Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by Frank Main

Starved Rock killer’s conviction should be overturned because of a hair belonging to one of four brothers, lawyer says

2023-12-14T14:47:18.805-06:00

Chester Weger, then 21, during a re-enactment in Starved Rock State Park’s St Louis Canyon after he confessed Nov. 17, 1960, to killing three suburban women.

The man convicted in the notorious Starved Rock killings case should have his conviction overturned because DNA tests show someone else from the area was at the scene of the 1960 crime, his lawyer said Thursday.

Chester Weger, 84, spent more than 60 years in prison after he was convicted of killing one of three women found slain in Starved Rock State Park about 100 miles southwest of Chicago.

Weger was paroled in 2020 for good behavior in prison but his conviction wasn’t overturned.

In a letter Thursday, his lawyer Andrew Hale urged Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow to vacate his conviction in the murder of Lillian Oetting.

Glasgow was appointed a special prosecutor representing LaSalle County where Weger was convicted in 1961.

In the letter, Hale said a DNA test confirmed that a hair recovered from the gloved left index finger of victim Frances Murphy belonged to one of four brothers from the Starved Rock area.

“The only explanation for this hair being found on the finger of Frances Murphy is that this person was involved in the murders,” Hale said in his letter. “And the fact that the hair had a root and follicular material on it is consistent with the hair being yanked out by Mrs. Murphy during a violent struggle.”

Chester Weger.

Illinois Department of Corrections

“It is time to correct this decades-old wrong,” Hale said, pointing to Weger’s advanced age.

“Time is of the essence,” he said. “Chester should be allowed to spend this Christmas with his family knowing that he has finally been exonerated.”

After Weger was released from prison in 2020, Hale launched his own investigation into the Starved Rock case, finding evidence he says connects the mob to the killings.

Convicted Starved Rock killer’s 1960 confession shows he did it, special prosecutor says

Glasgow has said he believed Weger’s original confession that he was guilty of killing Oetting, who was found bludgeoned to death with Murphy and Mildred Lindquist in the mouth of a cave in the state park.

The three suburban women were staying in a lodge at the park during a hiking trip in March 1960.

Strip club extortion case sees ex-Harvey mayor’s brother Rommell Kellogg found guilty

2023-12-12T16:44:01.869-06:00

The now-closed Arnie’s Idle Hour in Harvey.

Scott Stewart / Sun-Times

A federal jury has convicted a brother of former Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg of extortion.

Rommell Kellogg was found guilty Monday of charges that accused him of collecting bribes from the since-closed Arnie’s Idle Hour in exchange for keeping officials in the south suburb from closing the strip club.

His cousin Corey Johnson pleaded guilty last month to acting as a bag man. He was accused of accepting bribes from the manager of the club, who was a federal informant.

Johnson collected about $500,000 from the club between 2003 and 2017 plus another $35,000, which the FBI had secretly provided to the club’s manager to pay bribes, in 2017 and 2018, prosecutors said.

They said Johnson passed the money to Rommell Kellogg.

When the payments were late, Harvey police officers were sent to the club to pressure the owners to cough up the money, authorities said.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in 2019, Eric Kellogg, while mayor, led the efforts to shake down the club, approaching the owner in 2003, demanding $3,000 a month, later doubling the amount.

But Eric Kellogg wasn’t charged. The complaint referred to him only as “Individual A” and “Mayor of the City of Harvey.” His last term in office ended in 2019.

Federal complaint implicates Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg in strip club shakedown

Before Rommell Kellogg’s trial, he was instructed by U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman that he couldn’t present evidence that his brother Eric Kellogg was the “real target” of the investigation or speculate why Eric Kellogg wasn’t charged in the case.

The judge also barred Rommell Kellogg from presenting an entrapment defense.

FBI’s secret political support for ex-Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg could be an issue in brother’s upcoming corruption trial

Barack Obama’s massive clemency prisoner release led to Jesse Webster’s Chicago success story and three failures

2023-12-08T05:45:00-06:00

Jesse Webster, who was freed under former President Barack Obama’s push for executive clemency, working on his computer at a Starbucks in Bucktown.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times

Joseph Burgos was looking forward to his newfound freedom. He planned to write books, do some electrical work and help other ex-offenders.

Alton Mills was hoping to see his daughter walk across a stage with her nursing degree after he got out of prison.

They and a third Illinois man, Julian Wyre, are among more than 1,900 federal inmates who were freed when then-President Barack Obama granted them executive clemency — 13 times more than any other president had ever done.

Now, Burgos, Mills and Wyre — convicted drug dealers — are all back in jail.

Burgos, who pleaded guilty in September to a drug charge, is awaiting sentencing for smuggling oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl.

Wyre was convicted this past week of selling crack cocaine near Rockford.

And Mills is awaiting trial for murder in the fatal shooting of a woman in May in what the police say was a suburban road-rage incident.

