EA Makes an Offer That Can’t Be Refused – The Godfather II Video Game is Now in Stores

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) and Paramount Digital Entertainment announced the arrival of The Godfather® II videogame in stores now in North America for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and PC. The game will be available on April 10th in Europe.



The Godfather II is the sequel to the multi-platinum hit The Godfather The Game and has earned a perfect 5 out of 5 from GamePro magazine. GamePro calls the game “…criminally addictive” and “...the experience by which other crime games must be judged."

“The Godfather II offers players the ultimate fantasy of being a Don - of finally being the guy who calls all the shots for the family,” says Executive Producer Hunter Smith. “By combining the strategic gameplay of thinking like a Don through the 'Don's View', with our intense, visceral 'Blackhand' combat, we are focusing on the game at the root of the Godfather franchise, the game of organized crime. In essence, we're creating a new niche in the open-world genre and are really excited to see how players will build their families and customize their own experience in both the single player campaign and multiplayer battles.”

The Godfather II takes all of the drama, action and family values from the classic Godfather films and brings them into an interactive experience. This means that players have to build and invest in their family, manage their rackets, takeover crime rings and even reach out to corrupt officials – all through the revolutionary Don’s View. The Don’s View is a 3D display of the player’s criminal empire and family tree, offering a birds-eye view of all three cities to better coordinate their take-down strategies, plan hits on rival made men, attack enemy compounds, and much more. As a Don in the Corleone family, The Godfather II puts the control in the players’ hands and allows them to live in the Godfather universe while creating their own story of deception, betrayal, and conquest in a 1960’s organized crime world.

Developed at the EA Redwood Stores studio, The Godfather II is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and 18+ for PEGI.

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Chicago Mobsters Ordered to Pay Restitution

Chicago mob bosses convicted in the landmark Family Secrets trial have already been ordered to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Now they'll have also to pay up with their bank accounts.

Judge James Zagel late Monday afternoon ordered more than $24 million in fines and restitution to be paid, including $4.3 million to the relatives of 14 men who had been murdered by the mob. The gangland killings were the centerpiece of a prosecution that dismantled the Outfit's upper echelon in 2007.

Zagel's order means that Frank "The Breeze" Calabrese, James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo and Paul "The Indian" Schiro are responsible for paying restitution for the murders, some of which occurred in the 1970's and 80's.

The court-ordered repayment is intended to cover the loss of income by the murder victims.

The government had estimated that the murder victims' lives, by way of lost earnings, were valued at $7.4 million. Prosecutors wanted the above four defendants and convicted corrupt Chicago police officer Anthony "Twan" Doyle to split the restitution tab. But Zagel let Doyle off the hook for most of the money.

"I expressed at sentencing that, in my view, Doyle was not an active or full member of the conspiracy in the 1960s," wrote Judge Zagel."None of those murders occurred after February 1999, the latest date at which there is little doubt over Doyle's participation in the conspiracy. Accordingly, I apportion 1% of the total restitution amount to Doyle, or $44,225.73. As to the remaining $4,378,347.16, I hold Defendants Calabrese, Sr., Marcello, Lombardo, and Schiro jointly and severally liable."

In addition to the restitution, forfeitures totaling $20,258,556 were imposed on the men as payback of ill-gotten profits from years of mob schemes, scams and rackets.

Thanks to Chuck Goudie

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Remembering a Top Crime Reporter Who Covered Capone's Mob

Earl "Skip" Aykroid's father wasn't a gangster, but he got closer to the mob scene than many who lived to tell about it.

Aykroid's father, H. Earl Aykroid, was a reporter for the Chicago Herald and Examiner and later The Associated Press in Chicago. Skip, who lives in the northern Kane County village of Gilberts, didn't follow in his father's footsteps. "The closest I got was delivering the Sunday paper when I was a kid," Skip said.

Instead, he was in the uniform textile business for several years. But he still remembers the big stories his father covered in his heyday as a crime reporter in one of the nations most interesting crime cities.

When Skip was growing up in Park Ridge, sometimes he would overhear his father telling his mother about his days at the office -- coffee with notorious gangster Al Capone and chasing down leads from the city's top cops. "He'd bring stuff home, and we'd get to read it," Skip said. "In passing, he'd talk about certain things that happened over the years. Once I got to be old enough to understand, he'd tell (my sister and me) things."

The senior Earl got his start working for newspapers at an early age. With only an eighth-grade education, Earl started out as a copy boy for the Herald and Examiner at 18 in 1924. He got a full-time gig after scooping some of Chicago's veteran reporters by identifying a young drowning victim. Earl soon established his reputation around the city. "My dad was considered the top crime reporter of that time in Chicago in the '20s and '30s," Skip said.

Earl soon was getting phone calls from some of the criminals themselves. Skip said Capone called up the newsroom one day complaining that people weren't getting his side of the story. Earl was the one tapped to go and get it. The two soon were meeting on a regular basis for coffee or lunch and discussions about Capone's involvement in the Prohibition-era gang activity.

