The Outfit-connected crew had
planned the raid on the cartel stash house carefully, using a street
gang member who tipped them to a 40-kilogram shipment of cocaine from
Mexico that would be warehoused on Chicago's Southeast Side before being
cut up for distribution on the street, authorities say.
But what
crew leaders didn't know was that the nondescript gray frame house on
the 13400 block of South Brandon Avenue was a setup. The cocaine had
been planted by law enforcement officials, who wired the home with video
and audio surveillance equipment before giving their informant the
go-ahead to set the sting in motion.
As an FBI spy plane
monitored the Hegewisch neighborhood from the air late July 16, a team
of Chicago police and federal agents on the ground watched as reputed
Outfit soldiers Robert Panozzo and Paul Koroluk, posing as law
enforcement, kicked in the door and grabbed the stacks of narcotics.
When agents swooped in and made the arrest, Koroluk still had a police
star dangling from his neck, authorities said.
The dramatic sting
was the culmination of a monthslong investigation and led to sweeping
racketeering and drug charges unveiled in Cook County criminal court
last week against Panozzo, Koroluk and three other alleged crew members.
The charges alleged an array of crimes going back to at least 2007,
from home invasions and armed robberies to burglaries, arson, insurance
fraud and prostitution.
Authorities said the crew -- which,
according to previous court testimony, has ties to reputed Grand Avenue
mob boss Albert "Little Guy" Vena -- robbed cartel stash houses of drugs
and cash with a remarkable mix of sophistication and brazen violence,
tracking drug dealers with GPS devices and wearing stolen police badges
and body armor during the raids.
They had Chicago gang members
providing tips and acting as lookouts and used a battery service
business in their Near West Side neighborhood as a meeting place to
divide up the loot, according to the charges. When an associate was
nabbed for a home invasion, the crew plotted to kill the key witness
before he could testify and even put the Cook County judge overseeing
the case under surveillance, according to authorities.
Authorities
say Panozzo, 54, and Koroluk, 55, have also been prolific burglars,
using country club membership lists, tips from insurance brokers and
other intelligence to identify the high-end homes before they hit them,
then fencing stolen merchandise through Wabash Avenue jewelers and other
professionals on the take.
A search warrant affidavit filed in
the case stated that the crew has "surreptitious and unauthorized links
(with) certain employees of state and local government, as well as
insurance agents, jewelers, currency exchanges, banks, and business
owners."
Joseph Ways Sr., the former second-in-command at the
Chicago division of the FBI who now is executive director of the Chicago
Crime Commission, said the case shows the mob is still "alive and well"
despite recent high-profile prosecutions that decimated much of the
Outfit's key leadership.
Ways said that while the Panozzo-Koroluk
crew allegedly used many traditional mob schemes, it is also accused of
a particularly bold and risky tactic: stealing drugs that originate
from powerful drug cartels.
"That's a new twist," Ways said. "To
go in and rip off a stash house, depending on where it's at in the
supply line ... if you get too close and the wrong people find out, it
could be very hazardous to your health."
Authorities said the
investigation into the crew began in October, when the would-be hit man
informed police of the plot to kill a state witness who was about to
testify against Panozzo's associate.
While the charges identify
the associate only as "Individual H," numerous sources have confirmed to
the Tribune that he is Jeff Hollinghead, 48, a former union truck
driver who spent several years running an auto glass store in Las Vegas.
After returning to Chicago about six years ago, he teamed up with
Panozzo, whose base of operation was in Hollinghead's old neighborhood.
In
October 2009, Hollinghead and three others were charged with kidnapping
a wheelchair-bound gang member from his South Side home and holding him
for ransom. The man's family called police, who set up a sting with the
ransom money, court records show. Hollinghead was arrested by Chicago
police and FBI agents as he opened a garbage can in a Bridgeport alley
that had been marked with an "X" and removed what he thought was the
ransom payment.
When he was arrested, Hollinghead first told
authorities he was just looking for a place to relieve himself. Later he
told an elaborate story of how he was approached by a man on the street
who ordered him at gunpoint to retrieve the bag for him or
Hollinghead's wife would be killed, court records show.
According
to the search warrant affidavit, police investigating the
Panozzo-Koroluk crew got a huge break when Hollinghead began cooperating
last November, shortly before he pleaded guilty to the kidnapping
charges and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Hollinghead laid
out the details of the crew's operation, including how Panozzo used
connections with the Spanish Cobras and Latin Dragons street gangs for
tips on drug suppliers and the location of stash houses, according to
the charges. Police said Hollinghead told them that the crew's technical
operations wizard, Maher "Max" Abuhabsah -- who was also charged with
racketeering -- ordered GPS tracking devices from a Skokie surveillance
store and put them on the cars of their targets so he could track their
movements through his smartphone.
