A distinct form of international flavor appears to be coloring sizeable portions of what the future will look like in the rustbelt LCN mafia groups in Chicago and Detroit, respectively, per mob insiders, academics and federal intelligence emerging in both cities. The Chicago Outfit and Detroit’s Tocco-Zerilli crime family each have “Zip” factions growing fast and furious, while carving out more prominent pieces of the shot-calling and overall profit-sharing pie for themselves than their predecessors in their respective regions and are viewed as representative of their organizations’ evolution going forward, according to fresh federal intel provided by sources that don’t want their identity disclosed.

Fresh legs in Windy City, Lake County set up to remain major cog in Outfit wheel after Solly D era

In the Chicago mob, the “Zips” have always been few and far between, especially so in contrast to the Outfit’s East Coast mafia contemporaries in places like New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. More recently, per multiple sources on both sides of the law, a pair of brothers from the “other side,” have asserted themselves to the forefront of the Chicago mafia’s Cicero crew, with the mentorship of Outfit don Salvatore (Solly D) DeLaurentis, heading the regime’s Lake and McHenry County branch where the aging DeLaurentis hails from. Over the better part of the past two decades, the brothers and DeLaurentis have partnered in business deals, allegedly both legal and illegal, including co-owning (mostly silently) produce companies, wholesale food-distribution companies, construction firms and restaurants, according to exclusive GR sources.

Since the death of the DiFronzo brothers the seat of power in the Chicago moved back to Cicero from Elmwood Park, per sources. DeLaurentis became boss of the Outfit in 2011 upon the racketeering conviction and incarceration of acting don Michael (Fat Mike) Sarmo and then official boss a few years later with the retirement of Godfather John (Johnny No Nose) DiFronzo. Born and bred in Cicero, “Fat Mike” Sarno is alleged to have inducted more than two dozen younger-aged wiseguys between 2005 and 2010 that are now ascending as leaders of the Cicero regime and Chicago mob affairs in general, while they take counsel from Sarno from behind bars, per sources and prison phone logs. “Solly D” allegedly “made” the unnamed brothers, who reportedly reside and operate mainly, but not exclusively, in Lake County, shortly following him taking the reins of the Outfit on a daily basis, these sources claim.

Back in the early 1980s, DeLaurentis, empowered by the Outfit brass of the day, took over his now-longtime territory in Lake and McHenry Counties by force, pushing old-school Chicago mob captain Joseph (Black Joe) Amato into an involuntary retirement. DeLaurentis is currently 85 years old and increasingly-infirmed allegedly rules his mafia family through a series of front bosses based in Cicero, Elmwood Park and Grand Avenue on Chicago’s near Westside.


Motor City mob’s Sicilian wing gaining more steam by the second

Sicilian wiseguys Giuseppe (Joe the Hood) D’Anna and Girolamo (Mimmo) D’Anna have lived in Detroit since the early 1990s and lead the Tocco-Zerilli crime family’s growing-in-influence-and-numbers Sicilian branch, per sources, court documents and federal intelligence briefings. Seventy-one year old “Joe the Hood” reportedly skippers the crew that has control of most of Metro Detroit’s East Side, these sources say. FBI intel memos and federal-court filings dating all the way back to the 1980s link D’Anna to both feuding Detroit mob bosses of yesteryear; first-cousins Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco and Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli, who died of natural causes a decade ago no longer on speaking terms after running the borgata as boss and underboss, respectively, from the 1970s until a galactic falling out between the one-time inseparable mafia princes, following Zerilli concluding a federal prison term in 2005.

The D’Annas started visiting family in Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s as teens during summer trips to the Motor City and at that time allegedly would sometimes act in spot-duty as gofers and drivers for Tocco and Zerilli, according to FBI 302s. “Mimmo,” 59, allegedly looks after the fresh-off-the-boat brigade that began coming to Motown and beefing up the D’Anna East Side mob regime’s ranks in the late 2000s. Both D’Annas were convicted of beating and extorting a rival restaurant owner from their hometown of Terrasini in Sicily’s Palermo region in a 2009 altercation in local and federal court as counts in a racketeering and extortion case brought after their cases in state court were resolved with what the feds thought was a misguided slap on the wrist. The Tocco and Zerilli bloodlines trace back to Terrasini, too. Detroit mafia founding fathers William (Black Bill) Tocco and Giuseppe (Joe Uno) Zerilli came to Detroit from Terrasini in the first part of the 20th Century, establishing the city’s LCN family in 1931 by winning the Crosstown Mob War, when Tocco and Zerilli’s East Side Gang bested the perceived entitled Westsiders.

Historically, the Detroit mafia’s Zip faction had sway in the borgata, however, this era they appear to possess considerably more and in substantially more diverse ways, per sources. From the 1940s into the 1980s, the Badalamenti family ran Sicilian-crew operations for the Tocco-Zerilli mob. The Badalamentis were heavily involved in the infamous Pizza Connection heroin-smuggling ring and had control of the construction rackets in the Detroit and Southern Michigan areas for many years leading up to the D’Anna brothers arrived in the U.S. and in Metro Detroit as full-time residents.