Chicago's McCormick Place: Mob Haven

With the arrest yesterday of made member Rudy Fratto, Chicago's McCormick Place Convention Center is back in the news. The Chicago Tribune reports:

The Outfit has long been entrenched at McCormick Place and in many of the unions and contractors that do business there.

"It's been a rehabilitate-the-felon location in terms of being a place to get people jobs when they get out of prison," said James Wagner, a former longtime organized-crime supervisor for the FBI in Chicago and now top investigator at the Illinois Tollway. "It's had these kinds of problems for about as long as it's been there. And it's had someone associated with the Outfit in just about every job there."

Among the factors that make McCormick Place a haven for the mob are its sheer size and the number of contracts and trade shows there, Wagner said.

Four years ago, the riggers union, whose members set up exhibits at McCormick Place, was under federal investigation after its boss, Fred Schreier, who was once married to the niece of the late mob boss Tony Accardo, pleaded guilty to taking a bribe.

Something to think about if you are in the trade show business.No word from Mayor Daley on this one.