Hollinghead told police that
while he was free on bond and awaiting trial, he and Panozzo had
discussed arranging the murder of the victim in his case, but the victim
had gone into hiding and no one could find him, according to the
affidavit. Meanwhile, another informant said Abuhabsah had found the
victim's brother's address through Internet research, the affidavit
alleged.
Then, last July, Hollinghead's lawyer called him to a
meeting at a Caribou Coffee on Maxwell and Halsted streets, according to
the affidavit. At the meeting, the attorney slid a computerized
printout of the victim's name and address across the table.
"Give
this to Bob, he knows what to do with it," the attorney allegedly told
Hollinghead, according to the court documents. "This is your only
problem."
The charges refer to the attorney only as "Individual
K," but court records show Hollinghead was represented at the time by
longtime criminal defense attorney Joseph Lopez.
Lopez told the
Tribune he did meet Hollinghead at the coffee shop but gave him only a
copy of his investigator's report, which included a routine public
records search that had only outdated addresses for the victim. Lopez
said the meeting was part of the normal course of preparing for trial.
"We were trying to locate and interview the victim as part of trial preparations, just like we always do," Lopez said.
A
review of court records in Hollinghead's case suggests that eliminating
the victim would not have helped him beat the charges. The victim never
identified Hollinghead in a lineup, and the main witnesses against him
were FBI agents and Chicago police officers who were monitoring the
ransom drop site and watched as Hollinghead reached into the garbage can
and took the bag, records show.
Raised in the old
Italian-American enclave known as "the Patch" on the Near West Side,
Panozzo and Koroluk have criminal histories that stretch back decades,
court records show.
In 2006 they were both sentenced to seven
years in prison for a string of burglaries targeting tony north suburban
homes that netted millions in jewelry and other luxury items. Police at
the time described the burglars as some of the most sophisticated
they'd run across, from the disabling of state-of-the-art alarm systems
to the cutting of phone lines before entering the properties. It wasn't
until Koroluk slipped up and left footprints in the snow leading to his
car that police were able to crack the case.
According to court
records, Panozzo got his start as a juice loan collector under former
Grand Avenue boss Joseph "The Clown" Lombardo, who was convicted in the
landmark Family Secrets trial. Recently, Panozzo was operating a house
of prostitution masquerading as a massage parlor in the 800 block of
West Superior Street, according to the racketeering charges.
No
one answered the door when a Tribune reporter visited the alleged
brothel last week. Employees of the hair salon next door said they had
been suspicious of the place for months, sometimes spotting beautiful
young women dressed in skimpy lingerie escorting men into the building
in broad daylight.
The racketeering charges also allege that
Panozzo has a history of violence. According to the affidavit in the
case, Panozzo has often bragged to associates that he threw an elderly
woman down three flights of stairs to her death in 1987 after tricking
her into signing over ownership rights to her three-flat in the 2300
block of West Ohio Street.
Public records show that the woman,
Lydia Minneci, 77, signed a quitclaim deed to her home in October 1987
to a man named Steven Brantner, who at the time lived with Panozzo a few
blocks away on West Erie Street. Minneci was killed shortly after she
signed the papers, though no one was ever arrested, records show.
Four
years later, Brantner was also killed, records show. According to the
affidavit, Panozzo drove Brantner to the hospital, where he died of
bullet wounds. No one was ever charged with his slaying.
As
authorities were ramping up their investigation into Panozzo's crew
earlier this year, his name surfaced in the sensational trial of former
Chicago cop Steve Mandell, who was convicted in February of plotting to
kidnap, murder and dismember a local businessman flush with cash.
According
to trial testimony, Panozzo had introduced Mandell to real estate mogul
George Michael during a July 2012 lunch at La Scarola restaurant on
West Grand Avenue. At the table was Vena -- the reputed Outfit boss who
replaced Lombardo after he went to prison -- and several other alleged
mobsters, according to testimony. Michael, who unbeknownst to his dining
companions was an FBI informant, recorded the meeting on a hidden wire,
but the recording was never played at Mandell's trial.
Ways, of
the Chicago Crime Commission, said it's difficult to tell whether the
charges against the Panozzo-Koroluk crew signify a wider investigation
of mob activity. With all the recent attention on Chicago's rampant gun
violence, organized crime has faded from headlines. But that doesn't
mean it's gone away, he said.
"That's the joy of law enforcement," Ways said. "Even if they decide to lay low for a while, you know they'll be back."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-chicago-outfit-racketeering-met-20140726,0,2380128.story