Across the country, thousands of federal inmates have gotten their sentences cut short under Obama’s 2014-2017 clemency initiative and the federal First Step Act, signed by President Donald Trump in 2019, allowing convicted prisoners to petition for lower sentences in certain circumstances.

The push for more early releases came as a repudiation of draconian prison sentences created during the federal government’s “War on Drugs” that began decades ago.

Challenges of life outside prison

For ex-offenders, life on the outside can be daunting.

Jesse Webster is a success story. Webster — who was the subject of a series of stories by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell in early 2017 — landed a job with Catholic Charities of Chicago after Obama commuted his sentence for dealing cocaine.

Still, it’s a thin line between redemption and recidivism, he says.

Jesse Webster’s 2016 commutation letter from President Barack Obama.

“I had a life sentence, which was really a death sentence,” Webster says. “Obama let me out. But Obama didn’t create anything further than that. You really had to fend for yourself.”

He says the arrests of Burgos, Wyre and Mills show that society needs to do more to help ex-offenders.

Jesse Webster — from prison to redemption: Mary Mitchell

He says he doesn’t know Burgos or Wyre but briefly lived with Mills at a halfway house after they got out of federal prison in 2016.

“I thought he was doing great,” Webster says. “I really did. And so, when I heard that he got arrested again, I was, like, ‘Wow.’ ”

He notes that Burgos, Wyre and Mills represent fewer than 10% of the more than 30 people whose federal prison sentences in northern Illinois were reduced or wiped away by Obama. Most were convicted of drug crimes.

“Those guys needed more attention, needed more support, and it wasn’t there for them,” Webster says.

He credits his attorney Jessica Ring Amunson, a partner in the law firm Jenner & Block, for getting him an interview with John Ryan, then the chief of staff for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago. On the spot, Ryan offered Webster a job answering a helpline for homeless people. He’d been out of prison for only a month then.

Jesse Webster meets with his attorney Jessica Ring Amunson for the first time on Oct. 20, 2016.

James Foster / Sun-Times

Now, Webster runs his own businesses, doing “life coaching” and snow removal.

Despite the help he got, Webster says rejoining society after getting out of prison was tough. He remembers being puzzled while setting up a bank account when a teller asked for his PIN.

And, he says, he never would have gotten the Catholic Charities job if he didn’t know how to type. Luckily, he says he learned in prison, where inmates would compete with each other to see who typed the fastest. As a result, he says, he types 70 words a minute.

When he got out, old acquaintances he knew from being part of the criminal world sidled up to him with offers to make money illegally, but he says he refused.

He says he earned respect on the street because he’d refused to make a deal with prosecutors to cooperate against imprisoned Gangster Disciples leader Larry Hoover. Still, he says some people didn’t understand why he wouldn’t go back to selling drugs, which, in 1995, had landed him a mandatory life prison sentence that even U.S. District Judge James Zagel had said he had to give him but was “too high.”

“Now, they kind of frown on me,” Webster says of his former colleagues from the streets. “I’m doing my own thing now.”

Freed by Obama, then busted again

Joseph Burgos.

Winnebago County sheriff’s office

Webster, Burgos and Mills all attracted national attention after they got their clemency letters from the Obama administration.

Burgos, 74, was featured in a 2016 Washington Post story headlined “One year out” that included vignettes about ex-offenders who benefited from Obama’s clemency initiative.

“I’m one of the fortunate ones, believe me,” Burgos was quoted as saying.

He called his early release from his 30-year drug sentence “beautiful” but said he wasn’t ready — he didn’t know how to use a cellphone — and said life was “really tough” for some other ex-offenders from Chicago. Burgos said he was writing a “trilogy” of books and had moved in with a girlfriend.

Then, in 2018, Burgos became a suspect in a drug-trafficking investigation. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration wiretapped his phone.

On April 13, 2019, his phone pinged in Midland, Texas. DEA agents saw he was heading to Chicago and stopped him at the Greyhound bus station. In his backpack, investigators said they found 1,983 oxycodone pills containing 212 grams of fentanyl.

Burgos had two prior federal drug convictions, including one in the early 1990s that resulted in the 360-month prison term Obama commuted in 2015.

Burgos, who was charged in 2020 with distribution of a controlled substance, is being held at the Winnebago County Jail in Rockford and couldn’t be reached. His lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“People get enticed by various things,” says Joseph Lopez, his former lawyer. “And, quite frankly, some people just can’t say no. I mean, I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s the bottom line. They can’t say no.

“I felt really bad for the guy because of his age,” Lopez says.

Though Burgos was arrested in 2019, the DEA let him remain free. He wasn’t jailed until he was indicted the following year.

At a detention hearing in 2020, Lopez asked the judge to free Burgos until trial because of the risk of getting COVID-19 in jail. Also, because he was in his 70s, he didn’t pose a risk of violence to the community, according to Lopez.

Attorney Joseph Lopez.