One of the lasting stories from Skip's father's police beat days is what occurred on Feb. 14, 1929. Most Chicago-area residents know the story: Seven people with ties to Bugs Moran's gang were shot in a north-side garage in a bloody massacre. The victims were lined up with their backs to their shooters, who they thought were police. The real police were never able to collect enough evidence to put anyone on trial for the murders. "Because of the relationship my dad had with Capone, they let him know so he could have the scoop," Skip said.

The story Skip heard was that Earl, a city editor at the time, and a photographer pulled up to the garage on Clark Street right as the shooters were pulling away. According to Skip, Earl and his staff photographer were among the first on the scene and discovered the fresh bodies lying on the garage floor. "My dad got a call in the morning that something was happening at this address," Skip said. "He was there before the police were there. They wouldn't have let them in after the fact."

The picture of the scene the reporter saw that day is now a family heirloom of sorts, passed down to Skip. Blood and brains splattered across the cement floor of the crime scene are still visible in the cracked black-and-white photo. "They were brutal in those days," Skip said.

When Skip was 12, he got a chance to ride along with his dad on a story. A helicopter had crashed off Roosevelt Road in Forest Park. According to reports, 13 people were killed when a shuttle helicopter crashed on its way to O'Hare Field (now O'Hare International Airport) from Midway Airport on Chicago's south side.

"I begged him to let me go," Skip said. Skip was told to wait in the car while Earl checked out the scene. "When he got back, I asked him what happened. He said, 'You're not going out there. There are body parts everywhere,'" Skip said.

Even though Earl was covering some pretty dangerous stories, Skip said he was never worried about getting hurt. "There were two things you didn't mess with back then: reporters and cops," Skip said.

Some families pass down quilts or jewelry from generation to generation. Skip has a more nontraditional legacy from his father: a couple of albums full of press clippings and gory crime scene photos that were passed down from his father. "He never made a lot of money," Skip said of his father, who died in 1988. "But he lived an interesting life."

Thanks to Cigi Ross

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Planning a Mafia Free Wedding

A Sicilian couple, already partners in a business aimed at bypassing the Mafia, are planning a wedding the bride and groom hope will pay nothing to the mob.

Fabio Messina, 30, and Valeria Di Leo, 29, say everything from the wedding dress to the travel agency for the honeymoon comes from suppliers on the "Addiopizzo" list, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. "Pizzo" is the local term for protection money paid to the Mafia.

Prosecutors estimate 80 percent of the businesses in Palermo give the Mafia its cut of the proceeds. But more people and business owners have been willing to take a public stand against organized crime in recent years.

"Addiopizzo" began as an underground movement of people placing stickers around Palermo. Then a few business owners took a public stand and a list was published.

Messina decided to open his store because he believed that those business owners needed some encouragement. The store he owns with Di Leo sells a wide range of goods but only from "Addiopizzo" suppliers.

''I thought it was right to give those traders who refuse to pay protection money an extra opportunity,'' he said.

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Blagojevich Case Goes to Family Secrets Mob Trial Judge

Fresh off handling one of Chicago's biggest mob cases in decades, U.S. District Judge James Zagel will preside over the corruption case against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And it's no accident.

Normally, prosecutors would have issued a new indictment against Blagojevich and a circle of aides, prompting the case to be randomly assigned to a judge. But instead prosecutors on Thursday added the former governor and four top associates to an existing indictment against Springfield power broker William Cellini. That ensured that Blagojevich would be tried before Zagel, who was randomly assigned the Cellini case when it was filed last fall.

Although there's at least a hint of judge-shopping in the move, Chicago lawyers said the decision by prosecutors was permissible and a clever way to keep the Blagojevich case before a judge with whom they are comfortable.

The move had another immediate impact: Terence Gillespie dropped out Friday as Blagojevich's lead attorney because he once helped represent Cellini.

Prosecutors have made no comment on the move, but it can't be argued that the charges against Cellini are unrelated to the schemes detailed in the former governor's sweeping indictment.

Zagel, a Reagan appointee who has served almost 22 years on the federal bench, is widely respected but is seen by many attorneys as generally pro-government.

Some attorneys—none of whom wanted to be quoted by name because they likely will have cases before him again—noting his background as a former director of the Illinois State Police in the 1980s, said he would be more law-enforcement-minded.

Allowing the Blagojevich case to go to a randomly selected judge, although certainly the usual procedure, would have carried some inherent risk for prosecutors. Some judges can be more independent than others, and some are just unpredictable.

The U.S. attorney's office recently was stung when U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur sentenced convicted former Chicago Ald. Edward Vrdolyak to probation and not prison. And the trial of former Gov. George Ryan before U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer was seen by some critics, including one appeals judge, as an out-of-control spectacle with a jury that did as it pleased.

Zagel presided over the landmark Family Secrets trial of top Chicago Outfit bosses in summer 2007, winning praise from lawyers on both sides.

He recently wrapped up the case by sentencing several defendants to life in prison. It was a proceeding that needed careful management with some of Chicago's craftiest defense attorneys and a cast of mob characters including Joey "the Clown" Lombardo and Frank Calabrese Sr.

Thanks to Jeff Coen

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