General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[funkster]

Curious if anyone is familiar with these two police officers, John Adreani and Robert Bondi. Interesting case, both were fired from CPD and were involved in illegal gambling, both slots and roving poker games. It looks like Adriani owns a slot machine company V.S.S. They are placed in cities where slots are illegal. I believe there have been outfit guys with both the last names of Andreani and Bondi.

https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/cit ... 792880.pdf

https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.c ... 1cbda9423c

This is a good find, i dont remember this.


Anyone remember Mike Colella? Elmwood Park guy who got acquitted after being shit faced at a bar and beat the fuck out of a female CPD officer? Is he still alive?

Was he related to Santino Colella?

Mike Colella is still alive. He’s in his mid-60s now and living in Addison last I checked. Haven’t heard anything about him being connected, but clearly he was back in the 80s given that he was represented by Bob Cooley who was ordered by Marcy to fix Colella’s case. Guy was a beast, multiple times in the papers for beating the shit out of people. Maybe too much of a hot head to remain in the loop, who knows. I believe that Mike’s parents were Dominick and Rosa Colella, who were killed in Addison in ‘90 when a teenaged driver slammed into their car.

I tried to link Mike to Santino Colella and wasn’t able to do so.; didn’t seem any direct connection, though both guys are very likely Barese in ancestry so a deeper relation is possible. Santino I believe was either born in Bari and if not his parents were. What’s funny too is that both guys have caught cases for beating up cops. In ‘94, Santino was busted for attacking cops in Franklin Park who were trying to serve him on a warrant. Definitely rough dudes in both cases.

I think he was primarily a muscle guy, though you have to wonder why they'd use their judges for a guy so low on the totem pole. Not sure who he worked for. Believe the judge that got him off ended up getting caught up in the greylord stuff.

[PolackTony]

Curious if anyone is familiar with these two police officers, John Adreani and Robert Bondi. Interesting case, both were fired from CPD and were involved in illegal gambling, both slots and roving poker games. It looks like Adriani owns a slot machine company V.S.S. They are placed in cities where slots are illegal. I believe there have been outfit guys with both the last names of Andreani and Bondi.

https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/cit ... 792880.pdf

https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.c ... 1cbda9423c

This is a good find, i dont remember this.


Anyone remember Mike Colella? Elmwood Park guy who got acquitted after being shit faced at a bar and beat the fuck out of a female CPD officer? Is he still alive?

Was he related to Santino Colella?

Mike Colella is still alive. He’s in his mid-60s now and living in Addison last I checked. Haven’t heard anything about him being connected, but clearly he was back in the 80s given that he was represented by Bob Cooley who was ordered by Marcy to fix Colella’s case. Guy was a beast, multiple times in the papers for beating the shit out of people. Maybe too much of a hot head to remain in the loop, who knows. I believe that Mike’s parents were Dominick and Rosa Colella, who were killed in Addison in ‘90 when a teenaged driver slammed into their car.

I tried to link Mike to Santino Colella and wasn’t able to do so.; didn’t seem any direct connection, though both guys are very likely Barese in ancestry so a deeper relation is possible. Santino I believe was either born in Bari and if not his parents were. What’s funny too is that both guys have caught cases for beating up cops. In ‘94, Santino was busted for attacking cops in Franklin Park who were trying to serve him on a warrant. Definitely rough dudes in both cases.

I think he was primarily a muscle guy, though you have to wonder why they'd use their judges for a guy so low on the totem pole. Not sure who he worked for. Believe the judge that got him off ended up getting caught up in the greylord stuff.

I suspect that the fact that he was a paesan’ of the DiFronzos may have been part of it. Family could have been connected from way back.

The judge for the ‘86 lady CPD beating case was Lawrence Passarella. He was subpoenaed but I don’t believe actually indicted in Greylord; Cooley of course claimed that he had been told by Marcy that they had fixed the case with Passarella. In 1986, Passarella was voted out after a major public outcry was roused by the FOP and also by Mike Royko. Cooley’s defense was patently absurd — that some tattooed villain had slipped a drug into Colella’s drink at the bar, which caused him to fly into a violent rage — and the summary acquittal by Passarella was obviously a mob fix to anyone watching.

