last week.

These were all associates but Mickey Davis was a heavily connected guy.  The Outfit is still alive.

The Farmer: Enrico Ponzo

Marsing, Idaho: a small ranching community located in the Snake River valley that lists a population of 1,316.  

They can update that population to 1,315 because Jeffery John Shaw will now be a guest of a Federal prison for the next 30 years.  

The man, locally known as Jay, lived a peaceful, uneventful life for a decade in Marsing.  He was often seen wearing overalls and a straw hat.  Jay knew nothing about cattle or ranching, but he was a hard worker, so he fit in with the locals.

They may have wondered about his Boston accent, but they say he did his work and the past is the past.

Cara Lyn Pace could tell a different story.  Cara was Jay’s girlfriend for many years and she knew a different side to Jay.

Jay was not Jay but Enrico Ponzo, a Boston area gangster who was part of the renegade faction that tried to murder Francis Salemme, aka “Cadillac Frank,” the man who took over as boss of the Patriarca crime family in New England.

The long time boss Raymond Patriarca died and the family started to fall apart.  The New York Families voted for his son Junior to take over as boss.  

Junior had a sad run as a boss because he did not have the respect his father had on the street.  

He did have the distinction of letting the FBI record an initiation ceremony because his driver was an FBI informant.

So the family had a civil war and some hard times.

Ponzo was in the crew headed by renegade Capo Robert Carrozza aka Bobby Russo and he took part in numerous shootings.  He also helped distribute drugs for the crew.

Then he disappeared three years before the Feds dropped the hammer on the family.  He fled and lived on the lam for almost twenty years.  He was wanted by the US Marshalls.

Ponzo lived off a dirt road quietly all those years, part of them with his girlfriend Cara.  They had two kids. After she left him, he sued for custody.  He made threats and tried to scare her into giving him custody.

The US Marshals watched him for a week in February 2011 and then when he was driving down a dirt road, they arrested him.  

They found 100k in cash, 65k in gold coins, 30 guns and 65,000 rounds of ammunition in his home when they searched it.

If he hadn’t threatened Cara or sued for custody, he would still be living his quiet farm life. Last week he just got another four years added to his sentence for the guns.

Great Friends in the Mafia

Gennaro Bruno aka Gerry was a Gambino associate who pled guilty this week to the murder of his one-time friend. That is how they murder you when you are in the life.  The movies all show these guns walking in places and blasting away, but in reality it is a friend that shoots you.

Gerry had started out in a farm team gang that was affiliated with the Gambino family. They were called the Liberty Posse or Young Guns, and they were violent.  Gerry soon graduated to the big time by becoming part of Joseph (JoJo) Corozzo’s crew when he was a capo.

Nicholas "Little Nick" Corozzo, JoJo’s brother, was the one time boss of the Gambino family until he was locked up.  The family was run by a panel until recently, when it was taken over by Sicilian members.

The Corozzo crew was big into gambling and shylock.  They were not above taking cash from drug dealers.  

Gerry and his crew distributed thousands of pounds of marijuana from Canada. Martin Bosshart wanted to exclude a Gambino from the business.  The Gambino family set word that he was not to do it.  Martin Bosshart cut him out so the order was handed down.  Gerry and Todd LaBarca lured him to a deserted part of Queens where they shot him in the head while he was taking a piss.

Those were friends of Martin Bosshart, could you imagine what they would do if they were enemies?

Gerry started working for a carting company and he was soon picked up for extortion.  

They were shaking down companies to haul away their waste.

Gerry had moved to Las Vegas and gotten married, but the FBI picked him up on October 28, 2014.  

He will now have to serve 21 years for the murder of Martin Bosshart.

What kind of life glorifies killing your friends for a few dollars.  A human life is worth so much more.  

The life has a way of shifting the way you think.  Good is what you believe is good and bad is what you are told is bad.  

Most people believe they are doing good at whatever they do, but their logic is twisted.

There were people I got to know in the life who I liked, and who I felt were “good.”  Los Angeles Capo Jimmy Caci was a good guy and the same with Teddy Persico.  My idea of “good” was twisted too.

Today I feel sorry for both of them.  They spent most of their lives in prison, but never learned a new way of life.

Maybe Gerry will have learned a new way by the time he gets out.  

John “Specs” Baudanza is out and I wonder if he learned?  Did Eddie Garofalo learn a thing?

Time will tell!

The Biggest Mafia Heist

The biggest mafia heist in history was not the legendary Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport in New York.

The heist took place in Boston in the early hours of March 18, 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It took just 88 minutes for two crooks posing as Boston Policemen to steal 500 million dollars in artwork.

To this day not one of the stolen paintings has been recovered and nobody has done any time for the crime.  The statute of limitations has passed, but the artwork is still stolen property.

The two thieves went to the museum at 1:20 am, and a guard, who did not follow protocol, buzzed in the two “policemen.”  Once inside, they handcuffed two guards in the basement and started cutting paintings out of their frames.

The did got away with a lot of well known works of art including Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” but they left behind a Michelangelo, which was by far the most valuable painting in the museum.

That was the last time anyone knew for sure where those paintings were located.

Artwork, unlike cash, gold, diamonds and even drugs is very hard to move in the underworld. After all, it must go to a private collector that will never show it to anyone else.  Who is going to pay millions for something they cannot display?

Cornelius Gurlitt was the son of a well respected art historion who helped the Nazis steal works of art during world war two.

The secret that Cornelius Gurlitt kept until 2012 was a massive horde of stolen artwork.  The German authorities raided his apartment on a tax evasion charge and found 121 framed paintings and over 1200 that were not framed.  They were works of the great masters.

So I guess somebody out there could have all the painting hidden away in some home or apartment.

Despite a $5 million reward and many informants in the Boston underworld, there have been no substantial leads.

A mob associate named Bobby Donati is believed to be the mastermind behind the heist. Bobby was close to and drove around Vincent “Vinnie the Animal” Ferrara a powerful capo in the Patriarca family that ran the New England underworld.  

Bobby D is thought to have gotten a tip from someone who owed the mob cash about the lax security at the museum.  The only problem is Bobby D did not know a thing about artwork.  So he enlisted the help of master art thief Myles Connor.  The two men cased the museum, but Myles was taken down for another heist and given many years in prison.

Vinnie Ferrara went away and so did Bobby D’s protection.  He was found in September 1991 hogtied and beaten to a pulp, dead in his trunk.  A man the FBI thought was one of the fake policemen died of cancer a year later.

Another Boston mob guy is thought to be the guy who got the okay for the heist, but so far he has kept his mouth shut.