Chicago Outfit

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Chicago Outfit or "The Outfit"
In Flag of the United States Chicago, Illinois, USA
Years active Early 1900s – present
Territory Chicago to NW Indiana, Milwaukee to the West Coast of the United States
Ethnicity Italian, Italian-American, Others
Membership 200 - 250 made members and 1000 - 1200 associates approx
Criminal activities Racketeering,conspiracy,loansharking, money laundering, murder, gambling, extortion and call girls (prostitution).
Allies New York's Five Families
Rivals North Side Mob in early years; Every other criminal entity in Chicago that wouldn't side with Capone.

The Chicago Outfit, also known simply as "The Outfit" is a crime syndicate, based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Dating back to the 1910s, it is part of the United States phenomenon known as the Mafia. However, the Chicago Outfit is distinct from its cousins, the "Five Families" of New York City, though all Sicilian- and Italian-American crime families are ruled by The Commission.

The Outfit is the only criminal organization that has a monopoly on traditional organized crime in the city of Chicago, whereas the Five Families compete with each other for control of racketeering activities in New York. The Outfit's control reportedly reaches throughout the western United States to places as far away as Los Angeles, California and parts of Florida.

The Outfit has had other ethnic groups in its upper echelons since its earliest days. A prime example of this was that an unlikely Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik was the top "bagman" and "accountant" of the Chicago Mob for decades until his death. Yet, he was Jewish and either Polish or Russian depending on the source.

To this day, The Outfit bears the influence of its best-known leader, Alphonse ("Big Al," "Scarface") Capone; in fact, for decades after Capone had left the scene, The Outfit was known as "the Capone Gang" or "the Capones" to outsiders.

The Outfit's Membership at a moderate estimate is between 50 - 60 Made Members,with its membership being a core group in comparison to the other Five Families of New York. They have a large number of associates which make up the majority of their force.

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[edit] Impact of the Chicago Outfit

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The Chicago Outfit has been responsible for or involved in a number of high-profile, horrific events and much mayhem in the United States. Capone competed with George "Bugs" Moran for a monopoly of the sale of bootlegged liquor in Chicago during the Prohibition era, culminating in Capone's alleged oversight into the planning of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre on St. Valentine's Day, 1929. In the early 1940s, a handful of top Outfit leaders went to prison because they were found to be extorting Hollywood by controlling the unions that comprise Hollywood's movie industry. There were also allegations that The Outfit was involved in strong-arm tactics and voter fraud at polling places, under Salvatore ("Sam," "Momo," "Mooney") Giancana in the 1960 presidential election. The Outfit controlled casinos in Las Vegas and "skimmed" millions of dollars over the course of several decades.

For many decades it's been alleged that The Outfit has claimed all territory west of the Mississippi River.

[edit] History of the Chicago Outfit

[edit] Pre-Prohibition

The early years of organized crime in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was marked by the division of various street gangs controlling the South Side and North Side as well as the Black Hand organizations of Little Italy.

Giacomo ("James," "Big Jim") Colosimo centralized control in the early 20th century. Colosimo was born in Calabria, Italy, in 1877, emigrating to Chicago in 1895, where he established himself as a criminal. By 1909 he was successful enough that he was encroaching on the criminal activity of the Black Hand organization.

His expanding organization required the procurement of extra muscle. This came in the form of Colosimo's nephew Giovanni ("John" "Johnny The Fox") Torrio from New York. In 1919, Torrio brought in Al Capone, thus providing Capone's entrance to Chicago. In time, Colosimo and Torrio had a falling out over Torrio's insistence that they expand into rum-running, which Colosimo staunchly opposed. In 1920, Torrio arranged for Frankie Yale to kill Colosimo, ending the argument.

Torrio brought together the different parts of Chicago criminal activity, with a lasting effect on Chicago in general, and Chicago crime in particular.

[edit] Torrio-Capone and the birth of the Chicago Outfit

Severely injured in an assassination attempt by the North Side Mob in January 1925, the shaken Torrio returned to Italy and handed over control of the business to Capone. Capone was notorious during Prohibition for his control of the Chicago underworld and his bitter rivalries with gangsters such as George "Bugs" Moran and Earl "Hymie" Weiss. Raking in vast amounts of money (some estimates were that between 1925 and 1930 Capone was making $100 million a year), the Chicago kingpin was largely immune to prosecution due to witness intimidation and the bribing of city officials.

While Eliot Ness of the Bureau of Prohibition concentrated on trying to dry up the flow of the illegal liquor to Chicago, the United States Department of the Treasury was devising a strategy of using the Supreme Court's 1927 decision on bootlegger Manny Sullivan to bring down Capone. Sullivan had argued that the Fifth Amendment prevented him from reporting how much income tax evasion he had engaged in. Al Capone and a number of the other Outfit members were soon indicted, but Capone went unscathed until February 1931, when he was convicted for owing more than $215,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a Capone biography on the FBI's website.

