Mob insider details kickbacks

March 19, 2002

BY STEVE WARMBIR FEDERAL COURTS REPORTER

Former IRS Special Agent Gregory Ross, who went from mob investigator to mob tax preparer, told a federal jury Monday how his friend, alleged Cicero mob boss Michael Spano Sr., once educated him on how Cicero works.

Ross had referred an associate for a town contract, which the man got, and Spano told Ross the man had to pay up: a 15 percent kickback.

Spano "said 5 percent had to go to Mayor Maltese," Ross recalled. "He said 5 percent had to go to Chief Schullo. He said 5 percent went to him."

Ross, a key government witness, began testifying Monday in the federal trial against Spano, former Cicero Police Chief Emil Schullo and convicted loan shark James Inendino. The three men are charged with taking part in a separate scheme to rob the town using as cover a $75,000 contract to check whether three Cicero police officers were fulfilling the residency requirement.

Ross has already pleaded guilty to serving as a tax consultant to the scheme.

Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese is not charged in this case, but awaits trial on a larger corruption case. Her attorney has denied she took any kickbacks.

Ross gave evidence against Spano, the best man at Ross' wedding, and the two other men as he described in detail a July 26, 1997, conversation at an International House of Pancakes in Hillside. At the time, Ross described how tax forms could be filled out to hide any money shared from the contract.

Also present at the meeting was a private investigator, Sam Rovetuso, who took part in the kickback scheme. It was his firm that was doing the checks on the residency requirement. But Rovetuso was secretly working for the government all the while, tape-recording conversations.

Defense attorneys for the three men have called Rovetuso "a con man" who scrambled to make a case against the defendants, but failed.

In one April 1998 tape-recorded conversation, as federal investigators began bearing down on the men, Rovetuso pretends to Spano he has been questioned. Rovetuso wonders aloud who could be cooperating with the government.

Spano assures him it won't be Ross, whom he describes as "a good friend," according to a transcript of the conversation, which has not been played to the jury. During trial Monday, Spano rarely looked at Ross as he testified.

During the 1998 conversation, Spano seems to believe Schullo has turned stool pigeon. Schullo, though, did not cooperate.

"You know, the only guy left to be worried about is Emil . . . that's the only guy I'm worried about," Spano says.

Rovetuso and Spano even chat about how they will kill time in jail after they've been arrested.

"You play gin?" Rovetuso asks.

"F------ right," Spano says. "We'll play pinochle, gin, we'll play anything you want . . ."

Rovetuso then asks Spano if he plays chess.

"No, chess I don't play."