Inside the life of a Chicago Outfit extortionist
It was the holiday season, but Paul Carparelli was giving an order as chilling as the Chicago winter, the feds say.
“It’s easy, f - - - ing easy,” the 44-year-old Itasca area man was allegedly recorded telling a flunky in late November 2011.
“Catch the kid outside, beat the s - - - out of him, break his f - - - ing jaw, break his arm, and leave.
“It’ll take you five minutes. . . . That’s two grand. That’s your Christmas money right there.”
For the right price, Carparelli — the alleged leader of an Outfit-connected extortion racket — for years routinely and happily arranged similarly violent attacks, according to recent court filings.
Carparelli denies any wrongdoing. The court papers, though, suggest that while the Chicago Mob has received some heavy blows from law enforcement over the last decade, it is far from dead.
Arrested with little fanfare two weeks ago, alongside eight other alleged extortionists, Carparelli was a target of a two-year undercover FBI operation that resulted in thousands of phone calls being wiretapped.
For this first time, prosecutors recently laid out how they found $175,000 cash hidden inside Carparelli’s home and other details of their probe in an unsuccessful bid to persuade a judge to keep Carparelli locked up until his trial.
They paint a picture of a foul-mouthed man who took pleasure in arranging beatings for the Outfit, kept a cache of illegal guns, dealt cocaine and boasted of his commitment to organized crime figures, including convicted bomber and Outlaws Motorcycle Club ranking member Mark Polchan and mob boss Solly DeLaurentis.
On one occasion in 2010, he traveled to Nevada to look for a beating victim on behalf of a Carol Stream printing firm, it’s alleged.
On another, in 2011, he allegedly told a pal to be discreet, so that the FBI agents would think they had destroyed the Cicero crew.
“Let them think that they did their job, pat themselves on the back, go have a beer, great job, high-five each other,” he was recorded saying.
But just last month, the feds say, Carparelli was contracted by DeLaurentis’ partner “Micky D,” who allegedly paid $10,000 for Carparelli to arrange the beating of a debtor.
“They just want you to catch him and give him a f---ing thorough beating,” Carparelli was allegedly recorded on July 5 telling an underling, who was secretly working with the FBI. “I think the guy wants his legs broke.”
In an earlier call, it’s alleged, Carparelli was recorded laughing as the underling described how he’d busted a victim’s ribs and head with a pipe and broken his arm on Lake Street.
“That’s what [the customer] wanted,” Carparelli allegedly replied.
Though the cooperating witness told Carparelli he’d overseen the attack, the FBI made sure it and other contracted beatings didn’t actually happen, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Donovan told Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys.
Donovan pointed to conversations in which Carparelli discussed his hatred of “rats,” arguing that Carparelli’s violent nature and connections would put government witnesses in danger if Carparelli were released.
But Carparelli’s attorney Ed Wanderling suggested Carparelli was all talk. “Not one person was ever struck, injured, slapped on the wrist,” he said.
Wanderling argued that following the recent death of Carparelli’s ex-wife, Carparelli is the only person able to raise his young son, persuading Keys to release his client on bond after Carparelli and his mother both put up their homes as security.
Though prosecutors appealed the ruling, a second judge, Robert Dow, released Carparelli on Wednesday, under terms that allow him to open a Bloomingdale pizza business. Dow said he was convinced that Carparelli had “violent proclivities” but was “rational” enough to understand that “returning to his pre-indictment ways while on pretrial release would be reckless.”
It remains to be seen whether Carparelli will comply.
During a 28-minute telephone conversation in 2011 in which he allegedly discussed his ambition to move up inside the organized crime world, he allegedly boasted that he’d been involved with the Outfit “all my life.”
“I’m not about to change right now,” he was recorded telling an informant. “Because this is what I’m made of, this is where I f - - - - - - come from and I’m f - - - - - - proud of it.”
http://www.suntimes.com/21804384-761/inside-the-life-of-an-alleged-outfit-extortionist.html
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