The Chicago Outfit Today

The Chicago Outfit once dominated Chicago crime, but today it has faded into the background.  If you are in the mafia, that is the way you would want it.  When murders in Chicago reach into the 740’s for the year 2016 there is little time to give the Outfit press time.

The Outfit is still operating in Chicago today.  It is a far cry from the days of Al Capone or the long steady reign of Tony Accardo.  

Last week the ATF pulled an undercover sting on one of the few members of the Outfit’s Grand Avenue crew. Charles “Chuckie” Russell who is also the brother in law of  Albert Vena who heads the crew.  Albert is a capo and the street boss of the Outfit as of now.  

The ATF got interested in Russell when he bragged to one of their informants that he was juiced up in the Outfit.  He was looking to buy some guns for a planned home invasion robbery.

Russell bragged to the wired up informant that he was head of the “Bishop Boys” a robbery/ burglary crew that is responsible for hundreds of heists.

This is where the Outfit has gone down, the quality of it’s workers. In Tony Accardo’s time a loud mouth home invader would not be around long.

In all the decades Accardo was around his only mistake was having the burglars who robbed his home tortured, murdered and left as an example.  It brought a tremendous amount of heat on the Outfit when they had gambling and other white collar crimes locked up.

Russell met with the informant and an undercover ATF agent to discuss what he was looking to buy at least eight guns an AK-47 and an UZI for the job.  He was planning a home invasion right before Christmas.  He had been watching an attorney who supposedly had a safe with 750,000 dollars in cash. He had an ex-girlfriend who was close to the attorney feeding him information.

The crew was ready and they had police scanners, masks, cars and changes of clothes. The only real obstacle would be the attorney.  They needed the attorney to open the safe and he hoped he would not drop dead from a heart attack.

People always question me about why these guys talk about past crimes.  They love to brag because crime is their world, their lives and if nobody knows about it what good is it?

Russell described to the agent how he loved to make the score, the rush from pulling it off and the counting of the cash afterwards. He recounted the time he once stole so much cash it took him all night to count it and that his hands were covered in dirt.  This is so true - most people forget about how nasty those rag paper bills get.  The old money counters would get gummed up fast from the dirt, so we would often weigh the cash instead.

He then showed the agent a picture on his phone of a bullet riddled car and a driver's license of a black man.  He told him that it was a nice piece of work and that he had shot the guy through his head. He then told them how they drove the car to a black neighborhood so it would be just another black crime.

Believe it or not this kind of bragging is common, they all want you to know just what tough guys they are in real life.

Chuckie Russell might be in some real big trouble because the Chicago PD confirmed that the man whose license he showed the agent was murdered.

The Casino Skim

This is a story about the Mafia in its heyday.  If you have watched the movie Casino then you got a lesson in how the casino skim went down.  This is about the real men behind the skim of the Stardust Casino.

In the 1970’s a clean cut man in his 30’s, Allen R. Glick, first bought the Hacienda Hotel and Casino for somewhere around 5 million dollars.  He did well with it and he showed promise as a casino operator.  

Glick controlled the ARGENT company that soon got a Teamster loan for 140 million dollars to purchase the Stardust, Fremont and the Marina Casino’s.

He then put Lefty Rosenthal in charge of the Stardust, but he was really the point man for the Chicago Outfit, Kansas City and the Milwaukee families. Lefty had one job and that was to increase the skim and keep it coming.

The Outfit was not happy with the skim coming out of Las vegas because they had been hit hard by the Feds and it had become harder to get cash from their own casinos.

When Bugsy had built the Flamingo a casino owner could just walk into the room where they brought all the cash before it hit the count room and grab stacks of cash.

They could go to a table and sign a marker, play and then cash out.  Later they would have the marker disappear.

In the 1970’s a casino owner was not allowed in the count room and all the cash had to be accounted for that came in or went out.  

They could no longer gamble at their own casinos.

They had to come up with a better method.  Where there is a will, there is a way.

They had to go low.  Instead of going for the bills, they went for the coins.

The slots were bringing in so much cash that they could not count it everyday.  So they purchased scales that could weigh them in bulk.  They then recalibrated the scales to under weigh the coins.

They had the coins from the other three casinos brought to the Stardust everyday. They then had a guy to set the scales so they registered 10% less when they were weighed.

They started to do this with the dollar tokens and silver dollars that the dollar slot machines used back then.

