| Mob’s latest trend: farming out hits to gang-bangers BY STEVE WARMBIR FEDERAL COURTS REPORTER The west suburban bookie was furious with a rival bookie for backing out of a deal. He wanted revenge. But instead of turning to the mob to rub out his enemy, he took another route: He hired a member of a street gang to do it, investigators say. Call it a hit by outsourcing. Law enforcement sources say it’s a new trend in mob slayings, a way of getting dangerous jobs done with a minimum of risk to Outfit leaders. Instead of turning to a brutal mob killer such as Harry Aleman, who is now in prison, mobsters turn to gang-bangers. Take murder suspect Bruno Mancari, for instance. Mancari, who has alleged mob ties, was accused in February of reaching out to an associate in the El Rukn street gang to bump off a witness in the murder case against him. Unfortunately for Mancari, an FBI informant was in the same room when Mancari called a mobster associate from Cook County Jail to discuss the hit. Mancari’s attorneys call it all hogwash. Last year, in another case, Anthony “the Hatch” Chiaramonti was shot to death outside a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta in south suburban Lyons. The shooter was described as a Hispanic man, police said. Two years before, mob lieutenant Ronald Jarrett was shot and killed outside his Bridgeport home. The shooter was described as a black man, authorities said. In the 1995 case involving the furious suburban bookie, one of the alleged gang members involved owed the bookmaker money, so the bookmaker urged the gang member to rob the rival bookie. The gang member then could pay off his debt and keep whatever else he could steal from the rival bookie’s Glen Ellyn home, authorities said. The west suburban bookie told the gang member what day would be best–a day when the target would be sure to have tens of thousands of dollars in cash on hand. And it was always understood, investigators say, that the rival bookie was to be killed–not just robbed. The hit fell apart when the DuPage County sheriff’s police were tipped off to it. FBI and DuPage investigators caught the gang member and two fellow gang members outside the rival bookie’s Glen Ellyn home as they tried to break in. A fourth burglar escaped into the woods. While the three gang members were convicted of armed violence and burglary, investigators were never able to put together a good enough case to charge the bookmaker who set the crime in motion. But they were able to save a life. |
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| TV mobster Tony Soprano runs his Bada Bing strip club and garbage hauling firm. Real-life mobsters are diversified, too. They need legit ways to explain their high life. Sometimes they invest illegal profits in businesses; sometimes they just muscle their way in.
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In April, the first installment of Crime Inc. looked at how Chicago�s street gangs have become drug empires with Fortune 500 bottom lines. Click here to download the series in pdf format
Taking a lead from the feds, state prosecutors will comb through state tax returns and other financial records of suspected drug dealers is what they think could become a model for the rest of the nation.
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