Inside The Outfit: Frank Calabrese Jr part 1

The mafia in Chicago was once known as the Capone Organization by Law Enforcement because they had no idea how the mafia worked. Known as the Outfit by those on the street it was a highly successful Criminal Empire. The man who led the Outfit into the new age was Anthony Arcardo also known as Joe Batters. He ruled with an iron fist, yet he never spent one night in jail.  He may also have been responsible for the decline of the Outfit. So what was it like in an Outfit Crew? Read on...

Family Life in the Chicago Outfit.

Recently Frank Calabrese Jr and I were talking about the life and he said one thing that rang true for me also.  He said at one point in his life he bought into the life fully, he was a true believer. That is how I felt and also so many of my friends who have since left the life.

Frank Jr.’s story starts when he was in 3rd grade and his family moved to Elmwood Park into what was known as the Compound. It was a three story home and the family lived on the top two stories.  The basement was a family room that they referred to as the Garden Department because it was just below ground level.  A couple of years later they would add a huge addition to the house with more rooms and a professional gym and sauna.

Frank's father was Frank Calabrese Sr AKA “Frankie The Breeze” a Capo in the Chicago Outfit.  He had worked his way up from associate to made guy under Angelo J. "The Hook" LaPietra the boss of the Outfit’s Chinatown crew.  Frankie would later lead this crew and he knew how to make cash.

Frank Jr and his brothers were raised to be tight lipped about his family.  One day he came home from school and he asked his father what he should say that he did for a living.  Frank Sr told him to say he was an Operating Engineer.  What his father really did was make Juice Loans.  These were loans that required no credit checks and no collateral except yourself.  He was a Shylocks’ Shylock and he would make everything from a knockdown loan (Principle and Interest) to an interest only loan at 2.5 percent a week.  I personally think people are better off with a juice loan than a payday loan or a title loan because these local lenders would work with you if you fell behind.

Frank Sr also ran a huge sportsbook and during the Arcardo years Chicago Bookmakers were organized into one huge book.  This was highly effective because they had a lock on the lines and the players.  Frank Sr schooled Frank Jr on how to basically rate a player’s credit.  They would look at the player, what they did for work and then decide how much they could play a week.  The main reason was so nobody got in over their head because it could turn out real bad if a wife got scared and ran to the FBI.  If a player did not pay there were no threats, they would just cut him off and there was no place he could bet.  He had his name out there and no Outfit book would deal with him. Frank Sr would eventually drop the bookmaking and just collect a fee of 1000 dollars a week from every bookmaker.  This was a lot less work and he didn't have to deal with politics or numbers of the liars and cheats that ran the books.  It was a flat fee and it got rid of the drama and bullshit.

The Outfit was not the type of Family that encouraged the sons of made guys to join.  Most of the guys in the Outfit made sure their sons went on to bigger and better things.  This was not what Frank Sr had in mind for Frank Jr. Frank Sr started to see some of himself in Frank Jr so he started off having him do little things and showing him what the life was about.  He learned how to make the loans and how the interest rate worked.  He would do the books for the juice loans and Sports Books.

Then Frank Sr got his hooks into a porn guy who owned 8 adult bookstores with booths to watch a loop.  These were huge money makers, bringing in all quarters.  The skim on these booths are huge. Frank Jr would go and collect the quarters from the machines.  This would average about 4,000 a week and he would set aside 1800.00 for the Outfit. Frank Sr did not want to put a dime back into the business and he was so hard on the guy who owned them that the guy fled in terror.  He probably could have had a bunch of stores if he just was a little nice, but nice was not in Frank Sr’s makeup.  Frank Jr would order more loops for the booths and his father would get pissed that he wasted any money “investing”. He would also get pissed when the stores were down and not hitting the numbers he expected.

This is when Frank Jr stepped up and threw himself into the life full force.

Frank Sr’s crew was one of the two crews that did all the hits for the Chicago family.  They had even killed the Spilatro brothers in a scene made famous in the movie Casino.  Another series of killings they took part in, was killing some of the burglers that hit Anthony Arcardo’s house.  These burglars were tortured and their faces were blowtorched.  They had been warned to give everything back and refused to listen, and that was their punishment.  This was the crew that Frank Jr was about to join.  Now that you know a bit of the background, next week stay tuned for more on Frank Jr’s experience growing up gangster.

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The Mafia and Porn

The Mafia and Porn

The majority of porn made in the US comes from the San Fernando Valley just over the hill from Los Angeles. Porn is another business (like gambling) that is convenient for the Mafia to exploit.

The Mafia often gets into businesses that exploit human weakness or Vices.  

Early porn films were known as Smokers, Loops or Stag Films.  They were short sex scenes shot on 8mm or 16mm film usually with no sound.  They started the so called "Money Shot" or "Pop Shot" then so people could see that there was real intercourse going on.  Then some small cheap theatres started to show only adult films. They were able to stay open by arguing they had a first amendment right to show the films.  This is the same argument they use for stripclubs.

The Mafia gained control of these theatres. They also controlled the distribution of these films.  The laws in the United States at the time for obscene material were based on community standards.  That is all good in Los Angeles or New York but when you get into the Bible Belt it is not so good.  States like Utah, if you have pornography you will go to jail.  The Government used to get the Porno guys if they used the US mail to send it across state lines. Reagan had the Meese Commission and it did a lot to expose the role of the Mafia in Pornography.  A lot of the Meese Commission was work for the Christian groups.  After a long time in Porn and having a first hand look at what it does to people, I can say that it is a bad business.  While I would never tell anyone what to do in their own homes, it is not for me.  There are no happy endings, nothing good comes from the business.

