Was sentenced as well today.

http://www.fivefamiliesnyc.com/2012/09/chicago-mobster-gets-1-year-sentence.html

Is it just me or does every mobster on trial use the "not in good health" card?

Yup, i think you're right 123... i don't think a conviction happens without someone *coughing*

Wow that shows that there is still stuff going on in Cleveland and they are connected to Chicago

Most the high profile guys arrested are going to be older men. So it is a plausible excuse, truth or lie. Judges however, rarely grant leniency to OC crimnials for it.

Hello, first time poster. Seems to be a whole lot of underestimating/misunderstanding when it comes to Da Outfit (but hey, that's they way they like it!) on this website, clicked two recent topics & stopped reading pretty quickly.

anyways, yes, the Chicago Outfit is still extremely powerful, and gaining in power as of late, due to the unbelievable recent increase in black gang violence/mayhem, specifically over the past 5 years. That & the decrease in violence since the hatch murder has allowed the outfit to somewhat regroup & regain footing on the streets, particularly in regards to allowing younger members to get initiated & get their feet wet. Obviously not to the extent of the 60s/70s/80s, but Chicago is a much, much, much larger city than it was back then.

The outfit has downsized to two families, Elmwood Park & Cicero. Those have always been the two powerhouses over the past 30 years, but now the Northside, Rush St., Heights, & Melrose Park families have been sanctioned in to the two main ones. Each family has a sub family, Elmwood's being Grand Ave, and Cicero's being Chinatown. It's white collar (Elmwood) & blue collar (Cicero), with the white collar primarily dealing in light work, not much heavy stuff, and Cicero still keeping things pretty gutter & dealing with much more street crime, especially in the southwest burbs & obviously Chinatown. Drugs are most certainly a giant endeavor for the outfit, as is arms dealing. Anyone that says otherwise is mistaken. There was also a giant casino that was recently constructed in Des Plaines, not fifteen minutes from Elmwood Park, as well as numerous other endeavors, many legit businesses, especially with Elmwood.

The outfit is absolutely remarkable in its ability to confuse people & get rid of information. There are hordes of young (20s-40s) Outfit thugs that have not accumulated federal records as of yet. Street is more tightlipped & closed off from the public than ever before.

The current structure is a bit confusing, and some may argue, but it reads something like this:

Elmwood Park: Johnny & Peter DiFronzo/Marco D'Amico
Grand Ave.: Porky Pordyla/Al Vena

Cicero: Solly DeLaurentis/Jimmy Inendino
Chinatown: The Caruso Bros.

This will all be changing soon, as all of the men listed above (save for Frank Caruso) are more or less geriatrics LOL. Then things will really start to get confusing. American News Post is a great site to satisfy your "fascination" with them, but I'm sure you've probably been there, and apparently the "outfit chat" got severely out of hand on there or something, dunno. From what I understand its mainly folks with Northside knowledge on there.

Anyways, cheers! Oh, and Rudy chinstrap Fratto is a well known bum, boss my ass lol

Thanks for the post.

I had read/heard on ANP about the possible split into two families.

How often do they communicate? Does DiFronzo have say over the other one and just not exert it or does he want nothing to do with Cicero?

What roles do Joe Kong, Chris Spina and Pudgy Matassa play?

Where was Sarno before he went away? The papers were trying to make it seem like he was the boss(when don't they make someone out to the the boss) but others on ANP were saying he wasn't. Yet some on here were saying he was a boss.

Thanks in advance. Always good to talk about Chicago stuff.

You're very welcome.

ANP is by far the most thorough informational site on the outfit in existence, however keep in mind, that most of the guys on there releasing info have been previously dicked over by an Outfit member, or are related to a certain guy, so a lot of the info can be very biased.

anyways, Johnny Bananas doesn't have a whole lot to do with anything anymore, he's ancient lol. he shelved his brothers, Marco, etc a long time ago, and its mainly younger men you've never heard of that run the northside & take their orders from the elder statesmen. I don't think the beef between EP & Cicero is as bad as some might say, it was primarily between bananas (johnDF) and Jimmy Light Marcello, but the Outfit is still a family and people do business together all the time. ie, Cicero will use grand ave for heavy work, etc. hell, Marco D is a Cicero vet, spend 17 yrs down there during the 50s/60s., and is now exclusively Elmwood.