Getty Images

“If I contract this virus while incarcerated here, I could very well die,” Burgos told the judge. “It can kill me. And I don’t want to die while in custody, your honor.”

Prosecutors argued for Burgos to remain behind bars.

“He insists on trafficking narcotics, and, in this case, a very lethal narcotic that has resulted in many overdoses,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kalia Coleman said at the hearing.

U.S. District Judge Young Kim criticized the DEA’s decision to “catch and release” Burgos in 2019 but decided to hold him in jail until trial, saying he posed a risk of fleeing.

Burgos, who pleaded guilty in his latest case, is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 8. He faces, under federal sentencing guidelines, a maximum prison term of a little over five years, according to court records.

‘Casualty’ in War on Drugs back in jail

Alton Mills speaking at a Senate hearing in April 2016 about his commutation.

Getty Images

Mills, 54, who was serving a life term for cocaine-trafficking, became a standard-bearer for the movement to release prisoners who’d been given long sentences for drug-dealing.

“I hung out with a bunch of goldfishes that was dealing with some sharks, and the sharks caught the goldfishes up, and we were the ones that ended up going to prison,” Mills said in an interview on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton.”

After Mills was released in 2016, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, called him a “neglected casualty” in the War on Drugs.

In 2017, Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law said Mills got a job washing buses overnight in the CTA’s “Second Chance” program, hoping to become a certified diesel mechanic for the transit agency.

The law school announcement also quoted U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen as saying he regretted that federal sentencing guidelines in 1993 required him to give Mills life without parole. Aspen said he hoped Mills would become “a role model for a lot of people who have come out of the penitentiary with the good attitude that he has.”

In 2018, on Twitter, Durbin pointed to Mills in supporting the First Step Act. That law, which took effect in 2019, allows people convicted of crack cocaine offenses before 2010 to ask to have their prison terms reduced because they would have been lower under current drug laws. According to the Justice Department, more than 30,000 inmates have been released early under the First Step Act.

Over 60% in Chicago seeking early prison release under Trump’s First Step Act go free

Today, though, Mills is being held at the Cook County Jail, where he is awaiting trial on a murder charge. According to the Illinois State Police, Mills, living in Evergreen Park, got involved in a road-rage incident on the Interstate 57 northbound on-ramp in Posen around 3:15 a.m. on May 14. He is accused of firing into a car and striking a passenger, Linda Chattman, in the head, killing her.

At a detention hearing Wednesday, a judge denied Mills’ request to be released until his trial, noting that police said he was “angry that the victim cut him off” and fired three times into the car.

Freed, now accused of selling drugs to an informant

Julian Wyre.

Winnebago County sheriff’s office

Wyre, a 46-year-old father of eight from Chicago, was convicted in 2008 of dealing crack cocaine and got 17 years in prison. Granted clemency by Obama in 2016, Wyre was freed the next year.

In 2019, Wyre began transporting about an ounce of cocaine at a time from Chicago to Sterling and Rock Falls, west of Rockford, where he’d get someone to cook the powder into crack, federal prosecutors say.

In 2020, Wyre was charged with selling crack to an informant. A jury found him guilty Thursday after a four-day trial.

His lawyer didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

‘Bank jackings’ in Chicago see robbers drain victims’ accounts with their banking apps, cellphones; also tips on how to protect yourself

2023-12-08T05:30:00-06:00

Bank apps like this one have been used by robbers to loot victims’ accounts. These crimes involving cell phones are a relatively new and growing phenomenon in the city’s growing scourge of robberies.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times

You know about carjackings. Now, you also need to be wary of “bank jackings.”

Millions of Americans whip out their phones to pay for everything from dinners to vacation rentals using banking apps like Zelle, Venmo and Cash App. But that convenience is fueling a new kind of robbery.

In Chicago and other cities, gunmen have been forcing people to unlock their phones with their pass codes or technology that recognizes thumbprints and faces, according to police.

Once in, the robbers drain victims’ bank accounts. The payoff is often $1,000 or more — a lot more than criminals typically score by just stealing a wallet.

In Chicago, the robbers often wear the kinds of masks that have been common since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. So, even when the police can trace where a money transfer ended up from someone’s phone, the victim often can’t identify the assailant.

Chicago is seeing largest spike in robberies in over 20 years, analysis shows

Holdups overall are up more than 25% in Chicago this year through Nov. 26 over last year. According to detectives, these “bank jackings” involving cellphones are a relatively new and growing phenomenon in the growing scourge of robberies, which last year included more than 1,600 carjackings. The number of bank jackings isn’t clear because the Chicago Police Department doesn’t list them as a separate category of robberies.

Zachary Skinner is among the victims. Around 1 a.m. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Skinner, 21, a college student from Valparaiso, Indiana, was bar-hopping with friends in Wrigleyville when a man in a ski mask walked up to him.

