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.

The Disappearance of Little Tony Zizzo

You may not be familiar with the name Anthony Zizzo, or “Little Tony” as he was also known. Little Tony was a Chicago Outfit guy who may have assumed the underboss position for a short period of time.

The FBI is offering a $10,000 reward for information on the disappearance or the whereabouts of Little Tony.  Little Tony is presumed to be dead.  

He left his town home in Westmont, Illinois for a meeting on Rush Street in Chicago.  When he kissed his wife goodbye, she had no idea she would never see him again.  Little Tony drove to a restaurant in Melrose Park where he parked his Silver Jeep Cherokee and got into another car that would take him for his sitdown.

The sitdown was supposed to take place at a Rush Street restaurant where it was to be mediated by Joseph Andriacchi a well respected former underboss of the Outfit. What the FBI thinks, is Little Tony was kidnapped and murdered someplace where there were less eyes.  

The killers “disappeared” Little Tony’s body, and so far no informant has given up it’s location.

Little Tony came up in the crew of Outfit boss Sam Carlisi, along with James Marcello, who would also become boss one day.  

Little Tony and Marcello were taken down together in the early 1990’s. The indictment refers to Little Tony as a guy who handed out juice loans to gamblers and a boss.

When Marcelo was released in 2003 he took over as the boss of the Outfit.  He would not last long because he was soon swept up in the Family Secrets case.

Little Tony was not caught up in that case and some Outfit members may have felt a little uneasy with that.  He still remained underboss as well as representing Marcello’s interest on the street.

He got into a dispute with Mike Sarno, who was from the same crew but was moving up quickly over the Joker Poker trade.  Things soon were out of hand and word was sent  from Marcello to Little Tony to let it go.  He could not and he kept the fight going.

MIke Sarno decided that life would run smooth without Little Tony around.  Marcello did not put up a fight and the sitdown was arraigned.  

The disappearance of Little Tony is one of the Outfit’s last big hits, and now the FBI is looking for answers.  Someone out there knows and will someday be willing to trade on that information.

I wonder how soon it will be?  Little Tony’s wife passed away 5 years after he went missing and the rest of the parties are doing long stretches in prison.  

Rouse Mansion: Murder, Corruption and a Casino

The crime families and crews I write about all provide a vice, and the public is often willing to look the other way while it goes on.  The cash that these rackets bring into the families is used to corrupt both law enforcement and politicians.  The politicians are easy because most of them have never held a job or built anything in the public sector.  Most are not in office to help the people, only to line their own pockets. Law enforcement is another story.  Most of them are in it to serve the public, but there are a few bad apples.   One of those apples was named Tom Brown and he was the Sheriff of Lake County, Illinois during the late 1970s to the early 80s.  The town of Libertyville is located in Lake County and it is an upscale sleepy town with little crime.

When I say crime I am talking about street crime like drug deals, muggings, rapes and murder.

The morning of June 6th, 1980 changed all that because a self made millionaire named Bruce Rouse and his wife Darlene were found brutally murdered in their mansion. Their three kids had been home when they were murdered but they said they had not heard a thing, due to a thunderstorm.  

The Rouse Mansion after a long investigation and no real leads was sold to an Outfit front man. The Outfit would spend thousands turning it into a casino.  The crew behind it was run at first by Joe Ferriola aka Joe Nagell.  He had his man Louis Marino oversee and provide security for the casino.  William Johoda was the guy that the public saw.  Johoda had been a bookie who split profits with the Outfit and now he divided up the cash from the casino.

All the Blackjack and other games were rigged at the casino to maximize profits to the Outfit.

The crew used some of this cash to take care of guys who were locked up and kept their mouths shut.  Guys like mob killer Harry Aleman were sent cash every month to make their time easy.  

Although there was not much of your average street crime going on in Lake County and Libertyville, thanks to Sheriff Tom Brown, Sargent Willie Smith and Organized Crime Sargent Robert Schroeder there was a lot of organized crime going on with the help of law enforcement.  They took payoffs from the Rouse Mansion Casino in order to turn a blind eye to gambling and prostitution.  There were joker poker machines at other bars prostituion also at two stripbars and an adult video store.  Sheriff Tom Brown was given $1500 a month from Rocky Infelice to provide advanced warning using on a hotline installed in the Rouse Casino in case of a raid.  

