Illinois Governor Blagovich Leads List of Politicians Receiving Contributions from Friend of Mob Boss

An Oak Brook businessman who has extensive financial and personal ties to the former head of the Chicago mob has given more than $200,000 in contributions to Illinois politicians through personal and corporate donations -- with Gov. Blagojevich receiving the most money, $35,000, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

Among other top recipients of donations from the businessman, Nicholas Vangel, a longtime friend of mob boss James "Little Jimmy" Marcello, were former Gov. George Ryan, House Speaker Michael Madigan and state Rep. Angelo "Skip" Saviano, an analysis of the political contributions shows.

Vangel has not been accused of any wrongdoing and did not return phone messages Friday. He has denied in court documents any connections to organized crime. Some politicians who received contributions from Vangel or his businesses told the Sun-Times they were either unaware of Vangel's relationship with Marcello or had no idea who he was.

"We don't know much about the person in question and are still reviewing the contributions," said Doug Scofield, a spokesman for the governor's campaign.

A spokesman for Madigan, who received more than $17,000 over 10 years, had no idea who Vangel was and noted the amount contributed was relatively small per year. Saviano, who got more than $20,000, did not return phone messages.

Vangel, 66, and his family have extensive investments in several nursing homes throughout the Chicago area, as well as other businesses, but another side of him was shown during the recent Family Secrets mob trial.

In a secret videotape made by the FBI and played to jurors, Vangel was shown chatting as he visited Marcello at the federal prison in Milan, Mich., in February 2003. As Marcello snacks on a bag of Fritos, Vangel talks with him about the secret ongoing federal investigation of unsolved mob murders, including which mob leaders have been swabbed for DNA testing. Vangel tells Marcello he will find out what he can.

The men at times speak in code, and Vangel tells Marcello he wishes an unnamed individual had gone to testify before the grand jury investigating the mob murders. "Fact is, I mean to tell ya the truth, I was almost hopin' he'd a gone to find out what they were gonna ask him," Vangel tells Marcello.

His assistance to Marcello did not end there.

Vangel at times would deliver cash to Marcello's mistress, according to the woman's testimony. The woman was also put on the payroll of one of Vangel's businesses, so she could get health insurance.

After Marcello was arrested in the Family Secrets case in 2005, Vangel offered to put up his home, which had more than $1 million in equity, for Marcello's bond.

The judge refused to release Marcello, but if he had gotten out, Marcello could have returned to the job Vangel gave him, which involved calling upon several nursing homes on behalf of Vangel's management company.

In the Family Secrets case, Marcello was convicted of racketeering and was found to have taken part in the 1986 murders of the mob's man in Las Vegas, Anthony Spilotro, and his brother, Michael.

Marcello drove the brothers to what they believed was a mob meeting at a Bensenville area home, where they were lured into a basement and beaten to death, according to court testimony.

Vangel is an investor in another company with the wife of a Marcello associate. Vangel is listed on the corporate records of a temporary worker business called Patriot Staffing Management Inc. with Susan Zizzo, wife of missing mobster Anthony "Little Tony" Zizzo, records show.

Vangel's interests do not end there. He has been, for instance, an investor in the well-known Rush Street restaurant Tavern on Rush, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Vangel is the former owner of the Carlisle banquet hall in west suburban Lombard and was among nine people arrested there during a gambling raid of a Super Bowl party in 1991. Among those arrested were William Galioto, who is a former Chicago Police officer and Marcello's brother-in-law. Galioto has been identified by the Chicago Crime Commission as a mob lieutenant. Also there were two union leaders, who lost their positions after their locals were found to be mobbed up.

Charges against all the men were dropped when prosecutors missed a filing deadline, authorities said.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir

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Will the Chicago Outfit Assign Hitmen to Compose 'Trunk Music' Against the Writers Guild?

