Franchising crime
Officer got behind mob scene
NWI Times
May 28, 1991
http://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/franchising-crime-officer-got-behind-mob-scene/article_325699ab-5c89-55ec-8966-5356562b0e96.html
Gamblers connected to the Outfit-controlled rackets in Northwest Indiana figured they had a friend in Lt. Fred Bemish, head of the Gary Police vice squad.
They figured wrong.
From October 1984 to May 1986, Bemish took bribes from these gambling figures, from the low levels up to the mob's man on the street, Anthony Leone.
In return, he promised protection from the Gary police and would stage raids on non-paying competitors.
All the time, he was compiling information that led to the indictment of Leone and more than a dozen others in 1988 on illegal gambling charges.
It was a lonely game Bemish played. "Only one or two others inside the department knew I was doing this," he said. "The others, I guess they just thought I was making some money on the side."
Bemish had done some undercover work before in his 21-year career with the Gary department, before he retired in 1986, and said going up against crime syndicate figures was just part of the job.
"I was careful, but you're always careful. But I was never threatened, before or after they knew what I was really doing," he said. "My primary mission was to meet with these people and gather information."
It began when Chief Deputy Inspector Cobie Howard, now Gary chief, approached Bemish and told him he had been "talked to" about which police officers needed to be bribed for police cooperation.
"They (gamblers) knew what I did, that I was commander of the Public Morals Bureau," Bemish said. "They came to me. All I had to do was play to their greed. I presented myself as a corrupt officer, and the greed factor took over."
It began with some of the street-level gambling operators. "Donaldson paid me, then he brought me Shivers. Then Shivers brought me some other people," he said. "It just mushroomed over a period of time."
Charles E. Donaldson, of Gary, owner of the West Side Lounge at Fifth Avenue and Chase Street, and Richard L. Shivers, also of Gary, were arrested July 27, 1988, on gambling charges.
Following their federal convictions, Donaldson got a two-month work release sentence and was fined $15,000 and Shivers was given 18 months in prison and fined $3,000.
It worked to the point where Bemish met with Leone, former mill foreman and pizza maker turned Outfit "street tax" collector, about bigger fish.
"Leone wanted me to meet with Nuzzo and Steve Sfouris, but that never materialized," Bemish said, mostly due to his retirement. "Sure, I wish I could have gone on with it, but I had an opportunity to make more in the private sector and I had to think of myself and my family first."
Sam Nuzzo Jr. is described by the FBI as controlling 80 percent of the card and dice gambling in Northwest Indiana; Steve Sfouris allegedly ran large scale dice games from restaurants in East Chicago and Gary and ran an adult book store and a lounge that was a prostitution front.
Both were indicted for racketeering in December 1990. Nuzzo is incarcerated awaiting trial; Sfouris has allegedly fled the country for Greece.
Leone and Bemish would meet in Leone's black Cadillac outside McDuffy's Restaurant in Portage, according to Bemish. "Leone'd come out in that Cadillac, what a sleazeball," Bemish said. "Always crying about how poor he was, how short of money and he's driving a Cadillac with a car phone."
Over the weeks and months, Bemish worked to gain the trust of operators like Vincente "Pee Wee" Lozada, of Merrillville, who ran an illegal lottery.
"There was a trust factor there. Pee Wee checked me out thoroughly, asked some of his contacts on the (Gary) force about me, asked me straight out if I was with the feds, if I was working with the FBI," Bemish said. "I told him I had a real job. So Lozada felt I was like him, just trying to hustle a buck.
"He wouldn't even talk to me at the trial. He thought I betrayed him because I was honest. He saw honesty as betrayal. What can you do?"
Lozada, indicted along with Leone in 1988, was convicted and given three years in prison. He is now out.
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