According to Skinner, the man asked for a donation “to help less fortunate kids afford sports gear.”

Skinner says he tried to get the guy to go away by reaching into his pocket and handing him $7.

The intersection of West Eddy Street and North Clark Street. Zachary Skinner was robbed nearby on Nov. 25.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere / Sun-Times

Skinner had a “sinking feeling” it wouldn’t be enough. It wasn’t.

Another masked man approached, pulled up his shirt to show the gun in his waistband and demanded Skinner’s phone and pass code.

‘Painful lesson’ on payment apps: It was a lot easier to be scammed than Chicago business owner realized

The man used the Zelle app on the phone to send $1,000 to a bank account with a woman’s first name.

Skinner was lucky. He was able to reach his parents and get them to freeze his bank account before the person on the other end of the illegal transfer could accept the money.

Skinner’s friends, talking nearby with other people, were unaware of what was happening.

If the robbers had managed to drain his bank account, Skinner says he would have had to work a lot of extra hours to make up for that — which would have been a major hardship because, being a two-sport college athlete, he doesn’t have a lot of free time.

Skinner says his attackers were masked, so he couldn’t identify them.

Gig workers increasingly are being targeted by scammers online and even from the backseat

He says he should have stayed closer to his friends that night.

“It really puts things in perspective,” he says. “I mean, your life can be taken away in, like, two seconds.”

He knows that uninstalling the bank app from his phone would keep this from happening again.

“But would it be practical?” says Skinner, who uses the app all the time. “Probably not.”

A bank jacking in Streeterville

Anthony Morris is among those who have been charged in the last year with carrying out bank app robberies in Chicago. Morris, 28, a felon with convictions for burglary and theft, is accused of robbing a 40-year-old man about 4 a.m. on Dec. 29, 2022, in Streeterville. According to his arrest report, he pointed a gun at the man in a parking garage in the 600 block of North McClurg Place and told him, “Give me your phone and money, or I will kill you.”

The man gave him his wallet but said his phone was in his 41st-floor apartment nearby.

Morris then led the man to the apartment, pointing a gun at his back, police said. The man gave up his iPhone 14, and Morris took him back to the parking lot, according to the police, who say Morris stole $1,350 using the PayPal app on the man’s phone, $6,850 more with Cash App and $350 with Apple Cash.

The police report says Morris reminded the man that he now knew where he lived and said that, if he “tried to do anything stupid, he would shoot him in the head.”

Morris also tried to steal the man’s BMW but didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, according to the police.

Morris was identified through a surveillance video, and the victim was able to pick him out of a photo array, police said. Morris is awaiting trial on armed robbery and kidnapping charges.

Zelle is a digital payments network run by a firm owned by banks that include JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank. Offered by more than 2,100 banks and credit unions, it covers more than 80% of personal and small-business accounts in the United States.

Users enrolled in the Zelle app can send and request money by adding another person’s phone number or email address, a cash amount and a memo showing what the money is for.

Payments typically are then available in minutes, but financial institutions set different limits for how much cash can be transferred each day and month. In 2022, Zelle users sent 2.3 billion payments totaling more than $629 billion.

Other digital payment apps like Venmo and Cash App are operated by tech firms but similarly allow users to transfer money online quickly. Venmo is owned by PayPal. Cash App is owned by Block Inc., a San-Francisco company co-founded by former Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey.

Jack Dorsey, former chief executive officer of Twitter, co-founded Block Inc., owner of Cash App.

Getty Images

Venmo says it hasn’t seen a significant rise in bank jacking reports, which the payment platform calls a phone-security issue. The company recommends security measures that app users can enable to protect their accounts, like facial recognition, multifactor authentication and a PIN code. If an account is breached, Venmo says, customers should contact its customer service, change their account information, contact their financial institutions and call the police.

Cash App points to its “security lock” feature, which similarly offers layers of security to open the app and transfer cash. When users’ PIN or security settings change, they’re alerted by the company.

Zelle didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Bank jacking: How to protect yourself

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF

What can people do to get their money back if their bank app is hijacked?

According to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “The consumer is not liable for the unauthorized transfer, and the financial institution must refund the consumer.”

Victims of fraud or robberies must contact the bank or “digital wallet provider” to start the “error-resolution process,” according to the federal agency.

Under federal regulations, a police report isn’t required.

But Ed Mierzwinski, senior director of the federal consumer program for the Public Interest Research Group, says federal regulators need to “come down harder” on companies that operate bank apps. He says the businesses blame consumers for crimes associated with the apps and “wash their hands” of their responsibility under the law.

“My advice until then: Don’t use the apps!” Mierzwinski says.

A rise of bank jackings nationally

New York Mayor Eric Adams announces charges against five people accused of drugging bar patrons to rob them. John Umberger, a political consultant whose bank account was drained using apps on his phone, was one of two victims who died.

Getty Images

Violent bank jacking incidents have been reported across the country in the last two years.

