Chicago Mob Gambling Kingpin “Fat Mike” Sarno Denied Compassionate Release

• Judge denies Fat Mike’s plea for compassionate prison release.
• Cicero Crew boss remains high risk despite poor health.
• Sarno’s violent past overshadows claims of frailty in prison.
  

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Michael “Fat Mike” Sarno is begging for mercy. The once fearsome boss of the Chicago Outfit’s Cicero Street Crew claims he is no longer a danger to the public and is asking for compassionate release from the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., his home for the past five years. That request was denied by U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis last Wednesday, court records show.

In 2010, Sarno, now 67, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for racketeering and extortion following a five-week trial in Chicago’s U.S. District Court. He was convicted of ordering the 2003 pipe bombing of the headquarters of a rival to his video-poker machine empire.

He was also accused of organizing more than a dozen armed robberies in four states. The proceeds of the heists were fenced at a Cicero pawnshop operated by the Outlaws motorcycle gang, according to court documents.

‘Shadow of Myself’

The Cicero Crew, established in the 1920s by Al Capone, has long been a powerful faction of the Chicago Outfit, historically specializing in illegal gambling, loan sharking, racketeering, and political corruption.

In a letter to the judge penned by Sarno, the allegedly frail Mobster described himself as “a pathetic shadow of my former self.”

Despite walking into prison at 6 foot 3 inches and 400 pounds, Fat Mike said he was working out “and was in good health” at that time.

However, while incarcerated, I experienced health issue after health issue,” he wrote, adding that he has been wheelchair-bound for the past six years and needs help using the bathroom.

“When not in a wheelchair, I have laid in bed for weeks and months at a time,” wrote Sarno. “… This is very humiliating, and this has humbled me as well.”

Still a Risk

Sarno has made several pleas for passionate release on medicals grounds over the years, including during the COVID-19 pandemic when his lawyers argued that keeping him locked up as the virus spread through the prison system amounted to “the death penalty.”

Sarno was still “a risk to the community because he remains capable of continuing his role in the criminal enterprise, despite his diminished physical health,” she added.

“Sarno was the leader of a criminal enterprise that engaged in multiple ventures, escalating to the point of bombing a competitor,” she wrote. “Sarno also had a history of committing similar offenses, with [trial judge] Guzman finding that “[h]e appears to have had a single-minded determination to continue to engage in criminal conduct of an organized nature involving racketeering and gambling and, as a by-product, violence.”