guys like Kong Cullotta & Christy Spina are just Grand Ave soldiers, under Pordyla & Vena. I remember Cullotta fronting for Pordyla during the whole family secrets nonsense. Pordyla was Frankie Schweihs's partner for over thirty years, always under Lombardo. he's half Polish and boss of grand ave, so that should tell you the outfit really do not emphasize on being full Italian, even for top spots.

regarding fat sarno, no he was never the boss, but he was most certainly third or fourth in line down there. he's also still one of the younger guys, so if he hadn't gotten locked up, he most likely would have been given a top position within the next 5-10 years, seeing as how Jimmy I & Solly D are very old men. sarno aligned himself well early on, by having his daughter marry into either the Inendino or the Marcello family, the two most powerful names on the southside.

anything else, please feel free. thanks.

Hello welcome to the boards Ricobenes. It's always good to add new members, especially ones that know about Chicago since they are a very low key family and little is known about them. My questions are about three fold at this point.
My first one is how many members the Outfit has, in terms of made men, which doesn't have to include a formal induction

My second- is John DiFronzo still the Boss? And how relevant are Joe Andriacchi, Marco D'Amico, Pete DiFronzo, John Matassa, Caruso, etc.

My third is- What kind of activities does the Outfit still engage in? Do they still control Unions, construction, gambling, loansharking, etc?

Yeah, ANP was a great site. I missed all the activity/discussion by about 6 months, just didn't find the website in time.

But alot of those discussions, that you can still read, were very informative and interesting. Obviously, like you said, there were some people with ulterior motives and certain POV's to get across. Still good info.

Thanks for the info so far.

Well, lot of what you're asking has been addressed in my previous posts. There are two families in Chicago, Elmwood Park & Cicero. Johnny D. is the boss of Elmwood, James. Inendino is the boss down in Cicero. Johnny is, however, very old and decrepit, and has the final say on matters, but doesn't handle work anymore. Joe Andriacchi has been dying of cancer in upstate NY and may have even already passed away over the past year, obviously deeming him irrelevant. As you probably know, he was the boss of Rush St./Northside, and Matassa was his underboss. The Rush St family was completely sanctioned into Elmwood Park, and with it, Andriacchi's crew. Marco is rumoured to have absorbed the Andriacchi crew, therefore making Matassa second in command in Marco's crew. Marco & Greedy Pete are about equal, they are directly under Johnny in Elmwood, and facilitate their own personal crews. Toots & Bruno Caruso still maintain power down in Chinatown, that is all I will say in regards to current Chinatown, I am not comfortable talking about the current Chinatown layout, sorry. they are pretty goddamn relevant & dangerous, know that lol.

In regards to Outfit numbers, I can safely say that they are at around 60-70 made guys, and upwards of 300+ associates, and that is just from my own personal knowledge. There could very well be many, many more, and probably is. I don't know too much about what goes on in Da Heights, far south burbs, where they are rumoured to be even greater in number than before.

Finally, in regards to crime, union control has waned, not saying its irrelevant, but its waned, for obvious reasons. Business has primarily been shifted to the suburbs, minus Chinatown/Grand Ave, where they can have more freedom & control over local law enforcement. Suburban towns like Elmwood, Melrose, Darien, Lombard, Westchester, Island Lake, and many others have been completely constricted by the Outfit. Of course they still partake in the classic endeavors that you mentioned, but drugs & arms dealing have become an especially burgeoning market for the Outfit, especially within the Cicero family, but up north as well. Legit businesses as well, local gourmet grocery store chains like Mariano's, Tony's Finer Foods, Caputo's, and several others are Outfit controlled. The largest dumpster company in the city D&P is owned by the DiFronzo family. They are also rumoured to be the owner of Centralla brand items, which package everything from cheese to tin foil, and are sold as catch all items in all the local Jewel/Dominick's.

@PP, ANP is still a wonderful site, he just felt he was giving them too much attention & groupie bullshit (which they like) and slowed down with the Outfit articles.

Articles like the Lee Magnafichi piece and the lengthy interview with his son Mikey Mags, are gems that you will not find ANYWHERE but ANP. Seriously, I to this day cannot believe he had the cajones to publish that Mike Mags interview!

How can you explain the FBI estimates of under 30 made men which seems to fit the low amount of activity out of Chicago in recent years?