Passarella was from Melrose Park; his father, August “Red” Passarella was a major liquor wholesaler who died in 1979. The Passarellas were “Trivvies” (from Trivigno, Potenza, like Aiuppa’s wife, the DeGrazias, the Stacis, and many other in Melrose Park). Red Passarella’s dad was Agostino Passarella, whose brother Rocco Passarella was the acting chief of the MPPF who allegedly ran afoul of Frank Rio and was “taken for a ride” and disappeared in 1931 (supposedly done by Rocco DeGrazia and Jimmy Nucci on the orders of Rio). Another brother, Daniele Passarella, was chief of the MPFD.

[cavita]

Bruno Scordo made the papers a bunch of times in the ‘40s and 50’s. He had been linked to Paul Labriola and Marty Ochs and was arrested for numerous armed robberies, burglaries, and assaults, but here are some more memorable ones. In 1949, he was a suspect in a string of stick ups in NYC. In 1950, he was pinched with Guy Mendola and Peanuts and Butch Panczko for a $100k ($1.2mil today) diamond stick up in Nashville. In 1950, he was in a car with Pete DePietto in Chicago when DePietto was pulled over by the cops as a suspect in a Brinks armored car robbery in Detroit; Scordo escaped when he pulled a gun on the cops and fled. In 1951, he was apprehended in Minneapolis with a stick up crew of other Chicagoans following a chase and shootout with local police.

He was paroled to Chicago in 1955 and by 1965 at the latest he was in Peoria, where he was busted in a car with weapons and burglary tools. Scordo ran the Eldorado Club and the Broadway Club in Peoria. He was arrested in the 70s for operating the Eldorado after hours. In 1982, Scordo got a taste of his own medicine at age 70, when two women from Chicago tied him up and beat and stabbed him in a robbery of the Eldorado. He died in 1990 in Pekin, just outside of Peoria.

I didn’t know that he was called “Bruno the Polack”, presumably a tongue in cheek reference to him palling around with Polish hoodlums in Chicago (his wife, Mary Kuta, was also Polish). Bruno Frank Scordo was born in 1912 in the suburb of LaGrange to Giuseppe Scordo and Giovanna Condello. The Scordos lived in the Grand Ave Patch at Erie and Elizabeth, where Bruno was still living in 1950. While Giuseppe’s WW2 draft card does state that he was born in “Bari”, this was erroneous. His and Giovanna’s arrival records show that both were from Reggio Calabria. Additionally, neither surname, Scordo or Condello, is found in Bari but both are heavily concentrated in Reggio Calabria. In 1942, Bruno Scordo listed his employer as the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center (truly, the inmates were running the asylum), which could have been due to his ties to Paul Labriola, who was of course a bailiff in the Cook County court system.

Here’s a photo of Bruno Scordo at the time of his 1951 shootout with the cops in Minneapolis:

Wow. Thanks for the info- my friend's dad had to go and identify the body when he died because he was a relative.

[funkster]

Curious if anyone is familiar with these two police officers, John Adreani and Robert Bondi. Interesting case, both were fired from CPD and were involved in illegal gambling, both slots and roving poker games. It looks like Adriani owns a slot machine company V.S.S. They are placed in cities where slots are illegal. I believe there have been outfit guys with both the last names of Andreani and Bondi.

https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/cit ... 792880.pdf

https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.c ... 1cbda9423c

This is a good find, i dont remember this.


Anyone remember Mike Colella? Elmwood Park guy who got acquitted after being shit faced at a bar and beat the fuck out of a female CPD officer? Is he still alive?

Was he related to Santino Colella?

Mike Colella is still alive. He’s in his mid-60s now and living in Addison last I checked. Haven’t heard anything about him being connected, but clearly he was back in the 80s given that he was represented by Bob Cooley who was ordered by Marcy to fix Colella’s case. Guy was a beast, multiple times in the papers for beating the shit out of people. Maybe too much of a hot head to remain in the loop, who knows. I believe that Mike’s parents were Dominick and Rosa Colella, who were killed in Addison in ‘90 when a teenaged driver slammed into their car.

