October 6, 2020 – Long linked to The Outfit’s Cicero crew, Chicago mob associate Greg Paloian was busted for bookmaking this week in an operation the feds claim has been up and running for the past half-decade and centers in Elmwood Park and Melrose Park. The 66-year old Paloian is tied to reputed current Outfit underboss James (Jimmy the Icepick) Inendino and has a federal loansharking and two bookmaking convictions on his rap sheet. According to a 2002 sentencing memo, Paloian was a part of the Cicero mob regime when it was run by former capos Ernest (Rocky) Infelise and then Michael (Big Mike) Spano. Infelise died in prison, Spano allegedly retired from Outfit affairs a few years ago after getting released from a federal correctional facility and serving a 15-year sentence for racketeering offenses. As part of his own 1998 racketeering case, Paloian admitted his connection to Inendino and the fact that he sent his bookmaking customers in need of a street loan to “Jimmy I,” a man suspected in taking part in multiple gangland hits as a member of the so-called “Wild Bunch” hit team of the 1970s and 80s. Inendino, 77, led the Circero crew for almost a decade until a recent promotion to the organization’s No. 2 slot, per sources. He was nailed as Big Mike Spano’s second-in-command in a 2001 racketeering case that ensnared Cicero’s Mayor. Jimmy I walked free from his federal prison term in 2008. A law enforcement raid of Paloian’s residence back in the 1990s revealed $200,000 in cash, a cache of jewelry and a box containing uncut diamonds and South African Krugerrand. His trucking company was probed in the infamously mobbed-up Hired Truck Scandal from the early 2000s, however, he was never indicted in the case.