Daily Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart has come up with a novel idea to end the six-week-old writers’ strike – bring in the Chicago mafia to whack a few leaders of the striking Writers Guild.

In a column that ran in Daily Variety on Dec.10 under the headline “A way to settle so it’s all in the ‘family’” – with the word ‘family’ in quotes to make sure we all know he’s talking about the Mafia – Bart writes: “OK. I’ll admit it: I was once on reasonably friendly terms with Sidney Korshak” – the Chicago mafia’s man in Hollywood for more than 50 years.

Korshak, who was the go-to guy for the late-Universal Studios mogul Lew Wasserman when contract talks stalled, was a master of “the trade-off,” according to Bart, although in fact, Korshak was even more the master of a quite different art – the art of the implied death threat.

“Korshak died 11 years ago,” Bart writes, “but had he been alive today, he would have been dismayed by the state of disarray in Hollywood. The writers and show-runners don’t seem to appreciate what management has done for them, he would have declared. And the companies similarly seem to have lost their talent at hard bargaining.

“Korshak surely would have enhanced the proposed compensation for digital downloads (one of the sticking points in the contract talks), and had his offer not been embraced, a few individuals might have been downloaded as well. Peace would prevail.”

Here, by ‘downloaded,’ Bart apparently means whacked; and by “a few individuals,” he assumedly means union leaders, since they are the ones to whom contract offers are generally made.

“Does he know what century we’re in?” asked an astonished member of the WGA’s hierarchy. “Next he’ll be calling on Pinkerton agents to fire into our picket lines.”

Of course, Bart, who is a longtime member of the Writers Guild, may be just joking around – showing off the tough-guy image he has of himself, which is something he’s known to do on occasion. But a reasonable reader might ask: Is this anything for the editor of a newspaper to joke about during an increasingly tense strike?

Joking or not, whacking troublesome Hollywood union leaders is something that Korshak’s friends in the Chicago syndicate were known to do once in a while. One famous case was the murder of Willie Bioff, the #2 guy in the one of Hollywood most powerful unions, who in 1943 publicly identified Sid Korshak as the mob’s man in Hollywood.

Korshak’s ties to the Chicago mob go all the way back to the 1930s and the days of Al Capone. In 1943, his name came up during the sensational trial of some of Chicago’s top mobsters on charges that they’d extorted more than $1 million dollars from Hollywood’s movie studios. Unlike today, however, back then Daily Variety had an editor named Arthur Unger who wasn’t so cozy with the mafia, and who bravely crusaded against the mob, writing editorials in which he called on Hollywood to run the gangsters out of town.

The scandal began in the late 1930s when the Chicago mob seized control of one of Hollywood’s most powerful unions - the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents most of the behind-the-scenes workers in show business.

Frank Nitti, who was running the outfit while Capone was serving time for income tax evasion, controlled the union’s bosses, including Willie Bioff, who was finally indicted on charges of extorting money from the studios in exchange for labor peace.

During the trial, Korshak’s name came up when Bioff testified that he had been introduced to Korshak by one of the mob defendants, who had said: “Willie, meet Sidney Korshak. He is our man. . . . Any messages he might deliver to you is a message from us.”

Nitti had killed himself shortly after being indicted, and a lot of top mob guys went to jail, including Johnnie Roselli and Paul “The Waiter” Ricca. And in 1955, a decade after he was released from prison, Bioff was blown to pieces by a car bomb, which in those days was a signature mob hit.

Korshak, who was once described as “the toughest lawyer in America,” was never charged with any crime, and moved easily between gangsters and movie moguls. Though not licensed to practice law in California, where he lived for many years, Korshak served as an adviser to many of the top Hollywood studios. And at the same time, authorities said, he was also an adviser to such mob figures as Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo, Sam Giancana, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Gus Alex.