There were more murders besides the Rouse murders that went unsolved because of Law Enforcement.  Robert Plummer was a bookie in Libertyville until he crossed Rocky Infelice and Rocky decided he was to become trunk music.   He had Johoda bring him to the Rouse Casino and walk him up the stairs.  Once Robert Plummer reached the top of the stairs two Outfit killers grabbed him and began to bludgeon him.  Plummer’s last words were “Oh my God!  What was that!” and 3 seconds later he was dead.  They loaded him up in his wife’s Lincoln Continental  drove him to Mundelein where he would be found in the trunk.  

Joe Ferriola would move on to become the boss of the Outfit for a few years until his health problems would force him out.  He would die at 61 in 1989.  Rocky Infelice would go away for extortion and two murders. Nick Ferriola, Joe’s son, would start working with Frank Calabrese Sr. and his crew.  He helped with the gambling and shaking down a Pizza Parlor.  He was also the guy who was the go between to Ronnie Jarrett who was running the crew for Frank Sr. Ronnie Jarret would be murdered and Nick would get some more time thanks to Operation Family Secrets.

The Rouse Murders would be solved many years later when Billy Rouse, their son, would confess to their murder in 1995.

This is just one example of how law enforcement works with organized crime to mutually benefit each other.    

Johnny Roselli

Johnny Roselli

In late 1947 fifty men were gathered inside a winery on South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles.  They were all standing in a circle around a long table.  There was a revolver and a dagger crossed at the head of the table.  Johnny Roselli then led in five men.  Three of the five will go on to become the Boss of the family one day. On this day in 1947 they were initiated into the Los Angeles family of La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia. The Boss at that table was Jack Dragna, but he respected Roselli, and even though he was part of the Outfit, on that particular day he was in LA.

Johnny Roselli had just gotten out of prison for his role in the extortion of Hollywood Studios.  He only served 4 years of a 10 year sentence (thanks to the high level Chicago bribery scandal covered in last week’s post).  He was working at Eagle Lion Studios but in reality he was doing much more.  The men in that room owned and controlled Trucking, Garment Center Businesses, Produce and Fruit delivery, Vast tracks of land in Rancho Cucomonga.  Roselli would soon be splitting his time between Los Angeles and Las Vegas because The Outfit was about to step it up.  They needed somebody who could mix in both the underworld and the business world, and Roselli fit the bill.  

The story of the Flamingo and Bugsy Siegal is well known to most people but I’ll go over it here.  Bugsy oversaw the planning and building of the Flamingo for the New York Families. They would recruit those that ran casinos for Meyer Lansky and the Mafia in other places like Kentucky and Havana to help run it. Dave Berman and Gus Greenbaum were heavily involved in the casino.  Gus was close to the Outfit but most of these guys were closer to Lansky.  The Hotel cost over 6 million dollars and lost money when it first opened.  It was a well-known fact that Bugsy was skimming money the whole time.  When Bugsy was killed in Beverly Hills, Gus Greenbaum took over.  

Sam Giancana became the boss of the Outfit in the mid 1950's and he was very close to Roselli.  Chicago had a huge bank of cash via the Teamsters so they would move to buying and building Casinos.  Roselli  would soon start a number of side businesses some that controlled the parking lots of Casinos, others that brought Broadway shows and other shows to Las Vegas.  He also started a production company, a company that sold ice machines to casinos and a company that was building a marina at Lake Mead.

Roselli was a huge earner and very important to The Outfit in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, so its amazing that Hollywood continues to churn out tall tales.  Roselli had been directly under Capone when he was boss and in Los Angeles he worked closely with Jack Dragna but after Jack died he would stay with The Outfit and the new boss Sam Giancana who he had known way back when Sam was a driver for Jack McGurn aka Machine Gun Jack.

The Mafia was riding high.  They had casinos in Cuba and Las Vegas and they had even branched out to Great Britain.  But there was trouble brewing.  

The trouble was Fidel Castro and his revolutionary army which would soon take over Cuba.   They closed the casinos and took over the hotels.  They imprisoned mafia men like Santo Trafficante and kept his cash.  The Mafia saw this happen and they were furious.  It seemed the US Government was on the same page and wanted to take down Castro.

This would not be the first or the last time the US Government would work with the Mafia.  They worked with Lucky Luciano during World War Two to secure the docks from sabotage and then again when the Allies landed in Sicily.  They would use Greg Scarpa to find the dead Civil Rights workers bodies in Mississippi during the civil rights movement.