So now they had a steady stream of cash coming in.  How did they get it in a form that they could spend?  Coins might be legal tender, but nobody is going to walk around with hundreds of dollars in coins.

The key was the change girls that used to walk around the floor taking customers bills and swapping them out for rolls of coins.

The girls used to get the coins from the cashier's cage, but the Stardust installed coin cabinets along the walls that had coins and a dropbox for the bills.

They also set up a change booth that was not accountable to the gaming control board.  

They filled both places with the 10% skim coins and they got back bills!  

They were able to steal three hundred thousand dollars a week using this system.  It is believed that they had this going for 5 years, with fifteen million dollars a year going to the mob families.

These guys took down seventy five million that they know about.

Tales from the street

If you just ran across this blog today, I will share with you a short version of my story.  I was on the street many years with the LA Family in Los Angeles and the Colombos in Brooklyn.  I also wore a wire for the FBI for 8 years.

I no longer miss that life at all.  It is still and always will be a part of me, but it's the past.  I do wonder what will happen to some of those I once knew.

I heard this week about the passing of an old timer that I liked.  He was the last of a breed. He was a second generation wiseguy whose father was made famous in “Guys and Dolls.”

He was in the music business for decades.  He was very close to English gangsters and their firms.  He met with the Kray Brothers and when one came to America he was there.  I once sat in his place when he called Joey Pyle, an English gangster, and he put me on the phone.  I played Joey a tape of a guy here.  Well he made it to his August 31st 90th birthday and passed away on September 11th, 2015.  I know he missed going to the Thursday Spaghetti night at Pelham Club.  Goodbye, RIP.

I recently spoke to an FBI Agent who handled me when I was on the street.  It had been awhile and I’m sure he was glad to hear that I had moved past that life.

The FBI kept every promise they made to me.  They treated me very well. Looking back, it was a good decision.  They gave me a life and all I can say is thank you.

When you lived that life, it is hard to let go of old habits. Once you cooperate you are no longer part of that life.  You are faking it, a strange acting job.  Many guys cannot get passed it.  They live in the past.

I was surprised when I read a story about Joseph Barone Jr. who was an informant inside the Bonanno family for 18 years. He won a ruling in Federal Court that he could sue the FBI.

Joseph Barone Jr. was the son of Joseph Barone Sr., a Genovese family guy who was murdered on orders by Chin Gigante in 1992. Joseph Barone Jr. started informing for the FBI not long after his murder.  I know another guy who wore a wire after the Colombo family killed his father. They might as well, those people are not their friends.

After 18 years Joseph Barone Jr. says the FBI could no longer use him as an informant so they set him up on charges. He was rolled up in a plot to murder a businessman for insurance money. He was kept in solitary for 18 months while his case went to trial.  He was acquitted by the jury. I cannot see him winning this case but after all, stranger things have happened.  

In Chicago there was some updated Outfit news. Frank Calabrese Sr. supposedly had a stolen rare Stradivarius violin hidden in a vacation home in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.  I heard from some people that it was not actually a rare Stradivarius violin and that it was long gone.  Frank Sr. knew it, but a priest fell into his trap of greed. Eugene Klein, a former Roman Catholic priest visited Frank Sr. and accepted notes from him.  The government wanted the judge to give Klien 5 years for the whole scheme but the judge only gave him one day and 200 hours of community service.  He doubted the violin story. The police in Williams Bay said a burglar broke into the home and gained entrance to a secret room which was emptied.  Who knows what was there.

Greed will do you in every time.

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.

Fratto

There is one small part of Los Angeles where people still walk around, on Beverly Boulevard south of Wilshire. On any given day, you will see actors and models walking up and down the street, sitting outside a nice restaurant or at the newsstand.  If you walked around that area, you would also inevitably see a tan, white-haired man dressed in designer jeans and a t-shirt. That was Johnny Fratto.  He passed away this week from lung cancer.  

Johnny Fratto was the son of Luigi Tommaso Giuseppe Fratto, aka Louis Thomas Fratto, aka “Lew Farrell” or “Cock-eye.”  Louis was the boss of the Iowa family from the 1930’s until his death in 1967.  He handled everything, from trucking to beer distribution, for the Chicago Outfit.

Johnny was great at telling stories about life with his father.  Johnny and his brothers were crazy about the space program.  So their father and some of his men “borrowed” a space capsule for a few days and brought it home.  The kids played in it, and then they took it back to wherever it came.  

Johnny knew I liked boxing, so he told me a story about Rocky Marciano.

