McCormick Place is called the nation’s largest convention center, but reputed Outfit guys, ex-cons and criminals have another name for it:
A haven.
The kind of guys who populate a prison yard have been getting work at McCormick Place for decades, especially through the small but politically powerful riggers union that sets up some of Chicago’s biggest trade shows, including the Chicago Auto Show.
There’s a man working there who has ties to reputed organized crime figures and who helped run a heroin ring while locked up in Leavenworth.
There’s also a mobster’s son, a convicted felon, who beat a murder rap.
There’s a guy who looted $40,000 from a Catholic church where he worked on the side as a bookkeeper.
And there’s a former state senator who is a convicted ghost payroller.
“When the guys got out of jail, that was where they sent them to work,” said Robert Cooley, a former mob attorney turned federal informant whose cooperation helped decimate the Outfit.
The Outfit had great influence at the lakefront convention center in the 1970s and 1980s, Cooley said. And its influence is still felt there.
This year, the longtime president of the Machinery Movers, Riggers and Machinery Erectors Union Local 136 was charged with accepting a free Harley-Davidson bike from a pension fund manager.
Despite the charge, the president, Fred Schreier, and other union officers he’s allied with are seeking re-election next month. “We do not believe the indictment will hurt the re-election campaign,” union attorney Marc Pekay said in a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Their opponents include a man once accused of running illegal gambling at McCormick Place and then giving jobs at the convention center to deadbeats to pay their debts. The man, Charles O’Connell, was never charged.
The Sun-Times has obtained a list of riggers who work at McCormick Place, which gives a first-time look at some of the people who help run one of Chicago’s key economic engines.
While the cast of characters may raise some eyebrows, it will come as no surprise to people who work or exhibit at McCormick Place.
When asked about the ex-cons and reputed mobsters who have worked as riggers, Pekay, the union attorney, wrote, “The riggers do not discriminate or do checks on individuals, but merely serve the secured jobs of thousands of men. . . . This question impugns the integrity of hardworking and functioning individuals.”
McCormick Place visitors pump an estimated $1.6 billion each year into Chicago’s economy.
The convention center is run by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, a government agency known as McPier, which lures groups to stage conventions and trade shows in Chicago. Those groups hire companies, such as Freeman Decorating Co., to set up the exhibitions. Those companies hire carpenters, electricians and riggers to set the shows up and take them apart.
A former McPier executive said some McCormick Place managers have been aware of the shady folks working as riggers in recent years.
McPier’s current chief, Leticia Peralta Davis, said the agency has no control over who is hired by the companies that set up the trade shows. But she said Mayor Daley and Gov. Blagojevich are pushing for more labor reforms at McCormick Place so Chicago remains the convention king.
Riggers typically are paid $24.15 an hour to move large machines or items. Becoming a rigger and getting steady work can require clout or connections, critics say. The convention center is the biggest source of jobs, but riggers also work at Rosemont’s convention center and at hotels. They even moved the presses at the Sun-Times’ new printing plant.
Of course, many of the 350 members of the riggers union are hard workers with clean pasts, union members emphasize, calling the rogues a few bad eggs. Thousands more people are hired as riggers temporarily under permits.
McCormick Place itself has a history of corruption that goes well beyond the riggers union.
Just three months ago, Scott Fawell, the former head of the agency that runs McCormick Place, was indicted for allegedly fixing an $11.5 million contract to oversee the convention center’s $800 million expansion project. Fawell is already behind bars for political corruption while he worked in the secretary of state’s office under George Ryan.
Insiders say a culture of corruption permeates McCormick Place.
Take the story of one exhibitor, told by Robert Cappiello, industry vice president for the National Hardware Show.
The exhibitor watched the contents of his booth loaded onto a freight elevator but he wasn’t allowed on.
He went to meet the elevator, but when the doors opened, “nothing came out,” Cappiello said. “The whole booth was gone.”
There’s no evidence the riggers were involved. But such stories of thefts, ghost-payrolling, bookmaking and other wrongdoing abound at McCormick Place.
The riggers are no exception, and some have pasts rife with a certain colorful history.
Sharon Campagna, wife of a late union official, worked in the riggers office for 16 years before she says she was forced out. She knows all about the riggers.
“When I first met these people, I thought, ‘You must have to have a record to get into the union,’ ” Campagna joked.
Good news, bad news
Charles “Chuck” O’Connell has no criminal record, but he was in hot water with Freeman Decorating Co., the national firm that puts on the most conventions and trade shows at McCormick Place.
Freeman said in court records that it fired O’Connell, its longtime riggers foreman, in 1997 for ghost-payrolling.
O’Connell was taking bets on sporting events from employees at McCormick Place, Freeman said in court records. O’Connell allegedly put deadbeat gamblers on the payroll to cover their debts to him during the late 1990s.
