Chicago Sweepstakes Operator Sees Extortion Charges Dropped After Mistrial

Federal Prosecutors inward Chicago on Mon dropped extortion charges against ii reputedly mobbed-up figures next a tumultuous mistrial earliest this month, as world-class reported past The Chicago Tribune.

Sweepstakes operator Gene “Gino” Cassano, 55, and his tie in Gioacchino “Jack” Galione, 47, were on trial run accused of conspiring to take in a debt by extortionate means. Additionally, Galione was supercharged with using force to gather up a debt.

This was in telling to the alleged vibration shoot down and drubbing upwards of do drugs trafficker Luigi Mucerino who was assaulted inward Galione’s service department on Aug. 1, 2016. Prosecutors claimed Mucerino had borrowed $10K from Cassano, which he failed to compensate endorse in a seasonable fashion, leading to his roughing up.

Defense lawyers did not abnegate that Galione stony-broke Mucerino’s nose and shattered more than a dozen finger cymbals inwards his face. But they did refuse that he did this under Cassano’s orders for the purposes of extortion.

Don’t Mention the Mafia

The trial collapsed stunningly lastly month after FBI Special Agent Saint David Patch inadvertently testified that his chore involved investigating “organized criminal offence matters.”

This caused U.S. District Judge Sharon Samuel Johnson Coleman to arrest proceedings and hold a mistrial. That was on the grounds that the phrase would prejudice the panel against the ii defendants.

Lawyers for Cassano and Galione accused prosecutors of “attempting to regain ways to shoot organized crime rubric to this grammatical case from the jump.”

Yet the charges against the couple were parting of a wider federal investigation into the Chicago Outfit’s Elmwood Mungo Park and Grand Avenue street crews, according to court documents. It was focused peculiarly on two of the Outfit’s briny revenue streams, play and prostitution.

As portion of the investigation, the FBI had been wiretapping organised criminal offense figures within the Outfit since 2016. Targets included a relation of reputed Elmwood Mungo Park capo and Mob bookmaker Chief Joseph “Joe Gags” Gagliano, according to the Tribune.

The tardily Marco “The Mover” D’Amico was also a focusing of the investigation. D’Amico died inward 2020, age 84. It’s believed he headed upwards the Outfit’s illegal sports betting operations for decades.

Offshore Sports Betting Ops

Cassano had also at single time been a bookie, according to the testimonies of several somewhat reluctant witnesses at the trial, but he also operated logical businesses.

Federal wiretaps recorded Cassano inward conversation with other members of an alleged offshore online sports betting operation, according to judicature documents.

Federal prosecutors did not commit a specific ground for falling the charges Friday, although defence lawyers had indicated they would register a motility to throw out the grammatical case on three-fold jeopardy grounds had it proceeded.

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