@camarel low activity in regards to what? men getting arrested? The feds are usually incorrect, these are the guys that thought that accardo was boss for over forty years lol! these are also the shitheads that thought fat sarno was boss of grand ave! things change, Chicago changed for the better, whereas ny has yet to learn their from their mistakes

We had a poster here before that we were supposed to just take his word for his claims about Chicago i'm not willing to get into a similar discussion so welcome to the boards.

Well believe whatever you want I suppose. Put it this way, the Chinstrap fratto wiretaps were just released. This is a guy who isn't even a high level guy anymore, and hes still handling giant schemes and deals. Rudy is a clown and a moron, so he got popped, but that should just go to show you, if a piss broke, broken down wannabe goof like Rudy Fratto is wheeling & dealing with Cleveland people and masterminding mccormick place schemes, just think what smarter, legit Outfit guys are up to. Food for thought.

I know you should never judge someone on his looks, but was Fat Mike Sarno feared ? Because he looks pretty funny lol

heh oh absolutely fat sarno is/was one of the most brutal, ruthless, feared guys in the city. His crew is especially known for being particularly brutal. Fat sarno is also known as a piggish, disgusting idiot, who doesn't play by the rules and brings a ton of heat, most likely why he is a well known figure & also why he was recently convicted, lol. Believe it or not his relatives & friends have been campaigning a "free big mike" t-shirt campaign around the city, you'll see a number of Italians wearing the garb all over town, lol...not something the Outfit is necessarily looking for.

That's why never to judge a guy on how he looks lol
Now most of the members really look like they mean business. But Sarno, Fratto and Pudgy Matassa all looked pretty weird in the pictures I saw of them

Haha Fratto is exactly how he looks, a clown. That's why he's going away on some goofball bullshit. Matassa is literally one of the roundest individuals I have ever seen, like a beachball lol.

Sarno, though, is like 6'6, he's a gigantic human being.

Ricobenes, I have a few question about the outfit overall in the 70's and 80's. They are basically general questions about the interactions between different crews.

What was the interaction like between crews in the outfit in the 70's and 80's?

According to a outfit chart done by some people on ANP, they set up the outfit with 6 crews. Two crews were headed by Joey Lombardo and Turk Torello. So I will base my questions of these 2 crews and and use them as examples.

Would crew bosses, say Turk and Lombardo, know that each other were crew bosses? Or would each crew be very secretive in what they let other crews know and only the boss of the outfit would actually know who each crew boss was? I ask because it seems like each crew is basically its own family, so would each crew try to keep other crews in the dark for strategic purposes? I guess I'm asking, would the boss in the 70's and 80s'(Aiuppa) be the only person who knew who each crew boss was or was it generally know?

Also, since each crew is basically independent, who would each crew know who other soldiers were in each crew? Like in NYC, guys between families are introduced with "this is a friend of ours" so guys in other familes know that a guy is a made man. Did that happen between crews? Would a solider in Turks crew know who were soldiers in Lombardo's crew or would he have to be told by someone?

Sorry, for the long question. Just really interested in the outfit and have been waiting for someone with knowledge. Wanted to ask those guys on ANP but I got there to late.

So what's wrong with andriachii and why Is he in new York? I'm sure we would've heard if he was dead. And i don't agree that they are 2 different families. They definately communicate

PP, Everyone would know who was who in the Outfit. During the 70's and 80's there were indeed 6 crews. 4 of the Crews were partnered with the Dominent 2 Crews (Cicero & Elmwood Park).

Yes, the Boss of 26th Street (Torello) would not only know the Boss of Grand Ave (Lombardo) but they would sometimes work together on things. Union activity, murder etc.

Guys working under the Made guys would generally know other soldier/associates working under other made guys in other areas.

Murder was carried out by trusted made guys. However, sometimes a soldier/associate would be involved in a murder which would mean he was in line to move up and get made at some point in the future.

The street lingo in Chicago varied:
Sometimes the Head of a large street crew would be called a CAPO or AREA BOSS.
The UNDERBOSS of the entire Outfit would sometimes be called the NUMBER 2. He would also be a Capo.
A MADE GUY would sometimes be called a STREET BOSS.
A guy who worked under the made guy full time and was his crew member would sometimes be called a SOLDIER/ASSOCIATE or to make it short a SOLDIER.
A guy who did business with the Outfit on the street level like a street bookie who was a 25% partner with a crew would sometimes be called a STREET/ASSOCIATE or to make it short a STREET GUY.