I tried to link Mike to Santino Colella and wasn’t able to do so.; didn’t seem any direct connection, though both guys are very likely Barese in ancestry so a deeper relation is possible. Santino I believe was either born in Bari and if not his parents were. What’s funny too is that both guys have caught cases for beating up cops. In ‘94, Santino was busted for attacking cops in Franklin Park who were trying to serve him on a warrant. Definitely rough dudes in both cases.

I think he was primarily a muscle guy, though you have to wonder why they'd use their judges for a guy so low on the totem pole. Not sure who he worked for. Believe the judge that got him off ended up getting caught up in the greylord stuff.

I suspect that the fact that he was a paesan’ of the DiFronzos may have been part of it. Family could have been connected from way back.

The judge for the ‘86 lady CPD beating case was Lawrence Passarella. He was subpoenaed but I don’t believe actually indicted in Greylord; Cooley of course claimed that he had been told by Marcy that they had fixed the case with Passarella. In 1986, Passarella was voted out after a major public outcry was roused by the FOP and also by Mike Royko. Cooley’s defense was patently absurd — that some tattooed villain had slipped a drug into Colella’s drink at the bar, which caused him to fly into a violent rage — and the summary acquittal by Passarella was obviously a mob fix to anyone watching.

Passarella was from Melrose Park; his father, August “Red” Passarella was a major liquor wholesaler who died in 1979. The Passarellas were “Trivvies” (from Trivigno, Potenza, like Aiuppa’s wife, the DeGrazias, the Stacis, and many other in Melrose Park). Red Passarella’s dad was Agostino Passarella, whose brother Rocco Passarella was the acting chief of the MPPF who allegedly ran afoul of Frank Rio and was “taken for a ride” and disappeared in 1931 (supposedly done by Rocco DeGrazia and Jimmy Nucci on the orders of Rio). Another brother, Daniele Passarella, was chief of the MPFD.

Reading this made me remember a good friend of mine from Melrose has some Passarellas in his family. Will have to do some digging to see if there is any relation there.

[Tonyd621]

There is a podcast on youtube called JCosenza and the title of the episode is called "Chicago Wise Guys and Hi Rises"
It was posted 2 hours it says from 11:10 pm est. In fhe comments section it says how someone heard Paulie P and Bobby P got released early and the response was "I recently ran into Pauly at the Shell on Western" are those guys out? You guys hear of this. If it's not fed bop how can you find out if someone is released or not.

[PolackTony]

There is a podcast on youtube called JCosenza and the title of the episode is called "Chicago Wise Guys and Hi Rises"
It was posted 2 hours it says from 11:10 pm est. In fhe comments section it says how someone heard Paulie P and Bobby P got released early and the response was "I recently ran into Pauly at the Shell on Western" are those guys out? You guys hear of this. If it's not fed bop how can you find out if someone is released or not.

Paulie K is out. He was paroled 02/25/2022 and his parole will end in 2025. The guy presumably meant the Shell station at Rice and Western (which is in the immediate area where I grew up, BTW. My Junior HS is right around the corner and I used to go to Paulie's video shop on Chicago Ave, nearby).

Bobby P is not out -- he was transferred from the IL to the Fed system last year. He's currently in Manchester FCI with a release date of 05/21/2030.

[FriendofFamily]

I know you guys are talking about Tony Spilotro and there was another guy was picked to go, but had to be passed up because of the gambling convictions. Tony was in charge of Las Vegas and was totally screwing it up for the Outfit. When I have time I will expand on the Spilotro story.

[Patrickgold]

Frank Annunzio, who represented Chicago in Congress, was linked to the mob, his FBI file shows

Newly obtained records say sources told the FBI that the Machine Democrat, who died in 2001, “frequently associated with” top La Cosa Nostra figures and “is possibly an LCN member himself.”

By Robert Herguth Apr 28, 2023, 5:30am CDT
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Not long before his death in 2001 at 86, former U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio “lent his name” to a campaign against “The Sopranos,” the acclaimed HBO series about a fictional mob family that some critics said presented an unfair portrait of Italian Americans.