Sam Giancana

The CIA regularly uses "cut outs" or a go between they trust to take on assignments that they cannot or do not want to be involved.  Robert Maheu, a former FBI Counter Espionage Agent who was then in private practice knew Johnny Roselli, so when the CIA approached him to find people to assassinate Fidel Castro, he thought of Roselli.  He approached Roselli and they met at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles where Maheu was claiming to represent a number of US Corporations that wanted Castro out. Roselli saw the value in the plan so he went to his boss Sam Giancana who reached out for Santo Traficante Jr in Florida and they agreed to meet with Maheu in Florida.

They would meet at the Fontainebleau in Miami with Roselli useing the name John Rawlsten when he first met with Maheu and CIA Colonel Sheffield Edwards Director of security.  Roselli then introduced two men to the two CIA agents. Sam Gold (Sam Giancana) and Joe (Santo Trificante).  They worked out a deal where the CIA would provide cash and poison pills to Cuban Exiles and other contacts to assassinate Castro.  They may have tried or they may have just kept the cash, but they would meet again at the Plaza Hotel in New York.  The Bay of Pigs disaster made the CIA step up their operations but nothing would ever come of this plan.  Roselli would later talk about Santo Traficante possibly being a double agent for Castro and sabotaging their efforts.

I have about 8,000 FBI papers on Roselli but they really pick up in 1961 and they are all marked with the San Diego FBI Office on them. This is probably because they had turned Frank Bomp in San Diego who had a grudge against Roselli.  Bomp thought that he should have gotten something from the Frontier Hotel in las Vegas because he did some work way back but it was instead Roselli who got the gift shop and some skim.  Frank Bomp knew about Roselli's secret birth name and the FBI was soon onto Roselli.  By the end of the 60's Roselli was headed for a downfall.

Roselli had been sponsored by Frank Sinatra for membership in the Friars Club.  Once there, he discovered a cheating scam going on.  They held card games in an upstairs room and these were high stakes games with some very wealthy men playing.  Some other members had drilled holes in the ceiling and they could see the hands played and they would send signals to their players to hold or fold.  It was very lucrative and soon Roselli was getting a cut.  They even had a Palm Springs Town Home that they also rigged with peepholes.  The FBI found out about this and served search warrants.  They found the peepholes and arrested everyone including Roselli. They then decided they wanted to turn Roselli so they approached him on the street in Beverly Hills on Dayton and Rodeo.  The Agents had a picture of a 4 year old Roseli and his mother which they showed him along with a paper showing his real name, Fillipo Sacco, on it. I am sure they unnerved him and the Agents told him they wanted to meet him in the valley in a week which he agreed to before they left. Rosselli went right to his lawyer's office who called the FBI Office and told them Roselli would only talk to the Agents with his lawyer in his office.  Then Rosselli made a couple of calls and made a trip to New York to meet with Colonel Sheffield Edwards about his name.

 

The FBI was watching this because they had Roselli cold because now he was an illegal Alien and could be deported.  Roselli told the FBI to kick rocks and they charged him for failing to register as an alien on top of the cheating scandal. The CIA sent a memo to the FBI asking them to take it easy on Roselli, because they would be in a bad position if the truth about the plot to kill Castro.  He would get four years for the Friars Club and another year for the Immigration charges.  Tony Accardo had now taken over again as the boss because Sam Giancana was on the lam so he demoted Roselli from his Las Vegas position until he was finished with his cases.  

Santo Trafficante

Roselli served his time and moved to Plantation, Florida where he lived in his sister’s guest house.  He made trips to LA where he met with Jimmy Frattiano and told him about the Senate Select Committee that had called him as a witness for the Castro plot.  Santo Trafficante was afraid his name would come up but it already had so he was delusional.

Jimmy had heard that Johnny was a marked man and told him in no uncertain terms, which Roselli blew off.  

July 28, 1976 Roselli left his sisters home to run errands around town and never came back.  They knew something was wrong right away.  Twelve days prior he had lunch with Santo Traficante.  He was to meet again but nobody ever called for him again.  

On August 9, 1976 some fisherman in Dumfoundling Bay saw a strange 55 gallon oil drum with holes punched in it floating on the surface.  They pulled it in and saw what they thought was a human arm through the holes, so they called the police.  It would prove to be JohnnyRoselli.