In 1978, the California attorney general’s Organized Crime Control Commission issued a report that called Korshak “the key link between organized crime and big business,” noting that he was a “senior adviser” to organized crime groups in California, Chicago, Las Vegas and New York. In a rare interview, Korshak denied the allegations. “I’ve never been cited, let alone indicted, for anything,” Korshak told the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1978.

In Hollywood, Korshak helped broker numerous deals for some of the top studios. In 1973, he mediated in the negotiations that led to the sale of MGM’s theaters and properties in its overseas markets to Cinema International Corp., a joint venture between MCA and Paramount. MCA chairman Lew Wasserman and Charles Bluhdorn, whose Gulf & Western owned Paramount, personally negotiated the deal with MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian - with Korshak as mediator.

Bart knew Korshak back in those days, too – back when Bart was second-in-command at Paramount Studios in the 1970s – back when Korshak was the mentor of Bart’s mentor – Robert Evans, who was head of production at Paramount.

“Sidney (Korshak) was in my office every day for 10 years,” Evans said in an interview for my L.A. Weekly cover story about Bart in 1994. “There’s not a day that went by when I was in Los Angeles that Sidney wasn’t there…Sidney and Peter and I spent a lot of time together. They never broke bread. But, you know, Peter was my right-hand guy and Sid was my consigliere, so naturally they met.”

In his book, “The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life,” Evans wrote that Korshak “was not only my consigliere, but my godfather and closest friend . . . my lifelong protector.”

Bart, whose coverage of the strike has been criticized for toadying up to management, was a newspaperman in the 1960s before he joined Evans and Korshak in running Paramount Studios. In 1990, Bart actually boasted in an article for Gentlemen’s Quarterly that he carried a gun while covering riots in Los Angeles for The New York Times in the mid-1960s. “I carried a gun in my last days at The Times,” he said, claiming that he had twice been shot at while covering a race riot. “My philosophy was: If a man’s going to shoot at me, he’s going to get it right fucking back. I was a good shot. But it was not Times policy.” (Nor is it the policy of any newspaper in the country.)

And he says he wasn’t joking about having shot people during the Watts Riots. When asked about this in 1994, he told LA Weekly that the gun he used was taken from him “by an L.A. cop who was chasing somebody that ran past. He said, ‘Hey, Pete, do you have a gun? And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘Hand it to me.’ That’s the last I saw of that goddamn gun.”

So maybe he’s kidding about killing union leaders, and maybe he’s exaggerating about shooting black people during the Watts riot. But either way, maybe the Writers Guild should ask: Why is this guy still a member of this union? Isn’t there some bylaw against members advocating the murder of Writers Guild leaders – especially during a strike?

Thanks to David Robb

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Federal Case for Sopranos Sequel

Tony Soprano never had to sing in court. But the brains behind the mobster is ready to take the stand.

David Chase turned up Wednesday in a federal courtroom Trenton, New Jersey, for a trial that will determine whether the Sopranos mastermind got help dreaming up the series from a former gavel-banger.

The outcome, or any financial award, will be decided by a jury of seven women and one man, who were seated during the morning session. Two would-be jurors were given the boot after they admitted to being huge fans of the HBO hit, which, literally, went black earlier this season.

Chase sat at the defense table, flanked by his wife and his legal team.

Robert Baer, who toiled as a municipal court judge in Prospect Park, New Jersey, filed suit in 2002, claiming he's due some serious clams for coming up with key elements of The Sopranos.

A federal judge twice dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the deal between him and Chase was too vague to be binding.

Both times, however, an appeals court overturned the decisions by U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano and reinstated the complaint. The appellate panel did agree with several of Pisano's points, though, and allowed the lower court judge to limit the case's scope.

Per his breach-of-contract suit, Baer claims he and Chase met for lunch in California in 1995 and discussed the idea for The Sopranos. During their conversation, Baer says he gave a thorough debriefing about his days as an assistant DA targeting Mafia types and suggested colorful locales to set the show.

