Prosecutors, defense wrap up "Outfit"
NWI Times
Aug 15, 1991
nwitimes.com/uncategorized/street-tax-collection-impossible-wife-testifies/article_a828ecd9-92af-5f02-9ea6-472ad061f9f6.html
HAMMOND - No gambling operation was too small for the six men on trial - they wanted a slice of it all, said a federal prosecutor summing up Wednesday what has been touted as the largest organized crime case ever handled here.
"It didn't matter if the gambling business was making $100 million or 10 cents a day," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Thill told the jury. "If it's gambling, these guys want a part of it. They demand a part of it."
Defense lawyers demanded the jury look carefully at the evidence, using the analogy that the government is using a rubber mallet to try to make pieces from five different puzzles fit together as one.
They also hammered away at what they said was surprisingly little evidence given the eight years the government spent investigating the six men. Each lawyer for the six defendants, including Dominick Palermo, the reputed territorial boss of the Chicago "Outfit," said the government failed to prove their clients extorted money from illegal gambling businesses that flourished in Lake and LaPorte counties in the 1980s.
"The government has brought very little evidence," said defense lawyer Kevin Milner, who represents Palermo. "But what they've brought is a lot of innuendo ... a lot of fill-in-the-blanks."
The government will get one more chance this morning to try to refute the claims of the defense lawyers and to persuade the jury to interpret the evidence as the government believes it should be viewed.
The jury could begin its deliberations in U.S. District Court in Hammond sometime this morning following the government's closing statement.
The six men - Palermo, his alleged underboss, Nicholas "Jumbo" Guzzino of Chicago Heights, Bernard "Snooky" Morgano of Valparaiso, who allegedly controlled gambling in Northwest Indiana; Sam Nuzzo Jr. of Merrillville, who allegedly conducted the majority of illegal gambling in the area; and alleged bagmen Pete "Cadillac Pete" Petros and Sam "Frog" Glorioso - face charges of racketeering, conspiracy and conducting an illegal gambling business.
Thill asked the jury to consider the mannerisms of many of the witnesses who testified that they were shaken down by the defendants for a percentage of the proceeds from the illegal gambling ventures they ran.
"Many of the witnesses who testified were frightened," Thill said. "They were frightened out of their mind."
The witnesses may have been scared, said Scott King, who represents Nuzzo, but what they were scared of is "what might happen to their deal with the government." Many of the witnesses testified under a grant of immunity in return for their testimony. Some of them admitted they continue to this date running illegal gambling enterprises.
"The government didn't say go and sin no more, but go and keep sinning," King said of the illegal gambling operators.
King and the other lawyers also insinuated that the reason the government selected the six defendants and ignored prosecuting the admitted illegal gambling operators was because five of the six defendants are Italian. The sixth defendant is Greek.
Thill invited the jury to listen again to the more than 200 taped-recorded conversations from the Taste of Italy restaurant in Calumet City and the phones of Morgano and Anthony Leone, the alleged bagman and right-hand man of Morgano who pleaded guilty in the case and testified against the six defendants.
But, defense lawyers attacked the credibility of the tapes, reminding the jury the government's own investigators interpreted parts of the same conversations differently. They used the example of "Toots on the way," and "put the stuff away" to show how two agents listening to the same conversation heard different words.
The defense lawyers directed much of their criticism, however, at the government's star witness in the case, Anthony Leone, calling him a "hustler, a con man" and a "liar" who is telling what the government wants to hear just so he can cut a deal to reduce his prison time. Leone is already serving an eight-year term for an earlier conviction resulting from an illegal lottery he ran.
Thill, however, told the jury that despite claims by the defense, Leone is not a "one-man" Mafia and he didn't collect the so-called street tax from illegal gambling operations for himself - he did it under the direction of Morgano, Guzzino and Palermo.
There were workers and bosses in this illegal association, Thill said.
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