Johnny Roselli was without a doubt one of the biggest Mafioso in Los Angeles for decades but his name is never brought up.  

Rest In Peace Johnny.    

Milwaukee Phil

3600 Fluer Drive, Des Moines, Iowa

To the kids who lived at 3600 Fluer in Des Moines, Iowa the smiling man was known as Phil, but to the outside world he was known as Milwaukee Phil.

Milwaukee Phil was not a person to take lightly.  He had worked for Al Capone, but it would be his cousin Lou Fratto who brought him into the Outfit.  Soon he was working with two other old friends of Lou Fratto, Sam "Teets" Battaglia and John Marshal Caifano as an enforcer, mainly in Milwaukee and Chicago.  They saw that he was very good at taking care of whatever task he was given.  Many jobs required him to take trips to 3600 Fluer in Iowa which was a good meeting place because there was no surveillance there at all, and no heat.  This was the home of Lou Fratto, who was his cousin and the boss of the Iowa Mafia.

Phil was much more than an enforcer because he could think on his feet.  He soon started working for Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik who ran the "Corruption Squad" for the Outfit.  This was probably the most important Crew in the Outfit because they handed out the cash to law enforcement and politicians to keep the wheels greased.

The grease or payoff was what kept the Outfit on top for so many years and this is the real reason they kept away from drugs.  It was easy for a Judge to give a guy a slap on the wrist for gambling or Shylocking but selling hard drugs would never work the same.  These were important times in Phil’s life because he learned how the administration kept the Outfit on top.  When Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik died he was replaced  by another fixer, Llewelyn Morris Humphreys or Murray Humphreys aka The Hump.  Once again, the Outfit chose a non-Italian to handle their payoffs.     

The Hump

Phil would learn two important things from The Hump.  One was Union takeover and the other was the art of staying in the shadows, because the Mafia was intended to be a secret organization.  The Hump also had a favorite quote, "The difference between guilt and innocence in any court is who gets to the judge first with the most".

Phil must have taken the Hump’s advice to heart because he was quietly building an empire of vice in Milwaukee where he controlled a large gambling and shylock territory and it has been said that he was in control of a lot of the high end prostitution.  He worked with the leaders of the Milwaukee family but he was always an Outfit man.

It was at this time that he started working with Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti dealing with The Outfits headaches that they could not payoff.  In May of 1962 Phil and Chuckie were taken in and questioned by police when they were caught sitting in a car.  The car turned out to be a "Hitmobile"  The car was designed with hidden gun racks, secret compartments, controls to turn off and on headlights and tail lights basically everything you needed to carry out a hit.  They told police that they were waiting for a friend.  The terrible twosome must have been good at their job because in nearly two decades of "Work"  they were brought in numerous times and questioned about murders but they were never charged.  Phil was said to have carried out up to 14 hits for the Outfit.

Phil soon found himself working with another non-Italian, this time a Greek named Gus Alex who was tough and carried out many hits and was very good at corrupting the people he needed.  Gus took over being in charge of Chicago’s non-Italian connected guys when The Hump died of a sudden heart attack caused by some overzealous FBI Agents who pushed him too far and his heart could not take the stress.

Gus Alex

Gus Alex’s most famous hit was probably when he and Lenny Patrick shotgunned James Ragen, the owner of the racewire in the street which he would not sell to the Outfit.

Milwaukee Phil learned a lot from Alex that would serve him during his rise in the Outfit.  In 1967 Lou Fratto was indicted along with the Milwaukee Mafia Boss Frank Balistrieri and Kansas City Boss Nick Civella on ITAR Charges because of a 300lb con man named Allen Rosenberg.  

It has been said that Phil helped put an end to the Conman who was found in March of 1967 riddled with bullets and handcuffed to a car.  Lou would pass away in November of that same year.  Milwaukee Phil had left a trail of murder and mayhem in the 1960's, one of the most famous was the M&M where he and Tony Spilatro used a vice on the head of a Chicago hood to get him to tell them who his partner was in murdering an Outfit guy.  The hood gave up his friend and they were both found with their throats cut.  

At the end of the decade Phil had moved into the top spot of the Outfit but his reign would be short lived. Despite controlling restaurants, nightclubs and stripjoints, Phil was convicted of extortion and sent to prison.  He would die while locked up in 1971.