In New York, a political consultant from Washington disappeared on May 28, 2022, after visiting a nightclub. His body was found days later. Police discovered more than $25,000 was transferred from his bank accounts through apps on his phone, according to news reports.

In New York, charges in killings of gay men who were drugged and robbed

Other killings have also been linked to bank app robberies in New York.

In Chicago, an architect was walking to a downtown Metra station to catch a train about 5 a.m. on July 28 when he says three armed men jumped out of a car in the first block of South Jefferson Street, grabbed his cellphone and tried unlocking it by holding the device to his face.

When the facial recognition technology didn’t work, he says the robbers demanded his pass codes and then stole $2,000 through the Zelle banking app that was linked to his Chase account. They also took his wallet, and using the ATM password he gave them at gunpoint, drained another $1,000 in cash from his bank account.

“It was probably as traumatic for my wife and children as it was for me,” he says, “because who knows what could’ve happened to me.”

The architect says his bank almost immediately reimbursed the money taken from the ATM and recently forgave the thousands of dollars the robbers charged to his credit cards.

But the man, who asked that his name not be used, says he’s still fighting to be reimbursed for the money looted from his bank with his Zelle app: “I started bugging them and asking, ‘Why haven’t you responded to the claim for over four months?’ ”

He says Chicago police officers, responding within minutes after the holdup, chased the getaway car with the help of a police helicopter, but the high-speed pursuit was called off because of police department safety rules. The robbery remains unsolved.

“They have lots of commercials about how you can go pay for your friend’s meal, it makes it really easy, but they don’t say it’s like carrying a couple thousand dollars worth of cash in your pocket all the time,” says the architect, who offers this advice: “Don’t have any banking apps on your phone.”

A Chicago police detective who’s handled three banking app robberies offers a less drastic safety solution. People could consider uninstalling their apps, reinstalling them only when they need to make a payment and then disabling them again.

“It really doesn’t take that much time,” says the detective, asking not to be named because he wasn’t authorized by the department to speak. “It keeps the bad guys out of your bank account. This is a new thing — and it’s only going to get worse.”

Contributing: Sophie Sherry, Rosemary Sobol

Suspected Mexican cartel leader Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, facing drug charges in Chicago, sees Treasury Department freeze his assets

2023-12-08T05:00:00-06:00

Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, known as “El Musico,” is the head of the Beltran Leyva Organization, known as BLO, a major importer of fentanyl, cocaine and heroin to Chicago and elsewhere across the United States, according to the Treasury Departmen

U.S. Treasury Department

The Treasury Department has frozen the U.S. assets of Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, the reputed leader of one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, who has faced charges in Chicago for more than a decade.

Gastelum Iribe, 49, known as “El Musico,” is the head of the Beltran Leyva Organization, known as BLO, a major importer of fentanyl, cocaine and heroin to Chicago and elsewhere across the United States, according to the Treasury Department.

Gastelum Iribe, who was identified only by his alias in a 2009 indictment in Chicago, isn’t in custody.

He’s charged with conspiring to import “multi-ton” quantities of cocaine and heroin, and the government wants him to forfeit $885 million.

BLO, along with the Sinaloa cartel it splintered from in 2008, supplied Chicago cocaine traffickers Pedro Flores and Margarito Flores, according to the indictment.

The Flores twins were among the most prolific drug dealers in Chicago history. Arrested in 2008, they agreed to be informants against Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera in exchange for lenient sentences. El Chapo is serving a life sentence.

Lawyer Oscar Pulido Dias is among 14 other Mexicans whose assets also were frozen in the latest Treasury Department action. He’s accused of facilitating extortion payments for BLO and the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa cartel. The Chapitos, including Ovidio Guzman Lopez, are sons of El Chapo.

Group tied to El Chapo’s sons reportedly orders halt to manufacture of fentanyl in Mexico, but experts are skeptical

In September, Ovidio Guzman Lopez was extradited from Mexico to Chicago, where he is now awaiting trial on federal drug charges.

Ovidio Guzman Lopez being detained in Mexico in 2019.

Also being held in Chicago: Adan Casarrubias Salgado, a reputed leader of the Guerreros Unidos cartel, who was extradited from Mexico to Chicago last year and is awaiting trial on drug charges.

They were 2 Chicago pizza delivery guys. Then, they ran a Mexican drug cartel, feds say

The sanctions against Gastelum Iribe were announced Wednesday by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was in Mexico to talk with officials about combating fentanyl trafficking and illicit financing.

Thousands of people have died of fentanyl overdoses in Chicago in recent years, authorities say.

Mexico arrests alleged security chief for the ‘Chapitos’ wing of the Sinaloa drug cartel

The Treasury Department says Gastelum Iribe, Pedro Inzunza Noriega and Fausto Isidro Meza Flores are now at the top of the Beltran Leyva Organization, named for five Beltran Leyva brothers who once led the cartel.