“Kenji you know why I don't like steak?” he asked me. “No, I have no idea,” was my response.  

“Well, Rocky used to come over to our house all the time for dinner.  He loved my mom's cooking.  I always sat next to him.  This one time, my mom cooked steak. So Rocky cuts it up into pieces and chews them up, then spits out the meat when the flavor is gone.  So he has this big pile of chewed up steak. I couldn't look at it, and now I don't like steak.”

I take it Rocky was cutting weight at the time.

Rocky would be killed in a plane crash in 1969 along with Johnny’s brother Frank.

Uncle Frank Fratto took over in Iowa, according to Johnny, after the plane crash that killed his brother.  Johnny had a great picture in his house of Frank with a pistol to Sammy Davis Jr.'s head.  Sammy is laughing in the picture and so is Frank.  He spent a lot of time with the celebrities of the day, like the Gabor sisters and the Rat Pack.  

Johnny still had family inside the Mafia.  Rudy Fratto, a top guy in the Chicago Outfit, was his cousin.  He was upset when Rudy was hit with legal problems in the last few years. Rudy was inducted into the Outfit in a ceremony which was overseen by John “Johnny No Nose” DiFronzo, who had been the boss at the time.  Rudy had a charmed life until a tax evasion charge, and then was picked up on a bid-rigging scheme.  During the time he was being watched by the FBI, they picked him up on wiretap saying, “I’m the boss of this area around here, no one else.”

Johnny would ask me for favors from time to time.  I had a feud with a Bonanno guy in Los Angeles.  Johnny was close to him.  I disliked the guy, so I would make fun of him and call him names.  Johnny asked me as a favor to him, to let it go.  I did.  He was a peacemaker.  I was speaking to him one day and he told me, “I have to go to the airport today to pick up Joey Merlino.”  For anyone who does not know Joey Merlino, he was the boss of the Philadelphia Family.  

The next thing I knew, Johnny was on TMZ with Joey Merlino at the airport!

I was on the show the Deadliest Warrior one time, and when I was in the office, I noticed they were doing an Al Capone show.  They had this kid who pretends he is a Capone, and I knew that Johnny Fratto was actually related.  I told the producers about Johnny, and we made the call.  He told me this:  “Capone?  Capone in my grandmother's house was like a Saint.  She wanted to buy a building, and Al Capone gave her the money.  After that, Capone could do no wrong in her eyes.”  After he spoke to the producer, he called me back later and asked me if he had to get on the freeway to get to their offices.

That was the Johnny Fratto I knew.  One night he called me and asked me to come over and take a ride with him. He was waiting for me downstairs in his car.  He dropped the top before we pulled out and we drove a few miles away to Book Soup where Gary Dell’Abote from the Howard Stern Show was doing a radio show and signing books.  I soon found myself with Baba Booey, Jillian and Mark McGrath.

When Johnny passed away this week, a piece of mob history died with him.  He was around so many of the legendary Outfit guys.  He had stories for days about Capone and the rest of them.  I wish for our sake, that he would have published his book.  

Rest in Peace Johnny Fratto.

The Priest, The Violin and the Mobster

Frank Calabrese Sr was such a good manipulator that he was able to convince a Roman Catholic priest to help him continue his criminal activity.  If you know Frank’s background then this will come as no surprise.

Frank spent his whole life manipulating others for his own gain.  Frank brought his brother Nicholas into his juice loan business. Nicholas had served in the Navy for two years during the Vietnam conflict, and he worked as an Ironworker after he returned home.  Nicholas had then worked as a court security officer for 11 years in Maywood, Illinois. Nicholas was not afraid to hold a real job and work hard.  In the mid 1970s he also joined his brother Frank in his loan business and worked a double life.  He had no idea it was a lifetime commitment.  Frank was not above using money and threats to keep his brother in the business.   Nicholas would end up taking part in over 14 murders for the Chicago Outfit during his time working with his brother.

Frank was not content to just use his brother in the family business.  Frank would break an unwritten rule in the Chicago Outfit and bring his sons into the family business.  Frank would control every aspect of his son Frank Jr’s life as he grew up. He would alternate between using physical threats and generosity to keep Frank Jr under his control.  He would parcel out cash to Frank Jr so he could control what he did.   He would push him so far that one day Frank Jr would have to turn on his father to stop the evil cycle.