Porn was the perfect business for the Mafia to get into.  It was much like Gambling.  Gambling had always been a grey area business.  It has been around since the beginning of time just like porn.  It was all done mostly on a small scale until Prohibition time.  Then large gambling establishments started popping up, followed by the gambling scene in Las Vegas.  It was only later, by the 90’s that the corporations took over Vegas when the Mafia lost its stranglehold on the gambling scene.

Joseph, Anthony, and Louis Peraino all became millionaires as a result of their movie "Deep Throat" which was the first porno to get national attention.  They were with the Colombo Family and they had offices in the San Fernando Valley.  Years later I would see Big Tony often at his film and video office Arrow, or with Mike Esposito and Tommy Sinapoli.

They used profits from that film to build a vast financial empire in the 1970s that included ownership of garment companies in New York and Miami, investment companies, a sixty-five-foot yacht in the Bahamas, "adults only" pornographic theaters in Los Angeles, and record and music publishing companies on both the east and west coasts. From 1973 to 1976, their corporate empire included Bryanston Distributors, Inc., a motion picture company that earned twenty million dollars in its first year. The Perainos never really enjoyed the money because the money caused the whole family to go crazy and fight with each other.  I’m not sure what happened to Louis, but Joseph and Anthony hated each other.

On January 4, 1982, gunmen (one of who was said to be Tommy "Shots" Geoli) chased down Anthony's brother Joseph and nephew Joseph Jr. in a residential area of Gravesend Brooklyn.  Joseph "The Whale"  was paralyzed and Joseph Jr. was killed. The shooter also accidentally shot and killed a Nun who did a lot of charity work. I guess people forget about that death.  Jimmy Caci was close to both of the Peraino brothers (even though they hated each other) and we used to regularly hang out with Tony, and his son Louis "Butch.”  Jimmy also went to see The Whale in Florida a couple of times.

Deep Throat really opened up the gates for the big money in Porn.  The Mafia controlled the film labs that printed the loops and the 35 mil prints to be shown in theatres.  They would rent out their 35mm film and they would be paid by the showings. some of these films would be taken to multiple places to be shown a night.  Checkers would keep the owners of the theatres honest.  A checker would be on the theatre to ensure that the theatre would only show the movie as many times as they had paid to play it.

The Mafia had the muscle and the network to distribute the porn. They first came out to California in the 1960's and by the 70's they had the porno business locked down.  I suspect that Los Angeles was the perfect place because you had so many "Real" film productions going on in LA.  They had the people who knew production, lighting etc.  It is easy to find someone who needed cash and the equipment was also available. Another bonus was that so many women flock to LA to become movie stars and many of them were very beautiful.  In reality few of them ever make enough to make ends meet, so porn, stripping and hooking pay the bills.  Having an all-cash production model also allowed the mafia to avoid paying any taxes.

The LA Family was heavily involved in the business for a long time.  Mike Rizzi was close to Jack Molinas who was deep into the porn game.  Molina's supposedly had Mike Rizzi clip his business partner to collect 500k insurance money.  Mike Rizzi got 50k and was looking for more when Molina's was clipped.

The films were worth so much that if you duped a film or made a copy you could be killed.  It is funny because many of those Mafia or connected guys in the business owned or ran duplication labs and they all duped movies.

Pete Milano, a Capo at the time, was from Cleveland and the biggest pornographer in the world was also from Cleveland.  His name was Rubin Sturman and he ran General Video of America or GVA.  Rubin started as a Comic Book distributor and turned it into a porn empire.

1979 is when it all changed and what changed it was the Video Cassette.  Movie studios in Hollywood had not realized the potential of home video but the porn guys did right away.  They had the perfect product for home use. The cassettes had to be duplicated in real time so you would go into these cool warehouse with hundreds of industrial machines recording a film. It cost under 3 dollars to copy, package and ship a film that could bring 90 dollars retail.  In New York City they sold thousands a week alone  in Times Square.  

Jimmy Frattiano was business partners with Mickey Fine, who was close to Rubin Sturman.  Later Mickey would be sent to prison for his part in blowing up Adult Bookstores in Chicago.  Rubin Sturman was a very savvy business man.  He controlled the Arcades in most of the Adult Video stores in the country.  He would furnish the arcades at no charge to the establishment, but take 50% of the profits - and it was huge.

The Gambino's guy who held a stranglehold on porn was Robert "Debe" DiBernardo he was a huge money earner until the not so smart Boss of the Gambino family had him killed.   Why would you kill a man who made your family millions and who posed no threat?  John Gotti punched himself in the face with that one.

The Colombo guy in the porn biz was Andrew "Andre" D'Apice and that name is one that would come back in my life. I put away Andre D'Apice (junior, Andre senior’s son), along with Teddy Persico.

There were and still are Lucchese guys in the business.  They were close to the Taccettas in NJ and those in New York. They had duplication places in the valley. There were some Kansas City guys with them but now who knows.  

The Bonanno's had their guys, Mickey Zaffarano and Tommy Sinapoli in Los Angeles.  Mickey would die of a heart attack in New york. Tommy would go on to own Visual Images with Mike Esposito.

The last Gambino guy in the business was Big Chris Richichi a Capo in the family who controlled porn all the way to Rhode Island.

The business changed and there was no need for these regional distributors. The price of the equipment went way down. There was no more need for Labs to process the film.  Then the internet put the nail in the coffin for the Mafia.

The pornography trade is attractive to organized crime because "it's a fast way of making a buck". It was risk and reward, the risk was low and the reward great.  Today there is no way to control porn anyone with a computer can access it.