The trial of a reputed mob boss known for his wide girth and alleged penchant for violence will offer a peek into the inner workings of Chicago-area organized crime, laid low by prosecutions that sent older mobsters to prison for life.
Michael “The Large Guy” Sarno, whose racketeering trial started yesterday in Chicago, is considered — at the relatively young age of 52 — a different breed of mobster, someone whose talents as an enforcer normally would not have translated into a top mob job.
“I would say he is the perfect example of the new face of the mob,” said Art Bilek, a one-time mob investigator at the Cook County State’s attorney’s office. “He has street smarts — he’s not a dope. What he simply doesn’t have is the intelligence some of the earlier guys had.”
That goes to show how far the mob has fallen, he said.
The 2007 Family Secrets trial, the biggest such trial in Chicago in decades, was a body blow to the Chicago-area mob, also known as the Chicago Outfit. It ended in life sentences for bosses James Marcello, Frank Calabrese Sr and Joseph “Joey the Clown” Lombardo.
With aging kingpins behind bars and others dying, a weakened Outfit has scaled back a network that in its heyday, around 1970, encompassed operations ranging from prostitution and drugs to scams involving corrupt unions or Las Vegas casinos.
However, racketeering laws designed to target organized crime, aggressive federal prosecutors and competition from street gangs or biker syndicates have cut into mob-associated operations.
There are now fewer than 100 people formally initiated into the Chicago-area mob compared with more than 200 “made men” around 1970, estimated Scott Burnstein, co-author of a book on the Family Secrets trial.
In Chicago, the mob now focuses more heavily on running illegal video gaming, with approximately 25,000 machines in bars and restaurants, according to some estimates.
It’s leaders allegedly include Sarno, who weighed as much as 136kg and was known for using his bulk to collect mob gambling debts as an enforcer. Bilek says he suspects Sarno may have taken over operations in the city’s western suburbs from one of the imprisoned bosses.
Sarno’s defense attorney, Michael Gillespie, said allegations his client is linked to the mob are “fanciful.”
“The associations he has are with his family — his mom and dad,” Gillespie said on Tuesday.
It is impossible to know just where Sarno fits in. That’s partly because the mob’s old pyramid structure is coming undone and true leaders are eager to maintain a low profile, Bilek said.
Burnstein said there are also reasons to question the extent of Sarno’s power. For one, mob bosses want to see crime organizations they built up over decades continue after their deaths, so it’s likely mobsters with more savvy than Sarno are also being promoted.
“I don’t think it’s quite fair to say Sarno’s the new face of the mob, therefore the mob is dead because he’s an idiot,” Burnstein said. “If he is the new power, I agree it wouldn’t bode well, but I’m sure there are other competent mobsters who aren’t just thugs.”
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