[edit] From Nitti through Accardo

After Capone was jailed for tax evasion, his hand-picked successor, Francesco ("Frank 'The Enforcer' Nitti") Nitto, a former barber and small-time jewel thief, only nominally assumed power. In truth, power was seized by Nitti's underboss, Felice ("Paul 'The Waiter' Ricca") DeLucia, who was acknowledged as "boss" by the leaders of the growing National Crime Syndicate. Over the next decade, The Outfit moved into labor racketeering, gambling, and loan sharking. Geographically, this was the period when Outfit muscle extended its tendrils to Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, Kansas City, and especially to Hollywood and other California cities, where The Outfit's extortion of labor unions gave it leverage over the motion picture industry.

Nitti committed suicide in 1943 after refusing to take the "fall" for The Oufit getting caught red-handed extorting the Hollywood movie industry. He had found years earlier being in jail for tax evasion for 18 months to be claustrophobic, and he decided to end his life rather than face more imprisonment. Ricca then became the boss in name as well as in fact, with enforcement chief Tony ("Joe Batters," "The Big Tuna") Accardo as underboss.

However, later in '43, following the "Hollywood Scandal" trial, Ricca was sent to prison for his part in The Outfit plot to control Hollywood. He, along with a number of other mobsters, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, due to the "magic" of political connections the whole group of Outfit mobsters was released after three years, largely due to the efforts of Outfit "fixer," Murray "The Camel" Humphreys. However, as a condition of his parole, Ricca could not associate with mobsters. While Accardo theoretically took over as day-to-day boss, by all indications Ricca continued behind the scenes as a senior consultant. He and Accardo would share de facto power for the next 30 years, but with Ricca staying in the shadows. When he died in 1972, Accardo (who had joined Ricca in semi-retirement in 1957), was the sole power behind the throne for another 20 years until his death, in 1992.

Beginning in 1957, Ricca and Accardo allowed several others, such as Giancana, Joseph "Joey Doves" Aiuppa, William "Willie Potatoes" Daddano, Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio, John ("Jackie the Lackey") Cerone and Vincent "The Saint" Inserro, to serve as front men over the years, this due to some "heat" that Accardo was originally getting from the IRS, in the '50s. However, no major business transactions, and certainly no "hits," took place without Ricca's and Accardo's knowledge and approval.

The Outfit reached the height of its power in the 1960s. With the aid of Meyer Lansky, Accardo used the Teamsters pension fund to engage in massive money laundering through The Outfit's casinos, aided by the likes of Sydney Korshak and Jimmy Hoffa. The 1970s and 1980s were a hard time for The Outfit, as law enforcement continued to penetrate the organization, spurred by poll-watching politicians. Off-track betting reduced bookmaking profits and illicit casinos withered under competition from legitimate casinos. Replacement activities like auto theft and professional sports betting did not replace the lost profits.

In May of 1992, Tony Accardo, Chicago's one-time crime boss and ultimate consigliere of close to half-a-century, died. However, compared to how organized crime power struggles emerge in New York City, Chicago's transition from Accardo to the next generation of Outfit bosses has run rather smoothly.

[edit] Bosses of the Chicago Outfit

[edit] In popular culture

The Chicago Outfit has a long history of portrayal in Hollywood as the subject of films and television, including the highly fictionalized Scarface (1932), Chicago Syndicate (1955), The Scarface Mob (1957), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), The Outfit (1973), The Untouchables (1987) as well as both the The Untouchables television series (1959-63; 1993-94). During the 1960s and in to the '70s The F.B.I. showcased numerous, fictionalized, real Outfit cases on its television program. The television series Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986-1988, also portrayed a fictional syndicate mobster rising through the ranks of the Chicago Outfit.

Martin Scorsese's 1995 film Casino is a fictionalized depiction of the Chicago Outfit's skimming operations in Las Vegas. In The Simpsons episode "Viva Ned Flanders" the Las Vegas wedding-chapel priest cites the Chicago Outfit for vesting the power in him to marry. In FOX's Prison Break, character John Abruzzi is the incarcerated boss of the "Chicago Outfit." In the movie Payback, Mel Gibson fights against the crime organization firstly called, "The Syndicate," later in the movie called, "The Outfit."

In the Star Trek episode, "A Piece of the Action", the Enterprise visits Sigma Iotia II, a planet that based its culture on the Chicago Outfit (the fictional book "Chicago Mobs of the Twenties," (Pub. 1992). The Chicago Outfit are a Rock/Powerpop band from the UK. The Chicago Outfitis a Roller Derby league in Chicago (2007).

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