Feds’ seizure of jet in Gary tied to reputed leader of Mexican cocaine ring

According to a criminal case unsealed in recent days in California, Gastelum Iribe was involved in two shipments with a total of 6,000 pounds of cocaine from South America to Mexico — in 2021 and 2022.

How a West Side drug bust led the feds to ‘El Chapo’

Cousin of former Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg pleads guilty to bribery charge

2023-11-21T11:23:58.594-06:00

Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg in 2003.

Sun-Times file

A cousin of former Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg has pleaded guilty to collecting bribes during a federal investigation of longtime political corruption in the south suburb.

According to a federal complaint filed in 2019, Kellogg spent years shaking down a strip club owner of thousands of dollars a month in exchange for allowing prostitution in the club. He wasn’t charged in the complaint, which referred to him only as “Individual A” and “Mayor of the City of Harvey.”

But his cousin, Corey Johnson, was charged with collecting bribes from the now-closed club, Arnie’s Idle Hour, and delivering the cash to Kellogg’s brother Rommell Kellogg, who also is charged in the corruption case.

Federal complaint implicates Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg in strip club shakedown

On Monday, Johnson pleaded guilty to theft of government funds, referring to $35,000 the FBI secretly provided to the club’s manager to pay bribes to Johnson on a dozen occasions from October 2017 and April 2018.

Corey Johnson (far right) at the Dirksen Federal Building after his 2019 arrest.

Sun-Times file

According to prosecutors, Johnson accepted another $500,000 in bribes from the club between 2003 and October 2017. Because Johnson accepted responsibility for his role as a bagman in the alleged bribery scheme, prosecutors say they’ll recommend he get a sentence of less than six months in prison.

FBI’s secret political support for ex-Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg could be an issue in brother’s upcoming corruption trial

Rommell Kellogg faces a trial that’s scheduled for Dec. 4. Prosecutors have asked the court to bar him from introducing evidence at the trial related to the government’s investigative strategy and charging decisions involving his brother Eric, who was mayor of the financially distressed city from 2003 to 2019.

In 2020, Eric Kellogg’s brother Derrick Muhammad was sentenced to nine months in prison for using his position as a Harvey police officer to cover up a felon’s possession of a stolen Uzi submachine gun found in a towed vehicle.

Muhammad faces trial on May 13 on separate federal charges of using his badge to steer vehicle-towing jobs in Harvey to private companies in exchange for bribes from 2011 to 2019.

The now-closed strip club in Harvey.

Scott Stewart / Sun-Times

Chicago police unit that reviews cops’ use of force ‘critically understaffed,’ Illinois attorney general says

2023-11-16T15:33:22.7-06:00

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer heard testimony Thursday about the Chicago Police Department’s efforts to comply with a 2019 consent decree.

Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

A key Chicago Police Department unit that reviews cops’ use of force is woefully understaffed and has a backlog of unfinished reports, an assistant Illinois attorney general told a judge Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer oversees a 2019 consent decree that settled a lawsuit over widespread abuses of civil rights identified by a Justice Department probe.

The decree — which stems from the public outrage over a video of an officer’s fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald — identified nearly 600 areas of reforms, which a former federal prosecutor is monitoring.

Top cop’s public commitment to transparency could lead to long-sought Chicago Police reforms, independent monitor suggests

At a hearing on the consent decree, Assistant Attorney General Samuel Kennedy said Thursday that one unit, the Tactical Review and Evaluation Division, is “a critical component of the consent decree.”

The unit had a backlog of 2,702 cases in July, which has nearly doubled to 5,116, Kennedy said. In February, the unit had 54 police officers and now has 47. The department is adding four part-time employees to the unit, but that isn’t going to be enough to address the three-month backlog, Kennedy said.

Chicago police reforms slowed by staff shortages, court monitor says

Pallmeyer said she’s concerned that cops aren’t getting quick feedback from the reviews of their use-of-force incidents.

“I think it’s a lot more meaningful when you hear feedback immediately, rather than months down the road, when you maybe don’t even remember the episode all that well,” the judge said.

Cmdr. Sean Joyce, who runs the unit, said he’d like to see the unit complete its reports in 30 to 60 days. In addition to uses of force, the unit reviews incidents in which officers point their firearms and when officers get involved in foot chases.

The purpose of the unit, formed in 2017, is to recommend training for officers instead of investigating whether discipline is necessary as the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability does, Joyce said.

Chicago DEA office’s most-wanted list adds Mexican cocaine-trafficking suspect Oswaldo Espinosa

2023-11-15T14:00:00-06:00

Oswaldo Espinosa.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

A Mexican man suspected of shipping thousands of pounds of cocaine to Chicago and other U.S. cities was placed on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration list of wanted fugitives Wednesday.

Oswaldo Espinosa, who’s about 40 and from Minatitlán, Mexico, on the country’s Gulf Coast in Veracruz state, is wanted on charges of drug conspiracy and money-laundering.

