When Mike mentioned in passing to Agent Ted McNamara a series of obscure phone conversations that may have taken place between Jimmy Marcello, Rocky Infelise, and Joe Ferriola regarding Little Jimmy’s gambling activities, McNamara dropped by Mike’s desk a few days later with a set of transcriptions of wiretaps that took place in 1986. Maseth was stunned. Here were the two noteworthy recordings off the wire between Marcello, Infelise, and Ferriola.
McNamara and Agent Anita Stamat had tremendous recall and discovered and understood the criminal activities of Jimmy Marcello, including the video poker machine business he had with his brother Mickey. While the Two Mikes had my uncle and me to navigate them through the coded lexicon of the Calabrese crew, Stamat, as the case agent for the Marcello inquiries, had to go it alone in cracking complex Outfit communication codes.
Chris Mackey, the agent in charge of gathering data on the late Angelo LaPietra, accumulated over ten thousand pages on the Hook alone—which needed to be meticulously reviewed before it was handed over to the Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
When I first saw how many agents had joined the investigation, I was concerned that it might compromise my identity. But this was not the case, and the inquiry remained top secret.
In November 2002, when Uncle Nick was scheduled to be released on racketeering charges, he suddenly disappeared from the federal prison system and was moved to a secret location for an indefinite period. While friends and family (especially the Outfit) waited for my uncle to rejoin his wife and kids in the suburbs, speculation turned to certainty. He had flipped and was about to become the first made Outfit guy to cooperate in court. Now when anyone typed “Nicholas Calabrese” at www.bop.gov to find out his whereabouts, he or she got nothing. Uncle Nicky had vanished into the ether—in the system one day, gone the next.
A year later, Jimmy Marcello was released from FCI Milan after serving eight years and seven months of his original twelve-and-a-half-year sentence. Marcello took a job with a nursing home operation called DVD Management. By then rumors of a major FBI investigation had escalated.
By 2004, change was in the air. Mike Hartnett was promoted and moved to New York City. At first he continued working in the Organized Crime unit in New York, but he was later reassigned to the Manhattan Terrorism unit. In the wake of Hartnett’s departure, Luigi Mondini became my new handler, while Mike stayed on with Uncle Nick. Just as Maseth had earned his stripes with Hartnett, Luigi was doing the same and was upped to co-lead agent status. Now the burden of investigative leadership fell more on Maseth.
Family Secrets loomed over Mike’s career. While other agents were racking up arrests and solving dozens of crimes, he was confined to working one case. How that would bode for his career with the Bureau, particularly if Family Secrets didn’t pan out, no one knew. The Bureau brass in Chicago and Washington kept a close eye on the progress of each Organized Crime case. Family Secrets became a make-or-break situation for Mike. It was the only major case he’d been assigned since leaving the academy six years prior. Questions arose on the heels of Hartnett’s departure. What if the operation were to fizzle before going to trial? What if the jury didn’t buy into what my uncle and I testified to on the stand? What if the Outfit hired a dream team of attorneys and torpedoed the government’s case? Had the case become too sprawling and complicated for a jury to comprehend? These factors weighed heavily on Mike as the squad soldiered forward.
Another unfortunate loss came after the death of CPD officer Bob Moon in 2004 after a bout with cancer. Moon was the king of practical jokers on the task force and a morale booster. For instance, he and a former agent named Diane would go at it back and forth. On Diane’s fortieth birthday, Moon broke into her car and poured confetti into the air vents. When she started up the car with the air conditioner already on, her car’s interior was blasted with confetti.
Soon after, Diane retaliated. When Moon showed up at his car in the parking garage after work, an attractive female stranger walked up to him and said, “I’ll take a lesson.”
“What?” Moon asked.
“I’ll take a lesson.”
“Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The woman pointed at Moon’s license plate. Courtesy of Diane, Moon’s custom license plate frame now read, “Sex Instructor, First Lesson Free.”
Every agent on an FBI OC squad had to rotate for complaint duty. Every squad member took his or her turn answering phone calls, which sometimes involved talking to people with mental problems.