O’Connell allegedly received “numerous unsigned Freeman Decorating payroll checks upon which he forged the recipient’s signature and then deposited the forged payroll checks into his personal bank accounts,” a Freeman lawyer said in court records.
But it wasn’t all bad news for O’Connell, 57, of Bensenville.
He never was charged with any crime, saying in a court deposition that he “left Freeman Decorating on a mutual agreement.”
It’s unclear whether Freeman reported the alleged crimes to police or McCormick Place officials.
When asked about O’Connell, Freeman vice president Doug Van Ort hung up on a reporter.
“That’s such old news,” Van Ort said. “Goodbye.”
O’Connell eventually got to return to work at Freeman, but as a basic rigger, not a foreman, Van Ort said in a court deposition.
“We were very bothered about what Mr. O’Connell had done,” Van Ort said in the deposition. “After I terminated him, we felt like . . . that we were not going to deny him a living wage, so we allowed him to come down at show site and operate as a rigger.”
O’Connell declined to comment.
He’s seeking election next month as the union’s business agent.
McCormick Place officials were apparently never told about the alleged ghost-payrolling, but worry because it could mean conventions and trade shows were overcharged.
“If that’s true, that’s extremely, extremely disturbing,” said Leticia Peralta Davis, McPier CEO. “If our customers are getting billed for something that wasn’t delivered . . . we certainly would want to know that.”
“Prolific and multifaceted”
Inside prison, Thomas “Danny” Bambulas was definitely industrious. He was caught setting up a heroin ring at Leavenworth.
Now, Bambulas, 67, of Park Ridge, sets up trade shows. He says he and other ex-cons deserve a chance to make an honest living.
“Would they rather me on the street trying to rob people?” asked Bambulas, who has a lengthy criminal record and ties to reputed organized crime figures.
“Nobody’s giving me nothing for nothing. I’m working for whatever I’m getting,” Bambulas said. “It’s keeping me out of trouble. My grandchildren, everybody, are very proud of me.”
Calling Bambulas “a prolific and multifaceted criminal would be a major understatement,” a federal prosecutor said.
Charles Fasano of the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog, said it’s “good public policy” to let ex-cons make a decent living. But he said the riggers union seems to favor a certain type of ex-convict.
“It’s not your typical ex-convict, because that would be a black man,” he said.
A pair of Roccos
Rocco LaMantia is a convicted felon, but he beat the most serious rap against him. He was charged 25 years ago with killing his girlfriend by shooting her in the mouth. Cook County Judge Thomas Maloney, one of the most corrupt judges in state history, acquitted him, and the feds later alleged that the case was fixed.
LaMantia is the son of the late top mobster Joseph “Shorty” LaMantia. The son received attention earlier this year when the Sun-Times reported he had helped set up a trucking business that made more than $400,000 from the City of Chicago in its scandal-ridden Hired Truck Program.
LaMantia, 45, of Chicago, is a rigger now.
A more well-known Rocco was also a rigger at McCormick Place. He’s now in prison. Ernest Rocco Infelice, 80, was sentenced to 63 years in prison in 1993 for running a mob street crew that plotted to murder a bookie who refused to pay street tax.
Infelice tried to get a riggers union card, one source recalled, but was denied. He wound up on the rolls as an occasional rigger.
The two Roccos just scratch the surface of people tied to the Outfit who have been riggers at McCormick Place.
Take Michael J. Swiatek, described in court records as a suspected mob enforcer and a once-frequent visitor to reputed mob boss Joey “The Clown” Lombardo.
After his release from prison in the mid-1990s, Swiatek became a rigger at McCormick Place. He said he stopped a couple of years ago because of a bum leg.
There’s also the Calabreses, who have been entrenched at McCormick Place for decades, sources said. Nick Calabrese has worked as a rigger, as have his relatives.
Nick Calabrese is cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of nearly 20 mob hits, sources said. He also was a major focus of a federal ghost-payrolling investigation at McCormick Place that centered on the riggers, sources said.
Pressure from FBI
The feds used what they learned from their investigation, among other pressure points, to turn Calabrese into a witness, sources said.
The ghost-payrolling investigation has come to a halt, but the FBI is believed to be working on a broader investigation at McCormick Place.
A onetime employee of the Calabrese Street Crew, Terry Scalise, a convicted juice loan collector, also found work at McCormick Place after he left prison in 2000.
“I wish I was still working there,” said Scalise, 48, of Chicago, who is recovering from back surgery. “If anyone’s looking to hire me, give them my phone number.”
A rigger currently on the union rolls, records show, is Charles Miller, 53, of Chicago, a jewel thief with mob ties who was sentenced to prison after robbing a jeweler in Wisconsin.
Miller left prison in 1997 and became a rigger. He even filed a workers comp claim after he said he was hurt at McCormick Place.
