U.S.: Guns, cash stashed in reputed mobster's home

Posted 14m ago

CHICAGO (AP) — Federal agents searching a convicted mobster's home near Chicago found seven loaded guns, nearly $730,000 in cash and tape recordings that may contain "criminal conversations" hidden behind a basement wall, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

FBI agents and U.S. Marshals executed a search warrant Tuesday at Frank Calabrese Sr.'s home in Oak Brook, and discovered the stash — along with jewelry, recording devices and handwritten notes — in a secret compartment behind a family portrait handing on the wall, the documents said.

Agents executing the search warrant also found about $26,000 in bundled cash in a locked desk drawer in the bedroom of his wife, Diane.

Calabrese, 71, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted last year with several other reputed members of the Chicago Outfit in a racketeering conspiracy that included 18 murders — Calabrese himself was found responsible for 13 mob murders.

It marked the largest mob case in decades and exposed the seedy inner workings of organized crime in Chicago. Calabrese and three others were ordered to pay more than $24 million, including millions in restitution to the families of murder victims.

Documents found during Tuesday's search might prove that Calabrese and his wife attempted to launder illegal assets to avoid paying court-ordered restitution, according to the affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Calabrese's attorney, Joseph Lopez, said Wednesday evening that he did not know who stashed the items. He said Calabrese has not lived in the house since the mid-1990s, when he was sent to prison for another conviction.

Lopez also said he wasn't sure who was on the recordings, saying "it could be Frank Sinatra."

Calabrese is being held under strict security at a federal prison in Missouri.

A phone number for Diane Calabrese or anyone associated with the home's address could not be located. U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Randall Samborn said his office, the FBI and the U.S. Marshal's Service would not comment.

Authorities said they believe the firearms found were used in criminal activity because they were wrapped in cloth to prevent fingerprints from being left behind.

Calabrese was among five associates of the Chicago Outfit convicted in September 2007 at the Operation Family Secrets trial. Four members were found guilty of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included illegal gambling, extortion, loan sharking and 18 mob murders that had gone unsolved for decades. A fifth defendant, a retired Chicago police officer, was convicted of racketeering conspiracy but not accused of any murders.

Calabrese's brother, Nicholas Calabrese, was the government's star witness. He testified that his brother carried out mob hits, sometimes strangling his victims with a rope and then slashing their throats to make sure they were dead. Two victims were killed in a darkened Cicero restaurant while the Frank Sinatra record of "Strangers in the Night" was playing on the jukebox, he said.

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