Above photo: The Outfit’s longest-serving Godfather, Tony Accardo (center of photo, wearing glasses) and his right-hand man, Joey Aiuppa (far left), with their bosses in 1978. The five Mafia groups in Chicago got along very well – like five fingers clenched into a fist.

By the second half of the twentieth century, Chicago’s Mafia, known as The Outfit, was the most powerful Mob in the history of organized crime. While Mafia families warred among themselves on the East Coast, in Chicago they united into one monolithic force, not only controlling all major criminal activity in the city, but eventually, everything west of the Mississippi. They skimmed cash from casinos in Las Vegas and looted pension funds from two national unions, the Teamsters and the Laborers. The key to the Mob’s power in Chicago was their unprecedented ability to corrupt the city’s political and judicial leadership. Crooked judges threw out cases against Hit Men. Mobsters and Mob associates took top jobs in city government, including, at one point, Chief of Detectives for the Chicago Police Department.

Map above: Unlike the Mafia on the East Coast, the Outfit was organized by territory instead of family with the four major freeways as the dividing lines.

When Corruption Was King © 2004 by Robert Cooley and Hillel Levin


     
   
 
  From 1986 to 1989, criminal defense attorney Robert Cooley wore a recording device and developed criminal cases against mobsters and corrupt officials. His investigation led to nine federal trials in the Nineties and convictions or guilty pleas for twenty-four.  
 
 

“Bob is every bit the hero because he didn’t have to
do what he did.”

Tom Durkin, former First
Assistant U.S. Attorney

“The man is a paragon of corruption. The man is
walking slime.”

Criminal Defense Attorney
Edward M. Genson

Never has a federal investigation accomplished
so much, and never has an investigation revolved as
much around one man. But
to this day, the reasons why Cooley decided to cooperate with federal authorities remain a mystery.

 
 
 
 
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