Frank Sr would be found guilty in the Family Secrets trial in Chicago that took down the administration of the Outfit. He was given a life sentence for his part in 13 murders.  Frank Sr would mouth “You are a fucking dead man” to AUSA  T.Markus Funk after he was sentenced.  This earned Frank Sr Special Administrative Measures or SAMs which meant he would have no contact with anyone but his lawyer and certain family members under strict supervision of Federal authorities.  Each year Frank Sr was given a copy of the SAMs that would be implemented and he was informed of their continuation for the year.   In March 2009 Frank was transported to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri where he would serve his life sentence.  Eugene Klein was a Roman Catholic Priest who had served the Bureau of Prisons for over 20 years.  He would provide religious services to the worst that the Federal System had to offer and Frank Calabrese Sr was one of them.   Before he started speaking to Frank Sr he was given the SAMs package on Frank Sr.  He also read about his crimes in the Electronic Posted Picture System, a database that the Bureau of Prison uses. Klein was fully aware of the crimes that Frank Sr had committed.  Klein started giving Frank Sr Communion and other religious instructions soon after he took in all the information.   Frank Sr was locked in a cell with a small slot in which Klein was able to pass material to Frank Sr.  While talking with Frank Sr Klein learned of a hidden violin that Frank Sr claimed was an 18th-century Stradivarius that was likely worth millions of dollars.  

The real story of the violin was this: it was used as collateral for a juice loan by a guy named Corky.  Before Frank Sr took it he found out it was worth around 100k.  It was actually a violin made in 1764 by Giuseppe Artalli.  Frank Sr would claim that it was once owned by Liberace.  He was able to suck Klein into his plot by putting him in touch with associates who were still on the street.

During some of the visits Frank Sr passed notes containing instructions to Klein in the religious material.  Klein then gave it to the associates on the outside and they came up with a plan.

The Violin was hidden in a summer house near Williams Bay, Wisconsin that was being sold by the Government to satisfy the judgement they had against him.  They had already found 800k in cash and another 300k in diamonds hidden in another house.  Klein and his confederates would pose as buyers shopping for a house and one of them would distract the real estate agent while the others would recover the Violin.  The main problem is that Frank Sr may have been losing his mind, because the Violin and everything else had been moved long before.  The other problem was the house had already been sold.  The FBI soon found out about the plot but they never recovered the violin.  The Bureau of Prisons changed the rules when it came to Frank Sr after this last incident.  Nobody was allowed to deal with Frank Sr alone, they had to work in pairs because he was so manipulative.  They did arrest Klein and charged both him and Frank Sr.  Frank Sr would die on December 25, 2012 escaping those charges.  Klein would fight the case until the second of week of February 2015 when he would change his plea to guilty.

One of my mentors, a dirty cop, used to say all you have to do is plant the greed seed and you can get anyone to do anything.  Another guy, Jerry Zimmerman, used to tell me that I had to find out what somebody needed or wanted, what was missing in their life, and then fill it - that is how you turn someone.  Why did Klein disgrace himself? Only Klein can tell us that.  Where is the violin now?  Someone out there is taking violin lessons I am sure.

DiNunzio Brothers

The brothers DiNunzio have had a long history around the Mafia going back decades. Last week I wrote about the Boston Mafia or the Patriarca Family based in Providence, Rhode Island.

Carmen has long been thought to be the Underboss of the family, handling business out of his Cheese Shop in the North End.  Anthony DiNunzio is his younger brother who was the acting boss of the family until he became the sixth boss to be taken down in a very short time.

Carmen DiNunzio came out to Los Angeles when he was on the lam from things in Boston.  

He met a former Boston transplant Anthony Fiato in Los Angeles where he had done well in Organized Crime circles.  Anthony Fiato had hooked back up with Los Angeles Capo Mike Rizzi and they had gone to New York and met with the Administration of the Gambino Family.  They wanted to do their own thing in Los Angeles, start their own family.  Pete Milano the boss of Los Angeles would eventually bring Anthony into the family.  He was made and then he did his own thing.  Anthony would have over a million dollars in shylock loans on the street when Carmen hit town.  Anthony did not want to take Carmen in so he brought him to his old friend Joe Sica.