Mob Con 2013

Andrew DiDonato, Me, Frank Calabrese Jr.

This weekend was Mob Con 2013 and it was fun! Great audience and so many good speakers.  

I spent most of my time with Frank Calabrese Jr and Andrew DiDonato, great guys!

Frank told a story about how he was taken down by the FBI in Chicago. He was downstairs in his place and his family was in their beds, when the FBI knocked on his door and asked for him to come out.  Frank got his shirt on and then went to his front closet, because his alarm box was in the closet, and he noticed Agents watching him warily through the window. Frank yelled “I'm just turning off the alarm!” to assure them he wasn’t reaching for a gun, and then he opened the door. They told him that he was being arrested.  As he was getting cuffed his wife came to the top of the stairs and asked what was going on.

Frank: Its the FBI, I’m just getting arrested.  Go back to bed.  

Wife: What?  What should I do?  

Frank: Call my Father.  

FBI: We already got him, Frank.

Frank: Okay, call my Uncle.  

FBI We picked him up already too.

Frank: Okay, then just call my brother.  

FBI: We got him tonight also.  

Frank: Honey, just wait for me to call.  

Frank’s story is not just a Mafia story, it is the story of a dysfunctional family and the evil that is Organized Crime.  I highly recommend his book Operation Family Secrets.

Andrew DiDonato had some great stories about being a working street guy in a Gambino Crew. One of those stories was about when he went on the lam.  He was out on parole and one night he got a call from his parole officer who wanted to see him the next day in his office.  Andrew instantly knew that something was wrong because he had already checked in once that week and he had never been asked to come twice.  So he shows up to his P.O.s office and he is sitting there when two guys he knew where FBI agents were buzzed in to the office.  They were giving him the hard stare when they went into the inner office and then the front door buzzed and Andrew made a split second decision and he scrambled through the door. He had his lawyer call his P.O. that night and arrange for his surrender but the P.O. would not tell him a thing.  So his lawyer said fine you find mister DiDonato and hung up.  That started Andrews last 14 months on the street as a Gambino associate.

This was a great weekend because all of us have a kind of support system and its nice to speak with people who have been through the same things in life.

Andrew DiDonato wearing a "Breakshot: The Game is Rigged" Shirt

I was thinking a lot this weekend about all the times I was in Las Vegas with the LA guys.  Hitting Nicky Blairs with Jimmy Caci. Eating at Johnny Mashes place with Steve Cino or meeting up with Steve before he was put in the Black Book.  Watching Keely Smith and Bobby Milano put on a great show.  Old times and even some good times. The good times were good but it does not change what the life was and that was and always will be a dead end.

I have a Las Vegas story that I will tell.  I went with Fat Steve Cino to a Blueberry Hill restaurant in Henderson NV.  Steve could go to Blueberry Hill because they had tables, not just booths, as he was too big to fit into booths.  I liked Steve because he was a gentleman, but he was way, way, way overweight! He was so big that he used to go to his friends salvage yard drive his car onto the scale and they would weigh the car.  He would get out and they would weigh it again!  That was how big he was then!

We were meeting John Bronco and Tony Angeletti at Blueberry Hill for a talk about everything that was going on in Vegas.  They brought a guy with them named Tony Muso who at one time had worked for Ted Binion, the owner of the Horseshoe Casino.  John Branco had two things he wanted to get out.  One was he and Tony claimed that Herbie Blitzstien was a rat. They had a card made of a rats body with Herbie head on it and had brought a newspaper article about Herbie going into some jewelry store for the Cops.  They claimed that this made Herbie a rat.  

They wanted to do something to him. This was their idea and they were pushing it.  Steve Cino told them to chill out but they kept up. Steve told them that he was doing things with Herbie.  They then moved onto Ted Binion who John Bronco wanted to rob.  John owned a lawn service, so he mowed Ted's yard. These guys were petty and between John and Tony Muso they had the whole Binion heist planned.  I left with Steve and both of us shook our heads. I found out later that Ted Binion was warned by Law Enforcement that there was a threat to rob him, but Herbie was never warned.

What a waste.  

Vegas brought back old memories, good and bad, and we created some new ones. It was great swapping stories with Andrew and Frank and I'm already looking forward to doing it again at MOB Con 2014 next year!

New Women's Breakshot Shirts

Selling shirts at Mob Con 2013

Frank Calabrese Jr and I on stage speaking at Mob Con 2013