Espinosa and 14 others were indicted in July in federal court in Chicago in connection with more than 1,200 pounds of cocaine seized between March 2021 and March 2022 from his operatives in Chicago, Indiana, Texas and Florida, according to prosecutors.

Authorities say a cocaine-laden jet that was confiscated about two years ago at the Gary/Chicago International Airport was connected to Espinosa’s operation.

Mexican drug cartel crew leader from Aurora freed on bail

Chicago cops warned of violent Venezuelan gang El Tren de Aragua members among migrants, but there’s scant evidence of that, Sun-Times finds

2023-11-10T05:30:00-06:00

Migrants camped out earlier this month at the Near North police district station at 1160 N. Larrabee Ave., where those arrested for shoplifting on the Magnificent Mile have been processed.

The Chicago Police Department is warning officers to be on the lookout for members of a violent Venezuelan prison gang they say might be living among the 20,000 migrants who’ve come to the city over the past year.

But there’s little publicly available evidence that the gang, El Tren de Aragua, has a presence in Chicago. The gang is known in South America for human trafficking, drug sales, kidnapping and the violence that comes with it all.

A Chicago Sun-Times analysis, based on news reports, crime data and court records, identified more than 30 migrants from Venezuela who’ve been arrested in Chicago and DuPage County since April.

More than half of the cases involved theft and shoplifting. Two involved violent crimes — a robbery and a stabbing. Records show that only one of those migrants, charged with domestic battery, is listed in Chicago police records as being a suspected member of the prison gang.

Stores such as Macy’s and Nordstrom have been repeat targets of retail theft by Venezuelan migrant suspects in Chicago and Oak Brook, according to police.

One of them was accused of having hit two stores in four days. On May 4, the 34-year-old man was arrested and charged with stealing a watch, cologne and jewelry worth a total of $329 at the Nordstrom at 55 E. Grand Ave., but the case was dismissed. On May 8, he was arrested under a different name on a charge of stealing $720 of sportswear from the Macy’s at 111 N. State St. That case is pending.

The same man was arrested April 27 after punching another man in the face at a shelter in an argument over his turning on the lights too early in a communal sleeping area, according to police. That case got dismissed, too.

In DuPage County, two Venezuelan migrants living in Chicago were arrested on felony shoplifting charges at the Macy’s at Oak Brook Center on Oct. 23. Two others were arrested for the same charges a week later at the same store.

Of the cases the Sun-Times reviewed, the most serious involved a Venezuelan migrant, Jorge Goyo, 23, who was charged with stabbing a fellow asylum-seeker in August in the bathroom at the Grand Crossing police station, where Goyo was living. He’s free while awaiting trial for aggravated battery.

Another Venezuelan migrant was accused of pulling a knife on a Far South Side man and demanding his belongings in September outside the Standard Club at 320 S. Plymouth Ct. The suspect was living at the club, which has been converted into a migrant shelter. The case was dismissed.

Officials with the Chicago Police Department and DuPage County state’s attorney’s office declined to discuss crimes attributed to Venezuelan migrants.

“The sheriff’s office is aware of this organization and is working closely with local, state and federal law enforcement partners to monitor and address any potential threats to public safety or other criminal activity by suspected members of the gang,” said Matthew Walberg, a spokesperson for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

The Chicago police and the sheriff’s office have put out internal alerts to officers about the possibility of members of the violent El Tren de Aragua prison gang living among migrants. Officials wouldn’t discuss those alerts.

In late October, a Venezuelan man — arrested on a charge of beating up his girlfriend in one of the migrant tents outside the Near West police district station at 1412 S. Blue Island Ave. — had tattoos that resembled those worn by the gang, according to a Chicago police alert.

The gang’s tattoos include a skull with a gas mask and an AK-47 rifle, according to the alert, which said that its members wear Michael Jordan No. 23 jerseys because the gang’s anniversary is Jan. 23.

A separate Cook County sheriff’s alert said investigators have learned that members of the prison gang are in the Chicago area.

Kyle Williamson, former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in El Paso, Texas, calls the gang “a huge criminal threat.”

“They are coming in” across the border, says Williamson, who runs the West Texas Anti-Gang Center. “We are seeing them.”

But Williamson says he doesn’t know whether the gang has a presence in Chicago. “I think we are a while away from seeing their true impact,” he says. “It takes time to get organized.”

The United States’ poor diplomatic relationship with the Venezuelan government makes it nearly impossible for U.S. law enforcement officials to get warnings about members of such gangs, Williamson says.

He says many young Venezuelan members of El Tren de Aragua lean against getting the gang’s tattoos because they don’t want to be recognized as members. He also says a crown is not a symbol of the gang, as the Chicago police alert suggested.

CNN reported Thursday that the U.S. Border Patrol says it has detained “38 possible members of the Aragua Train throughout six sectors, between October 2022 and the same month of 2023.”

