Cosa Nostra News

John A. Matassa Jr.—a reputed Chicago mob figure and longtime union boss who earlier this year copped to a federal felony charge of embezzlement in an alleged scheme to fraudulently qualify for early retirement benefits— is going to federal prison. Matassa, aka Pudgy, faced sentencing on July 22, more than two years after a 10-count federal indictment slapped him in the nads. His defense had been that the U.S. Department of Labor had targeted him, a viewpoint that didn't hold much water in the view of the judge. In court recently, the two butted heads when Matassa stood before the judge and said,“ The only reason I’m standing here today is because my name is John Matassa .” The judge retorted with: “ You pled guilty to a felony to avoid going to trial. That’s why you’re here right now. Not because your name is John Matassa .”) The case stemmed from Matassa’s job as the secretary-treasurer of the Independent Union of Amalgamated Workers Local 711. While his plea a...

John (Pudgy) Matassa Jr., a reputed longtime Chicago Outfit member and former union boss, will ask a federal judge today to delay his upcoming sentencing for embezzlement because of serious medical problems -- and prosecutors apparently have no problem with that. John Pudgy Matassa Jr. Matassa Jr., 67, pleaded guilty in February to a scam to fraudulently qualify for early retirement benefits. Matassa was to be sentenced on May 22, but a visit to his cardiologist and then a heart surgeon are on track to interrupt the plan. The man suffers from "coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, sleep apnea, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease," according to a filing. Prosecutors don't oppose the delay in Matassa's sentencing. In the government's sentencing memorandum filed yesterday, prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly to sentence Matassa to between 27 and 33 months imprisonment -- and also acknowledged "that it would be app...

"I have to help you keep this sick man locked up forever."  --Frank Calabrese Junior Family Secrets trial (source: NPR ) The investigation that decimated the Chicago Outfit began when a letter dated July 27, 1998, reached the FBI's Chicago headquarters. “I am sending you this letter in total confidentiality," it began. "It is very important that you show or talk to nobody about this letter except who you have to. The less people that know I am contacting you the more I can and will help and be able to help you.” The message had been sent from the federal correctional facility in Milan, Michigan. The writer was Frank Calabrese Junior, a son of Frank (Frankie Breeze) Calabrese Senior, an especially vicious member of the Chicago organized crime family known as the Outfit. The letter spawned a seven-year investigation that went back to the 1970s. The original indictment named 14 defendants and included 18 previously unsolved murders; it  culm...

For some, this is old news; for others, it's very old news. For us, it's timeless .... To be “made” in Chicago meant one was 100 percent Italian and had committed at least one murder. The making ceremony was one of the closest-held events in the “ secret organization hidden in the shadows, ” according to the federal government. Getting made entitled one to a greater share of the proceeds from illicit gambling, loans, and street taxes. A Mafia initiation ceremony described in Mario Puzo’s novel the Godfather is “very close” to the truth, according to Frank Calabrese Sr. while speaking to his son in 1999. Both were in prison at the time, only Frank Calabrese Sr. didn't know what his son was truly seeking from him. Frank Calabrese Junior  was wearing a wire as part of a personal quest to keep his homicidal father in prison for the rest of his life. As per that mission, he was cooperating with the FBI against his own father — hence, the significance of t...

"I’m like an old-time general. They’d better give me some stars.” -- Giuseppe (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, caught on wiretap The Clown He was The Clown, but he was an intelligent clown who read the Wall Street Journal. (FBI agents who knew Joey the Clown Lombardo were amazed by his business and financial acumen.) He also embodied such an extreme paradoxical nature, he almost shouldn't have existed. “[H]e was no clown; he was a deadly killer,” Bill Roemer, the late FBI Outfit investigator, once wrote. “I believe he filled up a cemetery or two," Michael Corbitt, the former corrupt police chief, now deceased, who spilled secrets in a best-selling book once said of Lombardo. Some in law enforcement even found positive feedback to offer. "It’s kind of refreshing to have people like Joey Lombardo out there,” Peter Wacks, a former FBI agent who once helped put Lombardo away said when the mobster lammed it for the family Secrets case. "There are...

UPDATED Joey (the Clown) Lombardo, the wisecracking jokester who was am ong the Chicago Outfit’s most colorful, and deadly, figures , asserts his innocence and decries repressive prison conditions in a letter written in his supermax cell in Florence, Colo. Joey the Clown Lombardo In the letter, which was released this week, Lombardo, nearly 90, writes that his body and memory are both failing. (He’s withstood treatment for throat cancer and has had his gall bladder removed and stents put in.) Sentenced to life in prison about a decade ago when he was convicted in the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial, Lombardo once again claims he was wrongfully convicted and asks U.S. District Chief Judge Ruben Castillo to appoint him a new lawyer. In the letter, reportedly his first public correspondence since his sentencing in 2009, he notes: “My mind comes and goes. All my teeth are out and waiting for the prison to give me false teeth … over 3 months no false tee...

In February of this year the Feds  revealed  that a former prison chaplain passed "sensitive information" about a Chicago Outfit turncoat to an imprisoned mobster who had a lot to gain by killing the turncoat. Frank Calabrese Senior The allegations were filed in court after the priest, Eugene Klein, in a surprise move, pleaded guilty just as his trial was to commence. The Catholic priest initially was indicted for planning a theft with feared former Chicago Outfit member Frank Calabrese Sr. The priest's lawyer pointedly remarked: “Once again the government has chosen to go completely over the top because of Frank Calabrese. They recommend no more than six months for Dennis Hastert and 10 times that amount for Father Klein. That is absurd.” The attorney reportedly had previously aimed his vitriol at then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald for filing the case against Klein in the first place. In 2011, he commented to journalists that “now that we don’t have a...