The former mobster\u2019s conversations with his father in prison helped the feds clear 18 unsolved murder cases<\/a> against top-ranking members of the Chicago Outfit in 2007. He joined Cameo, an online platform where people can buy personalized video messages from celebrities, last month. There\u2019s been one job so far: a happy birthday wish.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted me to say a little quote about \u2018Make sure you pay so-and-so the $1,000 you owe him,\u2019\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cI just wanted to try it out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Calabrese, 66, said he can\u2019t afford to slow down. He shares his life story four times a day, five days a week as the only resident speaker at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The museum is dedicated to the history of organized crime. It has Al Capone\u2019s \u201cSweetheart\u201d pistol and an original courtroom, which is where many of its 400,000 yearly visitors meet Calabrese.\u00a0<\/p>\n Calabrese\u2019s story is a cautionary tale of a life in crime. Telling it is how he now makes a clean living.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can change your life, but that evil doesn\u2019t leave you. I need to always be focused on what I can never do again,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cMy kids and my grandson are\u00a0my purpose, and they\u2019re proud of me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Chicago Outfit has significantly shrunk in recent decades, said John Binder, a Chicago Outfit historian and University of Illinois Chicago professor. Aggressive federal investigations have knocked out bosses<\/a>. Once lucrative mob businesses, like gambling, have been legalized.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mob informants often wind up in witness protection, and most \u201ckeep their heads down and don\u2019t surface again,\u201d Binder said. But as the mob retreats, a few former members like Calabrese are stepping out as a new kind of \u201ccelebrity gangster,\u201d Binder said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFrank Jr. has stayed on the straight and narrow,\u201d Binder said. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a niche \u2014 and one Calabrese isn\u2019t likely to get whacked for.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe mob is still very good at doing what you might call cost-benefit analysis,\u201d Binder said. \u201cIf you see guys like Frank in public, just turn around and walk the other way. Now, it\u2019s not worth the trouble.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018I Hustle\u2019<\/p>\n Calabrese\u2019s residency in Vegas has already been extended twice and will run at least through the end of his third year in December. <\/p>\n Calabrese also sells about 60 copies a day of his book, \u201cOperation Family Secrets,\u201d<\/a> named after the federal case that sent his father, now-deceased serial hitman Frank Calabrese Sr.<\/a>, away for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI hustle. I get by,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cI live simple now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Calabrese will sign books with \u201cwelcome to the family\u201d or \u201cthe real boss is your wife\u201d \u2014 but what he does \u201cis not cheesy at all,\u201d Calabrese said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t wear a sweatsuit,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cI get people who come up to me and they relate to certain parts of the story. They want to change their life, or they have abuse in the family. So, you know, I feel like I\u2019m helping.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Mikayla Jones, a press person for the museum, said she knows Calabrese as \u201cthe epitome of a Midwestern kind person.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn film we see this glamorous perception of organized crime, but Frank\u2019s story really drives home how damaging it can be to a family unit,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThis institution is not a roadside attraction or a Las Vegas entertainment venue.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018My Dad Was A Sociopathic Killer\u2019<\/p>\n Calabrese grew up making pizzas at Armand\u2019s in suburban Elmwood Park. His father started sending him to collect on shark loans when he was a teenager. In 1997, he went to prison<\/a> with his father and uncle Nick Calabrese on racketeering charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n Calabrese said he \u201cnever crossed that line\u201d into killing people, but his father and uncle did. Their victims included the Spilotro brothers, whose gristly beatings were ordered by the Chicago Outfit in 1986 and famously depicted in the film \u201cCasino.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n But Calabrese\u2019s father did pull him in, even though \u201cyou weren\u2019t supposed to bring your kids into the mob life,\u201d Calabrese said. He got hooked on cocaine, leading him to steal $700,000 in cash from his father<\/a>, who Calabrese said controlled him with a tight grip and then death threats. Calabrese wrote a letter from prison offering the FBI his help.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad was a sociopathic killer,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want me out of the life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The decision to wear a wire \u201ctakes a lot of guts,\u201d Binder said. \u201cIf things go wrong, you have a serious problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The many hours of tape Calabrese collected brought his father, Chicago Outfit bosses James \u201cLittle Jimmy\u201d Marcello and Joey \u201cThe Clown\u201d Lombardo into the Dirksen Federal Building for a hallmark trial in 2007 that grabbed daily headlines. Calabrese and his uncle Nick were star witnesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was the first time a made man of the Chicago Outfit was convicted of murder<\/a>. Frank Calabrese Sr. died in prison in 2012<\/a>, soon after his son\u2019s memoir came out.<\/p>\n \u201cHad I had it over, I would have went into the Air Force when I was young,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cWhat I put people through, what I put my mother through, my ex-wife, my kids, my brothers, I would never want to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n Starting Over <\/p>\n Calabrese said he \u201chad his reasons\u201d for passing on witness protection. He moved to Arizona with his ex-wife and kids to start over. He had a pizza place in the desert that was doing well until the demands of the trial forced him to shut down, he said.<\/p>\n Calabrese worked on and off at a Marriott in Scottsdale as a food and beverage manager. Multiple sclerosis limited his ability to be on his feet. Sometimes he walks with a cane.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy friends are all retired now,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cI still got to work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Calabrese started coming back to Chicago in 2017 to run tours on the mob, which ran until the COVID-19 pandemic. He was booked for speaking gigs in front of conferences and businesses. The Washington Capitals brought him into the locker room ahead of a game against the Blackhawks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey loved me,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cI wanted to speak to the players about the route I took. \u2026 They can make one mistake and it can change their life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The first time Calabrese spoke at the Mob Museum was with an FDA agent who worked on his case. The former mobster said telling his story four times a day since hasn\u2019t gotten old.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI relive it in my head while I\u2019m telling it,\u201d Calabrese said. \u201cI don\u2019t hold nothing back. It\u2019s cathartic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Calabrese wants to stay on at the museum for as long as they\u2019ll have him. People from Chicago \u201cknow to come see me now when they\u2019re in Vegas,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s still chasing a dream to sell his book to Hollywood for the next mobster movie.<\/p>\n \u201cI personally am shocked no one has made a movie about the Family Secrets case,\u201d Binder said. \u201cIt has everything: father against son, brother against brother, murders, crime, intrigue, government investigation, wearing a wire as a danger to your own life.\u201d<\/p>\n Binder offers his own walking tours<\/a> on the history of Chicago Outfit and has a book on the topic<\/a> sold at local Walgreens stores. He started studying the mob \u201cbecause somebody\u2019s gotta do it,\u201d he said. The mob has faded, but the interest has not.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re fascinated by the dark side,\u201d Binder said. \u201cThink about most of us. We lead quiet, ordinary, law-abiding lives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He now considers Calabrese a friend.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Give me five bucks and I\u2019ll tell you a story,\u2019\u201d Binder said. \u201cThere\u2019s your first lesson about organized crime.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2014\u00a0 Frank Calabrese Jr. wore a wire against his father as he looked for a way…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":749927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-749926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Frank-Calabrese-Jr.-Headshot-1--683x1024.jpg\")
Former Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Jr. now gets by speaking four times a day, five days a week at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Credit: Mikayla Jones<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Frank-Calabrese-Jr.-Courtroom-Presentation-1-1024x683.jpg\")
Former Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Jr. now gets by speaking four times a day, five days a week at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Credit: Gabe Ginsberg<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Frank-Calabrese-Jr.-Courtroom-1024x683.jpg\")
Former Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Jr. now gets by speaking four times a day, five days a week at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Credit: Mikayla Jones<\/p>\n