AP News, June 27th, 2007
Prosecutors showed jurors Tuesday an FBI mole's shadowy videos of a reputed mobster collecting thousands of dollars in extortion money from an adult bookstore owner.
Anyone else pressuring the store for such protection money will be in trouble with the mob, Frank "The German" Schweihs says on the videotape.
"I don't care if it's Al Capone's brother come back reincarnated, this is a declared joint," Schweihs thunders on the 20-year-old videotape played for jurors at Chicago's biggest mob trial in years.
The videotapes made by undercover FBI mole William "Red" Wemette, who ran the Peeping Tom pornography shop in Chicago's Old Town for 18 years, offers a glimpse into how such businesses are pressured to pay shakedown money to the Chicago Outfit, prosecutors say
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mitchel A. Mars asked Wemette why he didn't defy Schweihs and refuse to pay $1,100 a month he was demanding.
"Something would happen to me," Wemette testified.
"What were the consequences you feared?" Mars asked.
"I feared death," Wemette said.
Those on trial are James Marcello, 65; convicted loan shark Frank Calabrese Sr., 70; Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo, 78; convicted jewel thief Paul Schiro, 70, and former Chicago policeman Anthony Doyle, 62.
All five deny the charges in the eight-count indictment which says that that they took part in a racketeering conspiracy that included 18 mob murders as well as extortion, loan sharking and illegal gambling.
Schweihs was also charged but has been severed from the trial by U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel because of unspecified health problems.
Wemette's tapes were played once previously at the trial of Schweihs and another man on charges of plotting to extort money from businesses.
Unknown to the mob, Wemette was feeding information to the FBI for most of the years that he ran his store.
And even though the tapes focused on Schweihs who is no longer on hand, prosecutors played them anyway because Schweihs was allegedly a member of the mob's Grand Avenue street crew which the government claims was headed by Lombardo.