According to Annunzio’s FBI file, recently obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, sources told agents over the years that the longtime congressman and Chicago Machine Democrat “frequently associated with” top La Cosa Nostra figures and “is possibly an LCN member himself.”

The records — released in response to a public records request and now part of the Sun-Times’ “The FBI Files” online database — also reveal there was a years-long federal investigation into a “proposed bribery scheme” described as having focused in part on Annunzio. That investigation was closed in the mid-1980s without any criminal charges, the files show.

As part of the investigation, the records show, FBI agents did surveillance on Annunzio — who retired from Congress in the early 1990s after representing parts of Chicago for nearly 30 years, from 1965 to 1993 — at his congressional offices in Washington, D.C.

An FBI record showing U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio’s Washington, D.C., offices were under surveillance in 1981.
An FBI record showing U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio’s Washington, D.C., offices were under surveillance in 1981.FBI
The records show federal authorities discussed the legality of staging what appears to have been a sting operation there.

“The opinion of the Legal Counsel Division (LCD) has been requested as to whether there exists any legal prohibition to permitting [REDACTED] bribe to the congressman, either in his Congressional office or in the Capitol building itself,” says an FBI memo from 1981. “LCD has located neither law nor precedent precluding this activity in either location.”

A record in late U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio’s FBI file shows federal authorities discussed the legality of staging what appears to have been a sting operation in congressional offices.
A record in late U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio’s FBI file shows federal authorities discussed the legality of staging what appears to have been a sting operation in congressional offices.FBI
The records also say agents wanted late 36th Ward Chicago Ald. Louis Farina to flip against Annunzio in the bribery investigation, which targeted both of them, but he wouldn’t do that.

“Farina basically took the whole blame in this matter upon himself and would not implicate Annunzio or anyone else,” according to an FBI memo from 1985, two years after Farina was convicted in a separate case in which he and Cook County Commissioner Martin Tuchow were found guilty of shaking down a developer.

The Annunzio case was dropped several months later, records show.

Many details about why Annunzio was targeted by agents and why the FBI considered him tight with the mob aren’t clear from the heavily redacted documents the agency released.

But one of the FBI documents quotes someone identified only as a “source” saying Annunzio “was a long-time friend of various LCN members, including Anthony Accardo.”

LCN, or La Cosa Nostra, is another term for the Mafia. Accardo led the Chicago mob for decades and died at 86 of natural causes in 1992.

Another FBI record says, “An in-depth study of Chicago files has revealed that various sources over the past 20 years have reported that Annunzio has frequently associated with top Chicago LCN figures and is possibly an LCN member himself.”

Another record in U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio’s FBI files.
Another record in U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio’s FBI files.FBI
Asked by a reporter about the newly released FBI records, Walter Dudycz, a former Chicago cop and state senator who ran unsuccessfully against Annunzio in 1990, says, “Am I surprised that he was connected? Absolutely not.

“I have no regrets running against Frank Annunzio,” Dudycz says. “But he had a lot of muscle behind him — political and otherwise.”


Kevin Tynan, Annunzio’s former son-in-law and onetime campaign manager, dismisses what’s in the FBI records.

“There’s a lot of innuendo in the files,” Tynan says. Saying “he was in the Mafia sounds like they were painting all Italians with the same Mafia brush, a sad commentary on life in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I hope we got past that.

“Frank earned a master’s degree in education from DePaul University and taught in the Chicago Public Schools,” Tynan says. “I don’t think graduate education is typical for made men.”

Another reference in FBI files to alleged mob connections of the late U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio.
Another reference in FBI files to alleged mob connections of the late U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio.FBI
Though the revelations regarding the FBI’s thinking are new, organized crime allegations against Annunzio had surfaced at times during his lengthy political career.


Author Ovid Demaris’ 1969 book “Captive City” cited a once-secret federal report linking the congressman to feared Chicago Outfit mob boss Sam Giancana and the notoriously mobbed-up 1st Ward Democratic political organization.

In 1990, Chicago magazine resurrected some of the same accusations in a story about Annunzio and his role in a massive savings and loan scandal that saw the collapse of numerous financial institutions and a bailout that cost taxpayers billions.