A Border Patrol official announces an El Tren de Aragua member was detained at the border in August.

Provided

In August, a man wanted in Venezuela on charges of financing terrorism was arrested after agents in the Justice Department’s Enforcement and Removal Operations learned he was in what they described as the “Chicago area of responsibility.”

The man “remains in federal custody pending immigration proceedings,” according to a spokesperson for the agency, who says she can’t provide details because of privacy restrictions.

Law enforcement sources say they’re concerned that laws designating Chicago and Illinois as places that provide “sanctuary” for migrants prevent them from tracking those who are arrested by their country of origin. They say it would be helpful to know how many people living in shelters and at police stations have been arrested in the Chicago area.

Experts say most of the Venezuelan immigrants who’ve landed in Chicago were fleeing rising crime and the imploding economy in their home country, arriving broke after being bused or flown from Texas.

The exodus to Chicago began last year with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, saying he was sending asylum-seekers to Democrat-run sanctuary cities in the North, including Chicago and New York, so those cities would share the financial pain of dealing with the migrant crisis.

Civil rights advocates say there’s no evidence the migrants pose a particular threat to public safety. And they say the restrictions on looking them up by their immigration status are a good thing.

“When you think about the abysmal record that CPD has had with databases and gathering information on people, it’s confounding that cops would complain about their inability to collect information on migrants — especially legal asylum seekers,” says Ed Yohnka, spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “Singling out people because of who they are is not a step in that direction.”

Regarding migrants who have been charged with crimes such as shoplifting, Yohnka says he’s not surprised: “These are people who came here to work and take care of their families. Desperation drives people to do things that sometimes they shouldn’t do.”

Venezuelan migrant shot while holding her son outside South Side police station

Mexican drug cartel crew leader Pablo Vega Cuevas freed on bail in Chicago

2023-11-03T19:08:31.585-05:00

Pablo Vega Cuevas.

Provided

The former Chicago-area crew leader for the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel in Mexico has been freed on bail in Chicago after sitting in jail for more than nine years on federal charges.

Pablo Vega Cuevas has been cooperating with federal authorities against the cartel, which is accused of shipping thousands of pounds of heroin to the Chicago area on passenger buses.

The cartel also is suspected of participating in the presumed massacre of 43 college students in Mexico in 2014.

Mexican cartel crew leader from Aurora tried but couldn’t get out. Now, Pablo Vega Cuevas is hoping for leniency for helping feds.

Vega, who grew up in Aurora, appeared in court Thursday in an orange jail uniform and listened to a Spanish translation of the proceedings on headphones. His lawyer Robert Rascia asked to speak with the judge and prosecutor out of earshot of the public. They huddled for about seven minutes.

Drug cartel leader ‘El Tomate’ extradited from Mexico, faces federal charges in Chicago

U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso then ordered Vega freed in lieu of a $200,000 bail secured with property. Prosecutors didn’t object. Vega, arrested in late 2014, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

How a West Side drug bust led the feds to ‘El Chapo’

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Parthum told the judge his order will prevent a situation in which Vega remains in jail awaiting sentencing for longer than his eventual prison term.

Feds’ seizure of jet in Gary tied to reputed leader of Mexican cocaine ring

Vega will remain on house arrest until his sentencing, the judge said. He was barred from having contact with a reputed leader of the cartel. The next hearing in Vega’s case is scheduled for June.

Contributing: Jon Seidel

Click here for more on Pablo Vega Cuevas and the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel.

Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by Frank Main

Starved Rock killer’s conviction should be overturned because of a hair belonging to one of four brothers, lawyer says

Strip club extortion case sees ex-Harvey mayor’s brother Rommell Kellogg found guilty

Barack Obama’s massive clemency prisoner release led to Jesse Webster’s Chicago success story and three failures

Challenges of life outside prison

Freed by Obama, then busted again

‘Casualty’ in War on Drugs back in jail

Freed, now accused of selling drugs to an informant

READ MORE ABOUT JESSE WEBSTER

‘Bank jackings’ in Chicago see robbers drain victims’ accounts with their banking apps, cellphones; also tips on how to protect yourself

A bank jacking in Streeterville

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF

A rise of bank jackings nationally

Suspected Mexican cartel leader Oscar Manuel Gastelum Iribe, facing drug charges in Chicago, sees Treasury Department freeze his assets

Cousin of former Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg pleads guilty to bribery charge

Chicago police unit that reviews cops’ use of force ‘critically understaffed,’ Illinois attorney general says

Chicago DEA office’s most-wanted list adds Mexican cocaine-trafficking suspect Oswaldo Espinosa

Chicago cops warned of violent Venezuelan gang El Tren de Aragua members among migrants, but there’s scant evidence of that, Sun-Times finds

Mexican drug cartel crew leader Pablo Vega Cuevas freed on bail in Chicago

READ MORE