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A Chicago mob figure convicted years in the past in the landmark Operation Household Secrets investigation was sentenced Monday to 4 months in federal prison for taking part in a Social Security scam by falsely claiming he’d earned wages from a series of phony or failed companies, together with Lehman Brothers and the Peanut Company of America.

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Michael “Mickey” Marcello, 71, the half brother of imprisoned Outfit boss James Marcello, pleaded guilty earlier this 12 months to at least one rely of theft of government funds, admitting he stole almost $23,000 in Social Safety distributions between September 2017 and should 2019.

Marcello, of west suburban Wooden Dale, has been free on bond since he was quietly indicted in December 2019. His attorney, Catharine O’Daniel, argued for probation, saying Marcello was a “low-rung” participant in the scheme and that by requesting prison time, prosecutors were making an attempt to interact in “a re-litigation of the Household Secrets case.”

“He doesn’t interact in that conduct anymore,” O’Daniel mentioned through the videoconference listening to. “He doesn’t discuss to these individuals anymore, your honor.”

However U.S. District Decide Jorge Alonso mentioned that whereas the loss quantity wasn’t as high as many Fraud Check Swizerland circumstances introduced in Chicago, that’s only because Marcello acquired caught relatively shortly.

“The plan was to maintain stealing the cash for the rest of his life,” Alonso mentioned.

The judge also stated that Marcello’s earlier conviction for mob-associated racketeering “couldn’t be way more serious,” noting Marcello’s elevated function within the mob’s Melrose Park crew and that the Social Security fraud occurred simply months after his supervised launch in the Household Secrets and techniques case was terminated in 2015.

“Mr. Marcello wasn’t just involved (in organized crime), he was an operations supervisor,” Alonso stated. “He was for a time operating day-to-day operations.”

Previous to the sentence being handed down, Marcello apologized to the courtroom, acknowledging he “made terrible choices” and asking for mercy as he nears the final part of his life. He additionally requested Alonso to recognize his past for what it is. “I paid my debt to society,” he said.

Marcello was one in all the primary defendants to plead guilty in the Family Secrets and techniques investigation, admitting in a plea agreement with prosecutors that as a member of the Melrose Park crew, he handed data to his incarcerated brother James, who on the time was the reputed head of the Chicago Outfit.

He also acknowledged relaying funds of $4,000 a month to mob hit man Nicholas Calabrese in a bid to buy his silence. Calabrese later became the star witness for the prosecution in the course of the trial that ended with the convictions of a number of the Outfit’s top echelon, together with James Marcello.

At Mickey Marcello’s sentencing hearing in 2008, prosecutors mentioned he’d been in organized crime for almost a decade and had evaded greater than $1 million in taxes.

“He isn’t the worst of the bunch, but when you’re talking concerning the Chicago Outfit, this is a pretty grim and evil bunch,” then-Assistant U.S. Legal professional Markus Funk said on the time.

U.S. District Choose James Zagel sentenced Marcello to 8 ½ years in prison.

In 2009, Marcello testified in the federal trial of John Ambrose, a deputy U.S. marshal accused of leaking information about Calabrese’s cooperation to a family friend with alleged mob links, realizing the delicate info would find yourself in the Outfit’s palms.

Secret FBI recordings made within the waiting room of a Michigan prison in 2003 had captured the Marcello brothers anxiously discussing whether or not Calabrese had flipped.

Marcello testified that he realized of Calabrese’s cooperation with law enforcement from reputed mob determine John “Pudgy” Matassa Jr.

Ambrose was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

James Marcello, 78, is serving life in prison at a maximum-security facility in Colorado.

Court records show Michael Marcello was released from prison in September 2012 and served three years of supervised launch. In early 2016, simply months after having his supervised release terminated, Marcello was brought into the Social Safety scheme by his longtime buddy Walter Paredes, of Rosemont, who was recruiting folks on behalf of imprisoned serial con man George Ruth, court data show.

Based on Marcello’s plea settlement, he agreed to provide his Social Safety information to Ruth, who submitted the fraudulent work history on his behalf. Marcello then lied repeatedly about his employment to his regional Social Security Administration office, based on the plea.

Amongst the businesses Marcello claimed to have labored for was the Peanut Corporation of America, a peanut-processing enterprise that collapsed amid one in all the biggest lethal foodborne contamination scandals in U.S. historical past.

Marcello additionally claimed to have labored for Lehman Brothers, the American international monetary services firm whose collapse in 2008 helped set off a global financial disaster.

In courtroom Monday, O’Daniel said the scheme was unsophisticated and “pitifully easy for the federal government to unravel,” notably because Ruth used the same contact data for every of the companies he fraudulently cited as previous employers.

“This was low-rung, late-coming conduct,” she said. “Nothing that my shopper did required any sophistication. He gave his Social Security number and then he lied and stated he worked some locations when he didn’t.”

But Assistant U.S. Lawyer Niranjan Emani noted that Marcello, who’d claimed to have learned his lesson when dealing with sentencing in the Family Secrets and techniques case, instead simply “found a brand new way to steal.”

“He noticed the ability to make a quick, cheap, simple buck and he went with it,” Emani said.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

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