Joe Sica and his brothers were long time players in Organized Crime on the West Coast. That is why I find it very amusing when Hollywood makes movies about Mickey Cohen the so-called “Boss of Los Angeles.”  One of the guys that was close to Joe was Chris Petti who would end up in San Diego. Chris was close to Tony Spilatro and others in the Chicago Outfit.  Chris came up with a plan to get in on the ground floor of the Rincon Indian Casino. The Rincon Tribe was looking for groups to bid on, build and ultimately run a Casino on their reservation.  Chris had the perfect backers… The Outfit, and they had a long history of getting inside Casinos and skimming them.  

They had an inside man in the tribe, but the Outfit told Chris to find other investors because they had another casino that was losing money.  That is where the FBI came in with an Undercover Agent posing as a Colombian dealer looking to launder cash.  They would end up taking down Chris, the administration of the Outfit, Carmen DiNunzio and his brother Anthony.

Luigi Manocchio became the boss of the Boston Family in 1996 after many years of fighting inside the family.  In 2004 he made Carmen his underboss.  Anthony was a Capo in Boston using the Gemini Social Club as his base.

Carmen was soon involved in a scheme to sell the Massachusetts Highway Department 300,000 cubic yards of loam soil from a company he had an interest.  He then decided to bribe a man he thought was an agent of the Highway Department (who was actually an FBI Agent). The FBI had flipped the middle man in the deal and he set up Carmen.  Carmen gave the informant $10,000 to give to the agent and then he gave him another $5,000 in cash at another meeting.  Then they provided the agent with a sample of the loam that they would supply.  It would have been a great score getting a contract to supply loam to the Big Dig but the FBI took him down.

Manocchio was a greedy boss and his men did not like him and there started to be decent, so he would step aside for Peter Limone.  Peter Limone had been locked up for 33 years for a murder that the FBI and their informant Joseph Barboza set him up.  He was released after the FBI found “real” evidence and it only took 33 years. He was released and won a 26 million dollar settlement from the FBI.  He then got right back into the family and busted again.

In steps Anthony DiNunzio as acting boss of the family and what he finds makes him very unhappy.  He went right to work in Rhode Island to beef up their rackets and one of them was

the adult sex industry business (strippers, escorts, porn). The family had made big money from these businesses and Anthony wanted to bring that back to profitability. He had a Eddie Lato a Capo in the family start picking up from the businesses in Rhode Island.  Then he had sitdowns with senior members of the Gambino Family to let them know they would be hitting up a guy who ran stripclubs and adult Bookstores in Rhode Island.  They contacted the Gambinos because the guy was friends with some soldiers in the family.  In the 1980’s the guy was close to Chris Richichi a Capo in the family based in Las Vegas. The Gambinos gave Anthony the green light to shake the guy down.

The crew would meet at a Chinese restaurant in Boston Billy Tse’s until they found out the whole place was wired up and the Feds had taped them.  The FBI then grabbed some of them after a meet and found cash from the stripclubs on them.  

Anthony was caught on tape speaking about his leadership of the family.  He said when he took over he changed everything and that anyone who did not toe the line was shelved (meaning they were no longer active members of the family) Then he told the guy that anyone who did not follow his rules would be buried alive until they died.  He also claimed that even if he was locked up he was still the boss.   He would continue to dig a deeper hole for himself when he was a senior Gambino guy he spoke about sponsoring a guy to be made and then afterward the guy telling him he is 100% with him.  

Anthony would end up pleading guilty and taking a 6 year sentence on November 14, 2012.  His brother Carmen took a 6 year plea deal in 2009 so they are for now off the streets.

Las Vegas: Operation Thin Crust

The last Las Vegas Mafia cases were Operation Button Down and Operation Thin Crust.  Operation Button Down was a nationwide assault on the leaders of the Mafia.  Operation Thin Crust was an FBI operation started in Las Vegas aimed at Mafia crews working in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is what is known as an open city in the Mafia world.  The Chicago Outfit ran the city for many years because they had the most interest in Casinos because they used Teamster loans to finance the Casinos. So when you see any film or something written and they say the Las Vegas Mob it is written by someone that has no clue.  The big rule for many years was that you were never supposed to kill in town because it would disrupt the Casino business.  

