General Chicago Outfit Info Dumping Ground

[NorthBuffalo]

Older photo of Chris Guiliano (right) who was mentioned in this 2002 Chicago Sun-Times story as being juice loan collector alongside his brother Thomas in Schaumburg and were indicted in 1999 by the Feds. They are originally from Berwyn and members of the Park Boys street gang that was loosely affiliated with 12th street players - the two others in the photo are well-known Park Boys who are deceased (Billy Lapiana and Matt Pantone).

Here is the original article - https://www.thechicagosyndicate.com/200 ... t.html?m=0

I've not managed to find any of the court cases their indictments were linked to. My source says at least one is a biker gang type these days. Tom Giuliano was a business agent for a year with a mobbed-up local.

[ChicagoOutfit]

What ever happen to Fosco? Didn't he post something within the last 4-5 years then posted that he was done talking about the outfit?

[pat_marcy]

Just listening to Nadu on YouTube and he was saying Chicago has 30 odd made guys and no one under 50. Is this true?

Chicago at its peak was always a top family. Bigger and better than New York (in my humble opinion) so seems mind blowing to me they could go from that to a remnant of what they once were given how strong they were and how much power they once held

[Wiseguy]

Just listening to Nadu on YouTube and he was saying Chicago has 30 odd made guys and no one under 50. Is this true?

Chicago at its peak was always a top family. Bigger and better than New York (in my humble opinion) so seems mind blowing to me they could go from that to a remnant of what they once were given how strong they were and how much power they once held

The Outfit probably doesn't even have half that many made guys at this point. The youngest identified member is Michael Magnafichi who is in his early 60's.

[pat_marcy]

Real success story for the FBI then to weaken them so much ain’t it. With the power they had you’d expect them to be at least functional in this day and age. Then again I suppose somewhere where being Italian doesn’t necessarily mean as much as it does elsewhere then it was always inevitable it would fade away like it has

[NorthBuffalo]

Anyways, back to real information that matters to people who follow these threads - would be interested for anyone's perspective on The Park Boys or what loanshark ring the Giuliano's were connected to within the late 1990s.

[pat_marcy]

I was asking a question. No need to act so petulant over it. Saddo

[Snakes]

Real success story for the FBI then to weaken them so much ain’t it. With the power they had you’d expect them to be at least functional in this day and age. Then again I suppose somewhere where being Italian doesn’t necessarily mean as much as it does elsewhere then it was always inevitable it would fade away like it has

They just made too few guys and had too many busts and deaths in the 1990s. No doubt that they are drastically reduced in manpower and influence. What remains seems to be centered in the western suburbs but there is probably some enclaves of activity in other traditional Outfit areas (Chinatown, Grand Avenue in the "Cozzo compound" area, etc.)

[pat_marcy]

Appreciate the reply snakes and wise guy.

[Antiliar]

Just listening to Nadu on YouTube and he was saying Chicago has 30 odd made guys and no one under 50. Is this true?

Chicago at its peak was always a top family. Bigger and better than New York (in my humble opinion) so seems mind blowing to me they could go from that to a remnant of what they once were given how strong they were and how much power they once held

I don't think there's any way of verifying his claim unless his source is a high ranking member, which is pretty unlikely. Mike Sarno reportedly made some guys and it's possible that others have been made since. The current total membership would be a guess with a range between 10 and 35. I lean between 10 and 20 in my estimate, so 30+ would be on the high side. Whatever the case, I admit this is a very rough estimate and that I could be way off.

[pat_marcy]

Strange one. I’m trying to think how big they were at their peak. In one of roemers books he has a chart with loads of names don’t it and there must be a few hundreds names in it. To go from that to 10-20 guys is some going.
Would it be harder to find any other guys who are in the loop that aren’t made? As Chicago has a lot of top guy over the years that weren’t Italian ain’t they

[pat_marcy]

Excuse my grammar

[Snakes]

Strange one. I’m trying to think how big they were at their peak. In one of roemers books he has a chart with loads of names don’t it and there must be a few hundreds names in it. To go from that to 10-20 guys is some going.
Would it be harder to find any other guys who are in the loop that aren’t made? As Chicago has a lot of top guy over the years that weren’t Italian ain’t they

That included associates and even guys who I'd stretch to call associates. I think a hard peak estimate is difficult to determine since they vastly overstated the membership numbers in the 50s and 60s. I'd say 75 to 100 is a reasonable estimate. They were down to 50 to 60 (official count in 1984 was 46, but the list left off several guys we knew were made at the time) by the 80s at the very end of their peak.

[pat_marcy]

Thanks for the information guys. I’m new to all this so still finding my way around the forums. Really appreciate it, thanks

[PolackTony]

This info isn’t very accessible in the sense that it isn’t compiled in one place but has been discussed in detail here previously, many times over now.

The FBI had poor insight into the Chicago Family in the 1960s and 70s, with only a couple of member informants, and even these seem to have provided little in-depth intel on the membership and structure of the organization (many of the FBI’s Chicago sources in this period were either associates or even people who were not formally affiliated with the organization in any meaningful way and thus had little to no insight into how things actually were set up and gave distorted or partial accounts: the problem of the “Blind Men and the Elephant”).

As no Chicago member source specified or estimated the total membership of the Family (Chicago had no Joe Valachi), the best sources we have are from NYC Families. In the early 60s, Genovese captain Ray DeCarlo was recorded discussing Chicago with other members in NJ and stated that they had around 50 members total. Later in the 60s, FBI confidential informant Greg Scarpa reported back from a Colombo Family meeting, where Joe Colombo had discussed Chicago and again reported that their membership was about 50 (Colombo told his Family in this same meeting that Chicago had an associate that had killed more people than the entire Colombo Family combined). Worth noting that in both cases, Chicago’s more restrictive membership numbers were seen as a positive, with both DeCarlo and Colombo advocating that their own Families should emulate that model.

Based on the evidence that we do have for Chicago, it seems to have always operated as a highly clandestine and in many ways very “traditional” Family, with a high level of internal security (members only having access to info on a “need to know” basis), little gossip or discussion of organizational LCN matters around outsiders, and a low tolerance for failure on the part of its membership (members being killed for messing up hits, for “honor” reasons such as not killing an unfaithful wife). They were deadly serious about the “secret” part of “secret society”. Having a relatively low membership — in relation to the size of the metro area and its Italian population as well as the scope of criminal activities controlled in whole or part by the mafia — is in line with this general picture of conservatism and secrecy. They didn’t make nearly as many guys as they could have and, like other conservative Midwestern Families, placed a high premium on the ability to commit murder on behalf of the organization, which had comparatively declined as a prerequisite for members in NYC.

By the time that the FBI released a Chicago members list in 1985 based on its updated protocols for LCN member identification (which were overhauled in the early 80s, as the laxer standards employed previously allowed for many unreliable member identifications), they had just under 50 guys listed. We know of a few confirmed members not listed there, but even with a couple of “sleepers”, which Chicago always had, the plausible membership at that time would very unlikely have been over 60. Interesting to note that this was in the same range that DeCarlo and Scarpa/Colombo had given ~20 years prior. Snakes gave an upper range estimate of 75 to 100. He’s being generous because of uncertainty, I think, but this would be the *absolute maximum* range. I’d be very surprised if Chicago ever had more than 75 members myself, and this for a metro area of 9 million people, one of the largest Italian populations in the US, and a very old and deeply implanted mafia tradition and longstanding OC subculture. In other words, Chicago almost certainly never had a membership approaching even the smaller NYC Families, or Buffalo, for that matter, but was in the range of Families like Philly and NE, historically.