Maybe my sense of what the mob is really like has been warped by too many Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola movies, but I was a little surprised to read about the guilty plea of 54-year-old Mario Rainone (Daily Herald) for felony residential burglary.
I mean, all his fellow gangsters have to do is provide some, uh, "incentives" for the members of the jury -- just one will do -- and hope for a mistrial. No such luck for Rainone, though, who was sentenced last week to 7 1/2 years in prison.
Rainone is widely believed to be a member of the notorious gang known as The Chicago Outfit (American Mafia), or simply "The Outfit" made famous by Al "Scarface" Capone.
You should check out his mug -- the steely eyes, thick neck and leather-on-steel facial features of a true-life gangster.
The burglary of a Lincolnshire house on Feb. 12, for which he was just sentenced, happened while Rainone was on parole for a federal racketeering and conspiracy conviction. Officers from an Illinois task force watched Rainone and accomplice Vincent Forliano walk into a condonimium complex and return soon after with stolen goods under their coats.
Forliano, however, has pleaded not guilty. I'm guessing Forliano is a higher ranking officer in the gang and thus more worthy of an expensive Chicago criminal defense attorney, but who knows.
But just like in Scorcese's Mafia masterpiece Goodfellas, in which imprisoned mobster Henry Hill and his cohorts smuggled bread, pasta, even lobsters into their cell, Rainone also smuggled some better-quality food into the prison where he was serving time.
The only difference is that while Hill got away with it, Rainone got caught and is facing federal charges of bribery.
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The New "Outfit" (Sun-Times via IPSN.org)
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Definition of burglary (FindLaw)
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Directory of Chicago criminal attorneys (FindLaw)
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