Judge sends Plainfield landfill owner to prison for four years after FBI foils bone-breaking plot. Another Chicago Outfit tale.
Plainfield, IL
Once upon a time, Michael “Mickey” Davis wanted a deadbeat car salesman hurt in a “break-both-legs beating” for failure to pay up on a $300,000 debt.
Davis, who grew up with men who now run Chicago’s Outfit, enlisted an Italian restaurant owner from Burr Ridge to find the bone breakers for him. The restaurateur went to mob associate Paulie Carparelli, who turned to a union bodyguard, George Brown, to wrangle the necessary goons.
But Brown — a “300-pound muscle guy” — was working for the FBI. After scaring another businessman who owed someone money into wetting his pants, the FBI busted Brown and persuaded him to wear a wire on Carparelli.
So much for that whole “I gotta guy” thing, right?
And that’s how the plot to hurt R.J. Serpico, a used-car dealer in Melrose Park, ended with Carparelli and Davis in handcuffs and eventually behind bars. Convicted this summer of extortion, Davis, 58, appeared before a federal judge Tuesday, who handed him a four-year prison term as his wife doubled over in tears in the courtroom gallery.
His defense attorney asked for 13 months, arguing Davis is the kind of man with a “genuine concern for the well-being of others, willingness to help those in need, and generous spirit.”
At trial, federal prosecutors wanted the jury to know just how deep Davis’s connections to the mob run, and how generous of a beating he wanted for Serpico.
Davis made millions of dollars collecting debris at the E.F. Heil Landfill in Plainfield from the construction companies owned by his reputed mobster buddies, Peter and John DiFronzo, friends from his boyhood days in Chicago. Davis is business partners with Salvatore “Solly D” DeLaurentis, described as a “feared capo” in the Chicago Tribune trial coverage, who’s done time for racketeering.
During court proceedings, federal prosecutors explained how Davis has long been connected to the DiFronzos and DeLaurentis, who run the Elmwood Park crew of the Chicago Outfit.
In response, his defense showed the jury a photo of a shirtless Davis and a shirtless DiFronzo deep-sea fishing on a boat in Costa Rica. The DiFronzos may be Chicago’s best-known reputed mobsters these days, his attorney suggested, but “Mickey” Davis and and the DiFronzos are “just friends.”
Why Davis didn’t go to his childhood pals to find thick-knuckled goons to beat down the used-car salesman instead of getting help from a restaurant owner wasn’t discussed at trial.
Defense counsel Christopher Grohman did say Davis, stoic and thick of neck and shoulder, “looks like a mobster” and “he could do it himself” if he truly wanted to someone’s legs broken.
A topic of much discussion, however, was how petrified R.J. Serpico was as he fretted about what Davis might do to him.
Serpico and his dad borrowed $300,000 from Davis in 2012 to start a used-car dealership in Melrose Park. The loan would be paid back in 2015. But Serpico’s dad racked up a rather large debt with a bookie using the borrowed money, according to court records. And Serpico wasn’t very good at selling used cars, so the business was failing.
Serpico, 44, a married father of two, testified about the January 2013 day Davis visited his dealership, Ideal Motors, with a not-so-subtle message: “This wasn’t our (effing) agreement,” Davis told him, showing him a piece of paper with an accounting of his father’s debt. “I want my (effing) money.”
Before Davis left came the threat.
“How are your wife and kids doing? Are you still living in Park Ridge? Does your wife still own that salon in Schaumburg? ”In the months that followed, reports the Chicago Sun-Times, the car dealer would “vomit often” out of fear.
According to testimony offered at Davis’s trial, Serpico tried to pay down some of his debt by giving Davis a used Chevelle and $60,000 in cash. Eventually, Serpico signed over Ideal Motors entirely to Davis in May, according to prosecutors. But Davis still wanted Serpico hurt. Hurt bad. As he put it, a “break-both-legs beating.”
So he went to Carparelli. Who went to Brown. Who, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your sympathies, was already in the clutches of the FBI. “OK, listen, I met this guy yesterday. You know who this guy is? This is Solly D’s partner. OK? ... So, listen, we definitely can’t (expletive) around with these guys or we’re going to have a big (expletive) headache, a big headache,” Carparelli said in a tapped phone call in July 2013. “The guy already gave the down payment. He’s a (expletive) mean mother(expletive). I don’t wanna have no problems with him.”
Carparelli told Brown he was excited about this task, too, according to the feds, because he saw an opportunity to impress his bosses with how he was going to handle the beat down. And this is how Serpico would get it: The goons would set up a car accident as Serpico left his new job as a salesman at another dealership.
“Say we give him a little tap, like an accident. ‘Oh man, I’m sorry.’ Guy gets out of his car. Boom, boom, boom. That’s it.”With that, the FBI brought everybody in, saved Serpico from the beating of his life and sent Davis to prison.
And everyone lived unhappily ever after.