Looting the collection box
William Tuzik was a rigger when he swiped $40,000 from All Saints Polish National Catholic Church on the Northwest Side.
Tuzik was arrested in 1988 and admitted skimming weekly collections while he was church treasurer. He got 30 months probation and said he made restitution.
Tuzik, 64, of Chicago, is still a rigger. He said he was planning to work this past week at Rosemont’s convention center.
“Dr. Mengele”
It’s not only crooks who work at McCormick Place.
There are also crooked cops.
Take Joseph Miedzianowski, described as Chicago’s most corrupt cop for running a Miami-to-Chicago drug ring while he was supposed to fight street gangs.
Miedzianowski, 51, and his crooked partner, John Galligan, 54, started working as riggers at McCormick Place in the 1980s after they were suspended following brutality complaints.
They needed money, so a police official asked a friend at the riggers union to put the cops to work, sources said. After they returned to the Police Department, they continued at McCormick Place on their off-days, sources said.
Miedzianowski’s reputation as a wild man from the police force followed him to the convention center, where he got dubbed with an unusual nickname, Dr. Mengele, after the Nazi who experimented on human beings.
Miedzianowski started working less and less as a rigger — and it’s now apparent why, a union member said. He probably was too busy running his cocaine operation, the person said.
Miedzianowski is serving a life sentence. Galligan was sent away for five years.
When Galligan gets out, he would be welcomed back to the riggers, a union source said.
In a similar case, Edward Freemon landed a rigging job and other work at McCormick Place in the 1990s after he was released from prison for a drug crime committed while he was a Chicago Fire Department captain.
Freemon, 68, of Chicago, now works for another union at McCormick Place.
A gentleman and a killer?
For most of their relationship, Orville “Orvie” Cochran was a gentleman, opening car doors and pulling out chairs for his girlfriend.
But he had another side as well, federal authorities said.
Cochran, 54, is charged in a massive racketeering case out of Wisconsin involving drug dealing, bombings and two murders by the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. He is also wanted for questioning in the 1999 murder of fellow Outlaw Tommy Stimac, sources said. Stimac worked occasionally at McCormick Place.
Cochran’s past may have come back with a vengeance in February 2000. He was outside the Outlaws’ South Side clubhouse when someone opened fire. Cochran was shot but survived. He fell below the barrage of bullets because he slipped on the ice, a former friend said.
“This guy was goddamn lucky,” the ex-friend said.
Cochran is on the lam. Before taking off, he was known as a consistent worker at McCormick Place with an eye toward becoming a union leader, sources said.
Another Outlaw and rigger, Carl Warneke, is lying low too, but for a different reason. He’s in a prison witness protection program after testifying against his former club members charged in federal indictments in recent years.
The riggers union continues to draw on the Outlaws as a source of labor for McCormick Place, but none of those men has been accused of any wrongdoing.
Haunted by ghosts
Federal investigators have long believed that not everyone is breaking a sweat at McCormick Place. Some are suspected of not showing up but getting paid anyway, sources said. Others apparently work under other names to avoid government scrutiny.
A recent federal investigation of ghost-payrolling at McCormick Place involved riggers union president Fred Schreier, sources said. Schreier, 59, of Willow Springs, has not been charged in that investigation.
But he was indicted earlier this year for illegally taking a motorcycle from a pension fund consultant who was working with the union.
Schreier’s first wife, Pamela, was a niece of Chicago’s late mob boss Anthony “Joe Batters” Accardo.
Schreier isn’t the first union leader to let people with shady pasts work as riggers — or find himself in trouble with the law.
The late business manager for the riggers and secretary-treasurer Ernest Gibas Sr. and two other union officials were convicted in 1960 of shaking down machinery- moving firms.
Charles LaTour, a Gibas associate and union steward in the 1960s, was a convicted robber who was questioned in a 1967 bombing of the Wilmette home of an exposition company executive.
Quid pro quo? Absolutely!
The union has seen tough times before and weathered challenges to its very existence.
In 1998, the riggers and other unions made concessions so McCormick Place would become more competitive with other cities that were threatening to lure conventions from Chicago.
In another case, legislation before the General Assembly would have consolidated McCormick Place’s unions and made the workers government employees, rather than employees of contractors.
Some union officials feared it would have cut wages and wounded or killed the riggers union.
That crisis was averted, thanks to political help in Springfield. The bill was defeated by a narrow margin with help from then-state Sen. Bruce Farley (D-Chicago), who at the time was under indictment as a ghost payroller in the Cook County treasurer’s office. He was later convicted.
The riggers remembered Farley’s help when he was released from federal custody in 2001. Farley, 61, of Chicago, found work as a rigger at McCormick Place.
“I don’t want to talk about my employment,” Farley said, before hanging up.
One union source was more talkative about Farley’s job.
“Is that quid pro quo?” he asked. “Absolutely.”
“We owed him an opportunity.”