“I’m being followed. The aliens have come down to get me.”
Bob Moon savored such calls. He told the other agents, “Send them to me.”
“Hello. This is the communication department. How may I help you? Now sir, slow down please.… Before you go any further, I need to know if you have the implant chip or the headband … and the serial number? … 666? … Okay, now grab a pen and paper because I’m going to direct you where to go to get it fixed.”
Moon gave the caller the phone number to the CPD detectives’ unit.
Mike, now the lead agent for Family Secrets, remained a constant target for intra-squad pranks.
One time before going out of town to debrief Uncle Nick, he left his overnight bag in the squad area. As soon as Mike and John Mallul arrived to debrief Nick in Ashland, Mike checked into his hotel room and opened up his suitcase. He noticed he didn’t have any underwear.
The next day a package for Mike arrived at the hotel. Mallul stood in line for twenty minutes to sign for it. The squad had stolen Mike’s underwear and overnighted it back to him in a FedEx box with some documents. These were the same trusted colleagues who locked Mike inside the Porta-Potty one night during the Albergo dig.
Mallul jumped into the car and threw the box at Maseth.
“Next time tell those guys to keep me out of the crossfire of their crazy-ass schemes.”
In the months leading up to the indictments, the FBI’s goal was to weave the murder charges in with the other RICO predicate acts (loan-sharking, gambling, and extortion) to show the Outfit operating as a singular criminal enterprise. Until the date of the Family Secrets indictments, there had been more than 3,200 mob murders in a hundred years in the Chicago area, resulting in only twelve convictions. No made member of the Outfit had ever been convicted of a mob homicide. No made member ever testified.
On April 25, 2005, the proverbial shoe dropped when the grand jury unsealed a United States Department of Justice indictment in which fourteen defendants were charged with organized crime activities. Eighteen previously unsolved murders (plus the attempted murder of Nick Sarillo) served as the indictment’s centerpiece.
For the first time the Justice Department targeted the Outfit as a criminal enterprise as opposed to prosecuting acts committed by individuals. As Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said, the indictment “is remarkable for both the breadth of the murders charged and for naming the entire Chicago Outfit as a criminal enterprise under the anti-racketeering law. It is a textbook example of the effective use of the RICO statute to prosecute an assortment of crimes spanning decades.” Of the fourteen defendants indicted, eleven were “charged with conspiracy, including [committing] murders and attempted murders, to further the Outfit’s illegal activities such as loan-sharking and bookmaking, and to protect the enterprise from law enforcement.” This, simply put, represented the most extensive mob-murder prosecution in American history.
The April indictments pointed an accusatory finger at what was left of the Outfit’s leadership. The roster of eleven primary defendants was as follows:
1. James Marcello, who had been released from FCI Milan in 2003, was listed as a member of the Melrose Park crew, and presently acting boss of the Chicago Outfit. Marcello would stand trial for his involvement in the 1986 murder of the Spilotro brothers.
2. Joseph Lombardo would have to answer for his role in the September 1974 murder of Danny Seifert.
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p; 3. Frank Calabrese, Sr., was listed as a member of the South Side 26th Street/Chinatown crew. In many ways my father became the star defendant of the group, the most reviled, and the defendant against whom the FBI had assembled the strongest case. The first murder of eleven he was indicted for was the killing of Michael Albergo, dating back to August 1970.
4. Nicholas W. Calabrese was listed as affiliated with the South Side 26th Street/Chinatown crew. Although Nick was cooperating with the FBI, he was indicted and would stand for his crimes, including the murder of John Fecarotta and thirteen others.
5. Frank Schweihs, known as Frank the German, was a feared enforcer and street tax collector and a murderer and extortionist. He was one of the most dangerous members of the Outfit and rivaled my father in notoriety, cruelty, and treachery. Michael Spilotro told his family that if they saw Frankie Schweihs lurking outside the family property, they should call the police immediately.
