One interpretation of the Outfit’s current status has been to look at the dwindling numbers of known made guys from that 20 year old member list and assume that the organization is rapidly withering away due to attrition. That perhaps Marcello and Sarno tried to get the thing running again but they got knocked before they were able to do so. That the recent gambling busts indicate a mostly vestigial LCN family with some loosely connected associates running a few gambling operations in the suburbs. That the Chicago Outfit was at the verge of following the Cleveland Outfit to the land of the dodo, if it hadn’t already basically done so.Antiliar wrote: ↑Mon Feb 07, 2022 10:44 amI think that's good advice. We should be cautious with every informant. We also need to be cautious with our own presuppositions and what we think we know to be true. I can say that my source was and is a well-placed associate with a family history that includes a made guy. He's somewhat disgruntled, but maintains his connections. Not everyone is happy with him, but the top people are protecting him. Some other people have vouched for him. I've come to consider him very credible based not only on the information he shared with me, but also the many photos he shared. I shared a couple of those photos here. To me, his information also makes sense and seems to fit with what Mike Mags told me. But each should decide for themselves what to conclude. I'm not putting any pressure on anyone on what to think. The new information can be a bit overwhelming for some. It's been overwhelming for me. He's shown personal information that I haven't shared here, and details that I wish he hadn't told me. I'm not sure why he picked me, but others contact me too. Anyways, I thought this group would enjoy the new material and would get something out of it.Snakes wrote: ↑Mon Feb 07, 2022 8:22 am We also need to be careful about taking everything this guy says as fact. Take it, digest it, compare it to other information that we have, and make a decision. So far, I have no reason to think anything he said has been inaccurate, specifically in regards to the goings-on in today's Outfit. However, without knowing the source (made guy, associate, family member?), it's difficult to make a true judgement on veracity. For example, Richard Mara was interviewed by agents in 1980 and identified a bunch of guys as "made" who weren't. He also said Spilotro was boss over Lombardo on Grand Avenue and that DiVarco was also part of that crew, all of which we now know is false. That doesn't mean that everything he said was false, or that I don't believe Antilar's guy is being truthful, we just have to be cautious.
This was always a plausible scenario to me, one that I think wasn’t inconsistent with the facts that we had, but it wasn’t my personal belief. While I didn’t believe that Chicago was rebuilding a powerful mafia organization in the shadows (etc., etc.) my gut instinct was that they remain a much smaller but viable and structured LCN family, with a small number of made members mainly insulated from the streets and trusted associates running their rackets. That they had made new members and that some of these would be names that had not even been on our radar. That since the 90s they had moved into narcotics and that links to street gangs were an important part of their wider criminal network on the street. My assumption was that Vena and Panozzo were illustrative of the kind of guys around the Outfit today, and that they can be very dangerous and capable of effectively using violence when they deem it necessary. Given that Carparelli was a 12th St Player, my thinking was that modern Cicero was going to have links to gangs and former gangbangers like Grand Ave has. Another line of thinking on my part was that aside from guys from the street gang world, the Outfit may have current guys within their ranks with links to back to Italy. For me the writing was all over the wall that at least up until the 2000s Chicago had ties to Italian OC groups and I doubt that those just evaporated in the last 20 years.
So much of what Antiliar’s source has claimed has, for me at least, gone a good way towards confirming my suspicions. Because it aligns my own assumptions, I certainly need to exercise caution in not over interpreting these claims, as it could serve to confirm my personal biases. Just thought I’d share my thoughts on this and make them explicit.