Of Annunzio and that time, Roll Call magazine wrote: “A dark period in Annunzio’s career came while he was chairman of the Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs subcommittee on financial institutions supervision, regulation and insurance. He chaired the panel during the savings-and-loan scandal, and he was criticized for his own ties to the industry.”

A photo of the late U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio contained in his FBI files.
A photo of the late U.S. Rep. Frank Annunzio contained in his FBI files.FBI
That included accepting campaign contributions from people from a savings and loan who stood to gain by his decisions in Congress and encouraging a bank board to hire a relative.

The FBI files show agents followed news accounts of Annunzio, including a Sun-Times report that he helped shepherd legislation benefiting the politically connected developers of Presidential Towers in the West Loop.

The FBI also tied another Chicago politician to the mob, the Sun-Times previously has reported. It once called the late 1st Ward Ald. Fred Roti a “made” member of the mob, which came to light only after his death in 1999.

[Patrickgold]

More attachments from Annunzio article

[cavita]

Excellent article and interesting to think of the possibility he was indeed made.

[Ivan]

Do we know of any hits in which Solly D participated or personally carried out? I'm sure there's at least one (can't imagine him being taken seriously as boss without breaking an egg).

[Snakes]

Do we know of any hits in which Solly D participated or personally carried out? I'm sure there's at least one (can't imagine him being taken seriously as boss without breaking an egg).

He was accused of being involved in the murder of Hal Smith, but the jury did not find him guilty for it.

[PolackTony]

Do we know of any hits in which Solly D participated or personally carried out? I'm sure there's at least one (can't imagine him being taken seriously as boss without breaking an egg).

He was accused of being involved in the murder of Hal Smith, but the jury did not find him guilty for it.

For those not familiar with the story, Hal Smith was an independent bookmaker in the North suburban Lake County who in 1985 was found murdered and stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac in Arlington Heights. This was during the period when the Cicero crew was consolidating its control over rackets in Lake and McHenry County, and Solly D is himself a Lake County native (though his family was originally from Taylor St).

In the 1992 “Good Ship Lollipop” case against the Infelise crew, former-associate-turned-CI Bill Jahoda testified that he had lured Smith to his home, where Rocky Infelise, Bobby Salerno, Bobby Bellavia, and Louie Marino took part in his murder, with Jahoda ordered to clean up the scene afterwards. Smith did not testify that Solly D was present.

The government did charge Solly as being part of the murder conspiracy, however, based on the testimony of Robert Hildebrandt, another independent suburban bookie. Hildebrandt testified that he been present in an Arlington Heights restaurant in 1983-84 when Solly met with Smith to inform him that he was expected to begin paying street taxes for his bookmaking business. Hildebrandt claimed that Smith (a major bookmaker, stated by the Feds to have been possible one of the largest independent bookies in the country at that time) flipped out during negotiations over the amount and told Solly off, including advising Solly to “take your guinea ass on a boat and go back to Sicily”, to which Solly was reported to have responded “You are trunk music, my friend” (a phrase that the Chicago media has been in love with ever since, for obvious reasons). Thus, the G claimed that this threat led directly to Smith’s murder, but as Snakes noted, the jury ultimately did not convict him on the murder conspiracy charges. Solly was represented by our friend Bruce Cutler, who successful painted Hildebrandt as a raging alcoholic and drug abuser whose girlfriend had been cheating on him with Smith, claiming that Hildebrandt had motive to kill Smith himself and then try to pin the murder on the mob.

Accounts of the trial, including Cutler’s antics, are hilarious, it’s just a shame that we don’t have any footage of it lol.

[PolackTony]

More attachments from Annunzio article

Great stuff here. Glad to see that the local media are continuing to work on mob-related investigations like this. I haven’t seen Annunzio’s files myself, but the claim that he may have himself been made is extremely interesting (if unproven), given that the FBI claimed that John D’Arco Sr, Fred Roti, and Vito Marzullo were members as well. Not to mention Joe Imburgio Bulger.

[Ivan]

Great info Snakes and Tony.

Wait did Solly D coin the term "trunk music"? The "trunk" part is obvious, but I've always wondered where the hell the "music" metaphor came from.