6. Frank “Gumba” Saladino, a member of my father’s South Side 26th Street/Chinatown crew, committed murder and other criminal activities on behalf of the Chicago Outfit. Saladino had done a lot of overtime with a knife and fork, weighing in at four hundred pounds. When served with his indictment, he was found dead in a motel room in the northern suburb of Hampshire where he’d been living for two months.
7. Paul Schiro was arrested in Arizona. “The Indian,” a jewel thief, burglar, and killer, served as the Outfit’s conduit to the southwestern United States. He was listed as an associate of Frank the German and Tony Spilotro while the Ant was serving the Outfit in Vegas. Also responsible for the Vaci homicide.
8. Michael Marcello, or Mickey, allegedly operated an illegal video poker gambling business with half brother Jimmy Marcello under the name M&M Amusement.
9. Nicholas Ferriola was the son of Joe Ferriola and a member of the South Side 26th Street/Chinatown crew. He was accused of “delivering messages to associates of the enterprise and collecting money generated by extortion demands” for my father while he was inside FCI Milan.
10. Anthony Doyle was one of two corrupt law enforcement officers who the Outfit had in their pocket. “Twan” was a former CPD officer who kept my dad informed by passing messages and supplying important confidential information about my uncle and Jimmy DiForti to determine if they were cooperating with law enforcement.
11. Michael Ricci, a retired CPD officer, was subsequently employed by the Cook County Sheriff’s Department. He collaborated with Twan Doyle and my father, passing messages about the bloody gloves that linked Nick to the murder of John Fecarotta. He was indicted on one count of making false statements to the FBI.
Of the eleven defendants, seven were singled out for committing murder or agreeing to commit murder on the Outfit’s behalf. They were my father, my uncle, Jimmy Marcello, Joe Lombardo, Frank the German, Gumba Saladino, and Paul Schiro.
Through their involvement in M&M Amusement, three additional Marcello associates—Thomas Johnson, Dennis Johnson, and Joseph Venezia—were charged, raising the number of those indicted from eleven to fourteen. Each was charged with one count of conducting an illegal gambling business. The Johnsons appeared in FBI surveillance photos carrying video poker machines.
Besides the murders and attempted murders spanning decades, the racketeering crimes named in the indictments included juice loans (charging 1 to 10 percent interest per week), illegal gambling, violence, intimidation and threats, obstructing justice, using fictitious fronts to hide criminal proceeds, using coded language and names for fellow conspirators and victims of their crimes, monitoring law enforcement radio frequencies to detect law enforcement presence, using walkie-talkies while conducting criminal activities, acquiring explosives and explosive devices, maintaining hidden control of labor organizations and assets, maintaining hidden interests in businesses to receive untraceable income, and maintaining written records and ledgers for loan-sharking and bookmaking activities.
The official press release showed that the Bureau meant business and that the investigation that started a few years earlier when the Two Mikes reopened the Fecarotta murder case had blossomed into a high-priority attack on the Outfit.
“This unprecedented indictment puts a ‘hit’ on the Mob,” said Patrick Fitzgerald. “After so many years, it lifts the veil of secrecy and exposes the violent underworld of organized crime.” With strong words, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, through these indictments, were sending a stern message to organized crime.
“While there have been many successful investigations during the past quarter-century resulting in the arrest and indictment of high-ranking members of the Chicago Outfit,” said Robert Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of the FBI, “never before have so many in lofty positions in the Chicago mob been charged in the same case.”
Many were convinced that my father’s harsh and abusive treatment of Kurt, my uncle, and me had dragged the low-key and publicity-shy Outfit into a high-profile prosecutorial shoot-out. The words of Vito Corleone in The Godfather echoed throughout the streets of Chicago: “A man who doesn’t take care of his family is not a man.”
Once the indictments dropped, two of the primary defendants—Joey the Clown and Frank the German—went on the lam. It would be eight months before Schweihs was arrested in Berea, Kentucky, forty miles outside of Lexington. The seventy-five-year-old Schweihs was nabbed as he left the town house he was sharing with his “younger and attractive” girlfriend in her sixties.