Operation Thin Crust

John Branco

The Operation was started by the FBI using a Fat Con Man named Tony Angeiletti and an undercover Agent that was called Charlie Morone.  Fat Tony opened up a Social Club behind the Rio in an industrial area and he was soon sucking up to the LA Families Underboss Carmen "Flipper" Milano.  Fat Tony named his club The Seabreeze after Carmen's Sea Breeze Distribution.  Carmen was the underboss and when I was in Las Vegas I would go see him with Jimmy Caci or Steve Cino. We would often meet at an Italian Deli owned by a Gambino guy named Johnny Mash.  The FBI soon realized that Fat Tony was a lying con man so they changed directions in their investigations. Fat Tony and another street hood in Las Vegas, John Branco, both were informants and neither knew that Charlie Morone was an undercover Agent.  John Branco was a long time low level street hood who was still trying to play the tough guy.  He was a big guy who would beat up smaller men but he could not do any work.  He was also an informant and had worn a wire for the FBI when his daughter was involved in killing her husband in Chicago. He was locked up in Boron Federal Penitentiary and he was released to get the murderers on tape. Jimmy Caci knew this and so did the others. John Branco used to collect money for Herbie Blitzstein's shylock business and he also tried his hand at extortion.  He tried to extort the owners of escort businesses in Las Vegas.  One night he confronted an escort operator and a fight broke out and one of his wannabees pulled a pistol.  John was arrested and his bail set but he had no way of making bail and Herbie told him to sit it out.  John flipped and began working with the FBI.  He soon began giving information on Charlie who was in Las Vegas to pursue criminal opportunities.  They soon revealed that Charlie was an FBI Agent and they started working together.

The Las Vegas FBI planned on taking down Fat Herbie in the case, and they had a bug in his house. Meanwhile John Branco and Fat Tony were going around telling people that Fat Herbie was a rat.  They wanted him hurt because they owed him money and they wanted what he had.  I have written before that Herbie was known to carry large sums of cash and he had a large shylock business.  The LA guys Steve Cino, Jimmy Caci, Carmen Milano and Bobby Milano all liked Herbe but they would still take a cut of his business.  The only LA guy who did not like Herbie was Louie Caruso, a Capo under Pete Milano.  Louie did not like Herbie because Herbie had him moved out of a booth at a stripclub in Las Vegas.  Louie is a short man who pumps himself up like a mini bodybuilder but he is no tough guy. He brought some bikers to a family sitdown in Los Angeles in a breach of the rules. Later he would be beaten up by some bikers.  

Jimmy Caci and I were making our rounds in LA one day when we had to go meet a friend named Abe at Starbucks across from the Beverly Connection. Abe brought a friend named Eddie to the meeting. Ori Spado ended up at the meeting, which I did not like.  Eddie had these really good Visa travelers checks that could even be run through a machine and they would come up real. He gave us four as a sample, Ori tried to take them but I got them.  A week later, Ori got Jimmy arrested and Jimmy was locked up.  Jimmy told me to take them to Las Vegas.  Rocky Zangari and John Demattia (members of another crew of the LA Family) heard about it from their guys in Vegas and decided to get in on it and shook down Abe. They started to bring them to Las Vegas.  We had a huge sitdown in Culver City where guys came from Las Vegas and Palm Springs. Jimmy's lawyer went to see him and brought back word that we were to drop it and let Rocky deal with it because it was a waste.

So Louie Caruso and Rocky Zangari dealt with John Branco and Charlie.  Louie Caruso really did want to make John Branco into the family.  I met him with Jimmy and Ori in Palm Springs at Club 340 one afternoon. I was there with my girlfriend and Louie brought his girlfriend so they hung out while we had our talk.  Louie brought up John Branco and how he wanted to to bring him into the family. Jimmy flipped out because Louie brought it up in front of me and that he would even consider it.  Jimmy told him John Branco was a rat and had worn a wire.  Louie was shocked and embarrassed but like a lot of Mob guys he liked easy cash and he got it from John Branco and the FBI.  I took a picture of Ori at that meeting and it is all over the web check it out.

A few weeks later I met Steve Cino in Las Vegas at Marie Calendars and we spoke about Herbie and Louie Caruso.  The real wiseguys did not want Herbie killed it was the wannabee guys but a mob killing makes the news.  Never mind that no made guy took part or was convicted for the murder.  Yet writers keep writing about the Mafia killing Herbie.

Frank Cullota

“I liked Jewelry stores because they had a lot of cash.”  - Frank Cullota

Frank was the Leader of the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a very success crew that pulled scores in Las Vegas when the Chicago Outfit reigned supreme in Sin City.

Frank Cullota

Frank was born June 20, 1938 in Chicago.  He met the man who would become his best friend in his criminal career when he was 13 years old.  That man was Tony Spilatro.  Tony would work his way up from a street thug to the Outfit’s man in Las Vegas.  