"He proposed the idea about doing the show about the north Jersey Mafia," Baer's lawyer, Harley Breite, told the Asbury Park Press. "He's looking to be compensated for the value of what he did, the services and assistance he provided to Mr. Chase."

Breite says Chase kept in touch with Baer and frequently used him as an expert consultant on questions about organized crime. Chase even sent Baer a draft of The Sopranos pilot to weigh in on, the attorney claims.

Baer also claims to have introduced Chase to detectives on the mob beat. Among his most significant suggestions, Baer alleges, were that Tony and his crew hang out a local pork store and have an older Jewish character as an adviser.

Breite says that when Baer tried to contact Chase after The Sopranos was picked up by HBO, the producer never returned his calls.

According to Chase though, Baer can fuhgeddaboud trying to claim credit for the most honored drama in cable TV history.

Calling Baer's lawsuit "grossly distorted, petulant and self-aggrandizing," Chase says the former judge provided only a "modest service." And while he admits sending the ex-judge a copy of The Sopranos episode in court papers, Chase says the former judge didn't submit "a single suggestion for improvement of [his] script."

The producer has also stated that he had come up with the concept five years prior to his lunch date with Baer and was "keenly aware" of the subject, having spent his childhood in the Garden State.

The plot-poaching trial is expected to last five days.

Thanks to Josh Grossberg

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Would the Mob Control a City of Chicago Casino?

Cities across the country have looked to casinos as a way to generate money, but Chicago is going a step further. There's a movement in Illinois to allow Chicago to actually go into the casino business. Under the deal, Chicago would own and operate a casino, making it the first municipality in the country to do so. Given Chicago's history with the mob, gambling and corruption, the plan is raising more than a few eyebrows.

Ben Calhoun's audio report provides more details and includes comments from Mayor Daley, Chicago Crime Commission President Jim Wagner and author Richard Wagner, who has written several books about Chicago.

Once you listen to the report, you can vote in a Chicago Crime Commission poll on the topic.

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Mob Trial Ends in Aquittal for Pizza Maker

In a stunning reversal of fortune, a Brooklyn jury Thursday night acquitted a pizza maker of cooking up a plan to gun down a mob loanshark and his cousin.

Carmine Polito, 48, whose 2003 federal conviction in the case was overturned on a technicality, is free and clear after a five-week trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court - where one of the victims and two accomplices testified against him.

"Obviously there is no justice," said Assunta Rozza, whose brother Sabato (Tino) Lombardi was killed and cousin Michael (Cookie) D'Urso wounded in the 1994 attack at a Williamsburg social club. "This mother------ is going to have Christmas with his family - and my brother never will," she said, adding that she thought jurors were afraid because the case involved mobsters.

She also said she thought Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Joel Goldberg disallowed too much evidence.

The judge will decide the fate of Polito's co-defendant, Mario Fortunato, 60, whose federal conviction also was overturned.

"This is a big win. It's a huge upset," said Polito's gleeful lawyer, Gerald McMahon, who fought a contentious battle and very nearly came to blows with prosecutor Christopher Blank during a break in the action last week. "These guys were so confident they wouldn't even offer a serious plea" deal, said McMahon, who had blasted the three main witnesses.

D'Urso joined the main shooter and the getaway driver in testifying against Polito and Fortunato.

Prosecutors said the pair organized the hit because Polito owed money to the Genovese-connected Lombardi and Fortunato wanted to settle an old score with D'Urso.

The evidence was considered stronger against Polito than Fortunato, who chose a bench trial before Goldberg.

"These three guys were two crackheads and a wanna-be [mobster]," McMahon said. "Juries are looking at these types of cases [based on accomplice testimony] a little more carefully now."

The federal case came after D'Urso entered the witness protection program and helped convict about 40 Genovese crime family members, including the late boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante, then Polito and Fortunato.

Goldberg is expected to render his opinion in the Fortunato case Friday.

Thanks to Scott Shifrel

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