Lombardo remained a fugitive for nine months until he was apprehended in January of 2006 after leaving the office of Dr. Patrick “Dr. Pat” Spilotro. Lombardo had a couple of after-hour appointments with Dr. Pat to fix an abscessed tooth and perform a bridge adjustment. During his months on the run, Lombardo played cat-and-mouse with the judge (and the press) by feeding letters and communiqués through his lawyer, Rick Halprin, denying any involvement in acts of racketeering, murder, or violence “in anyway [sic] shape or form.”
Agents Tracy Balinao and Luigi Mondini began the search for Lombardo on a Sunday, the day before the April 25, 2005, indictments were unsealed.
They went to arrest him at his place of business. Then they went to his home and to the Italian clubs. They searched up and down the streets and could not find him. He sent letters through his attorney to the judge, saying that if the FBI and the court gave him certain considerations he would come in.
Nine months later Balinao and Mondini set up surveillance and, with their car, T-boned Lombardo’s car in an alley. He was a passenger. The agents had to yell at the driver—who was quite elderly—to put the car in park. Joe the Clown was polite when he was apprehended, dressed like a homeless person sporting a beard, looking like Saddam Hussein. At first he wasn’t going to tell the Feds who he was, but he had a driver’s license on him with his name on it. He didn’t want to get the guy who was driving into trouble, so the FBI took him to their office and fingerprinted him. The agents found him to be very personable, and Luigi tried to get him to talk by speaking a little bit of Italian.
With the MCC full for the night, Joey was taken to the Chicago Police Department lockup to be held. Once there, he was more conversational, recommending restaurants in the area. The next day, he was set to be moved over to the MCC. Joey had made friends with the folks in the lockup, and warmly greeted federal agents. Gone was his homeless look. “See?” he said. “I shaved for you. I got all nice.”
As charming and amusing as Joey could be, the FBI was aware of his vicious side. He’s personable and nice, and people love him, but if he’s crossed, that’s it. The wiretap of Lombardo meeting with Morris Shenker shows the other side of Joey, when Shenker, a St. Louis mob attorney and Las Vegas casino investor, was warned by Lombardo during a 1979 money dispute:
Lombardo: How old are you, Morris?
Shenker: Seventy-two.
Lombardo: If they come back and tell me to give you a message and if you want to defy it, I assure you that you will never reach seventy-three.
Other than some idle speculation, no one knew I was wearing a wire until I made the grievous error of telling my brother Kurt, who passed it on to his lawyer. This misstep put the investigation in serious danger. Standard procedure is that the only person who should know that you’re cooperating is you. You can’t even tell your wife.
When my Bureau contacts found out that I had leaked it to my brother, their first reaction was “expletive deleted.” The agents didn’t yell at me, but they did ask, “Do you want to get killed?” That’s essentially what it came down to. Kurt got out before me, while I was still inside with my dad. Thank goodness the information didn’t spread and nothing happened.
The Feds did hear on one of the wires before indictment, around 2003, that Jimmy Marcello had made a comment about my wearing a wire. Marcello said, “Don’t talk to the kid,” and he ran his fingers up and down his chest as if he had a wire on. I don’t know if Marcello was guessing or was certain.
Originally, Uncle Nick suspected that the FBI’s sudden flood of information came from Jimmy DiForti and not from me, since the FBI couldn’t play, and never played, any of my Milan prison yard tapes to my uncle. He was in the dark as to my role in the case, but after Nick figured out it was me, he apparently wasn’t angry, and said, “I should have known. I knew what he grew up with. I grew up with the same guy so I understand what he had to do.”
The gulf of time elapsing between Uncle Nick’s flipping in January of 2002 and the spring of 2005, when the indictments and arrests landed, was occupied by the intense prep work that goes on between the gathering of evidence and the trial. Once everything pertinent to the case was collected and cataloged, it was time for an important road trip—the delivery of 1.2 million documents, which were assembled, boxed, and loaded into two tractor trailers.
Operation Family Secrets: How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family Page 23