I was speaking to Frank on the phone the other day and I asked him a few questions.

First, I wanted to know about Herbie Blitzstein.  I liked Herbie, I always felt he was a good guy who just did what he knew.  A lot of people refer to him as an enforcer but I never got that vibe when I was around him. The FBI was running Operation Button Down and Operation Thin Crust in 1995 in Las Vegas.  The LA Family was once more trying to regroup and Las Vegas was one of the places they were working on.  

Fat Steve Cino lived there along with a host of associates, so LA Capo Jimmy Caci and I would drive out there frequently.  Jimmy was out on an appeal bond for a Telemarketing deal gone bad, so we were trying to get things moving.  Jimmy and his brother Bobby Milano liked Herbie and so did Steve Cino.  

Jimmy would get picked up by LAPD because he was around an FBI informant named Ori Spado in Beverly Hills.  Ori had gone out on a collection in the Valley and Jimmy was in his car.  Ori went into this business and he started running his mouth selling wolf tickets, the guy had enough of Ori’s crap and he decked Ori with a tape dispenser.  Ori was on the ground and the guy had a pistol out when Jimmy came into the office and stopped the guy.  The guy knew Jimmy from the track so he chilled and he explained his situation.  The guy had a business that went bankrupt everything was in bankruptcy so he had nothing.  Jimmy helped Ori to the car where he dressed Ori down for acting so foolish.  Ori never told Jimmy what he was doing there or Jimmy would not have even gone with him.  

A week later I went to dinner with Jimmy and Ori at Frankie’s after dinner Jimmy went to Ori's apartment.  While there, Ori had to get something from his car.  The next thing Jimmy knew there was a knock at Ori's door.  Ori ran to open it, and it was the LAPD OC Squad.  

Ori lived in a secured building.  

Thanks to Ori,  Jimmy was away on January 6, 1996 when some wannabee low class robbers broke into Herbie’s condo and murdered him.

This was not a Mafia crime in anyway shape or form.  The only guys I heard that wanted him dead were the two FBI informants John Bronco and Fat Tony. They both owed Herbie money.  The FBI used it in a RICO case against Steve Cino and Bobby Panera but it was a joke.

Speaking to Frank about Herbie helped me learn some more about Herbie.

Herbie was a bookmaker in Chicago and he made juice loans but he was not a tough guy.  He was in too big to go on scores but he always had money on him.  He would carry 20k in his pockets because the IRS would take anything of value from him.  He owed them for unpaid taxes.  Frank was asked by his boss in Chicago to move out to Las Vegas to help Tony out in the 70's when he got out of prison. It was not an order just a nudge to go out to Las Vegas.  

Tony opened up a jewelry store in Las Vegas called Gold Rush Ltd where they bought and sold Jewelry.  Tony told Frank that he was bringing out the Jew to help, that is what they called Herbie.  Herbie mostly worked in the back room removing jewels from settings and melting down the gold.  He bought hot merchandise.

Frank told me that Herbie was never a hard guy he just looked it.  

I asked Frank who he admired most in his criminal life and he came back with two answers.  One guy he liked was Sam Giancana who was tough and smart.  Sam used to tell him that he was too quick with his fists because Frank was young and angry.  He told him that it would get him in trouble someday.  The other guy is a criminal legend. Tony Accardo, Joe Batters the man who was in the Outfit since Al Capone and never spent a night in jail.  He would see Tony at the Golden Bear Pancake house and after the first time Tony saw him there he would say hello. Nobody got close to Tony but he knew who everyone was everywhere he went. If Tony would have been legit he would be a Billionaire today.

I cannot do justice to Frank’s story on this blog, you can read all about his life in his book Cullotta: The Life of a Chicago Criminal, Las Vegas Mobster, and Government Witness. Frank has a lot to say and anyone who wants to gain a better understanding about the Life should attend Mob-Con Sept. 7 and 8 in Las Vegas at the Palace Station.  You can meet Frank and ask him any questions about the life.  Others I have featured on previous blog posts will be there also:

Andrew DiDonato

Andrew Didanato, Frank Calabrese, Tony Montana, Tim Redsull as well as Law enforcement speakers and authors.

Hear from Andrew about life in a crew where one wrong step could mean death and that went for the boss's son John Gotti Jr.

Frank Calabrese

Speak to Frank Calabrese about growing up in a Mafia house hold and then running his father street rackets.  

For more information check out the convention’s website:

http://mob-con.net/