LOS ANGELES -- Jury selection began Tuesday in the racketeering, loan-sharking and extortion trial of seven men allegedly part of a Chicago mob's drive to set up business in Southern California.
U.S. District Judge Matt Byrne is expected to question jurors during the next four to six weeks and set a trial date after the panel has been selected.
Court records indicate the money-lending ring, allegedly headed by Vito Dominic Spillone, made 'implicit and express threats of violence' to ensure borrowers, some of whom were beaten and robbed, repaid 1,000-percent-interest loans.
A handful of victims, including men convicted of perjury, grand theft and mail fraud, are expected to testify how they were threatened after taking money from the organization.
Prosecutors have charged Spillone, a 46-year-old wholesale food distributor from Upland, headed the operation with permission from Chicago-based organized-crime leaders who wanted him to establish a family in Los Angeles.
Also charged in the case are John Barro, 46, owner of a nationwide chain of Barro's Pizza parlors, and John Clyde Abel, 41, an alleged member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremecist prison gang. Abel currently is serving a 25-year prison sentence for bank robbery.
Other defendants include Frank Serrao, 56, of Huntington Beach, Joseph Bolognese, 52, and Frank Citro, 38, both of Las Vegas, and John Meccia, 51, of LaSalle, Ill.
Prosecutors are expected to call several witnesses and informants to the stand, but a government witness whose testimony to a federal grand jury in 1982 helped lead to the seven men's indictment has since disappeared and is not available for the trial.
John Angelo, of Yorba Linda, Calif., told the grand jury Spillone had the approval organized-crime leaders in Chicago to establish a crime family in Los Angeles.
Prosecutors with the federal Organized Crime Strike Force deny claims by defense attorneys that Angelo, who has a long history of criminal arrests government informing, is being hidden from them.
Another possible witness, Raymond Cohen, also is a government witness in the ongoing probe of alleged scalping of Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl tickets in 1980. Cohen, who turned informant after being convicted of mail fraud, was the target of a murder attempt in 1980.
