Reputed Chicago mobster gets 3 1/2 years in prison

CHICAGO (STMW) - A reputed Chicago mobster was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison Wednesday for playing a central role in threatening debtors across the country.

Paul Carparelli pleaded guilty in May to a series of extortion conspiracies around Chicago as well as in Las Vegas, the East Coast and one in Wisconsin that caused the victim to wet his pants and give up a Ford Mustang out of fear of Carparelli’s goons, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

Carparelli on Wednesday conceded to the judge that he has “anger issues.” But he and his lawyers repeatedly pointed to the health issues suffered by his son, who recently began high school, as a key reason to give Carparelli as short a sentence as possible.

“(Carparelli) needs to come home, and his son needs to know when he’s coming home,” lawyer Charles Nesbit said.
Ed Wanderling, another of Carparelli’s attorneys, has said his client is a “typical wannabe who watched the Godfather and Sopranos too much.” But federal prosecutors wanted U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman to send Carparelli to prison for seven years.

By the time Carparelli admitted his guilt, the judge had already tossed him in jail for allegedly threatening a government witness. The feds say Carparelli yelled at one of the witness’s employees that the witness had broken one of Carparelli’s three cardinal rules.

“Tell [the witness] he is a f—ing rat,” Carparelli allegedly said. “Tell him he knows what happens to rats.”

They also said Carparelli threatened a business partner as recently as August in an email sent from the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Wanderling claims no threat was made. Rather, he said the angry email described by the feds was sent to Carparelli’s “best friend” who never opened it and laughed when Wanderling told him about it.

“They are glamorizing this case as Mr. Carparelli has a big mouth and likes to throw names around of people he never met or knew,” Wanderling wrote in an email.

The investigation that nabbed Carparelli has already resulted in prison sentences for several of Carparelli’s associates, including five years for Robert McManus, four years for Michael “Mickey” Davis, 46 months for Mark Dziuban and Frank Orlando, and 38 months for Vito Iozzo.

The feds captured the reputed Cicero Street Crew member’s colorful way with words on thousands of secret recordings as he bossed around a 300-pound enforcer, ordered up brutal beatings, and concerned himself only with the hierarchy of the Chicago Outfit.

While demanding that the “f—ing thorough beating” of a car salesman in Melrose Park include broken legs, he allegedly added, “Hey, in that situation, if it’s your legs or not, what’s the f—in’ difference, you ain’t movin’.”

Other times, the feds say he described the beatings more simply: “Guy gets out of his car. Boom, boom, boom. That’s it.”

But they said he also once asked the enforcer to “just beat the living p—” out of his ex-wife for $5,000. And after she died of a drug overdose, the feds say Carparelli had two words for his former father-in-law, who called Carparelli a junkie and a drug dealer: “Who OD’d?”

The feds said Carparelli committed to the mob life and claimed to live by three cardinal rules:

“As long as you don’t steal from me, f— my wife or rat on me, you’re my friend 1,000 percent,” Carparelli said in October 2011. “Do you hear that? Do you hear those three things I just told you?”

Carparelli allegedly made that comment to George Brown, the 300-pound mixed-martial arts fighter who wound up cooperating with the government against Carparelli and others. The feds say Brown’s cooperation interrupted potentially violent schemes involving Carparelli. Among them was the “break-both-legs beating” of the nephew of Melrose Park Mayor Ronald Serpico.

The Itasca man was arrested July 23, 2013, as he drove up to his home with his son in the car, according to the feds. He had cocaine and tested positive for it, and agents found two guns and $175,000 cash in his home. They said he’s dealt drugs for nearly 20 years.

Carparelli started out as a member of the 12th Street Players before becoming a member of the Cicero Street Crew, prosecutors allege. They said he has ties to Michael “The Large Guy” Sarno, a top Chicago mobster, and his pal, Mark Polchan, a ranking Outlaw motorcycle gang member.

Federal prosecutors also said Carparelli laid out his “manifesto” while speaking to Brown in 2011 about a power vacuum in the Chicago Outfit. When you are with “certain people,” Carparelli allegedly said, “there are certain rules.”

“I’m not about to change right now,” Carparelli allegedly said. “I don’t think I’m about to change, so if somebody tells me something, I have to f—in’ listen. It’s not that I have to, I wanna listen to it.

“Because this is what I’m made of, this is where I f—in’ come from and I’m f—in’ proud of it.”