Lawyer Arthur N. Nasser was asking for a delay in sentencing to Feb. 12 for his own convenience and pleasure.
"The defendant's attorney had made plans to visit with his family during Thanksgiving weekend in McLean, Va., and Christmas in Charleston, W.V.," stated the motion filed last week and presented in federal court Wednesday morning.
"Thereafter, (Nasser) has reservations to travel to Palm Springs, Calif., for 12 days departing Dec. 28, 2009 and returning to Chicago on Jan. 9, 2010. Upon his return to Chicago he is scheduled to have a cataract removed from his right eye ... on Jan. 14, 2010."
Judge Matthew F. Kennelly had already agreed to a sentencing date that allowed Mr. Fratto to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with his family and Wednesday did not agree to an additional month.
Judge Kennelly ruled that two more weeks of preparation were adequate and set sentencing for the afternoon of January 27.
Federal prosecutors will ask for a sentence of between 12 and 18 months, which was the period prescribed in Fratto's plea agreement last October.
The 65-year old Fratto pleaded guilty to evading paying more than $141,000 in federal taxes on an income of about $835,000. The feds, who had Fratto under scrutiny for years, finally nailed him on the same charges that allowed them to bring down many organized crime figures: tax violations.
It was the same method operandi that prosecutors used to finally put Chicago's notorious gangster Al Capone on Alcatraz Island.
Fratto is no Capone, but like Scarface, does have mobdom in his genes.
The Elmwood Park boss' most notable relative was Luigi Tomaso Giuseppi Fratto, who was a gangland leader and labor racketeer from the 1930s into the '60s.
Luigi Fratto was also known as "Cockeyed Louie" due to his off-kilter eyeball. "Cockeyed" is just one of Rudy Fratto's blood relatives who toiled in the trenches of the mob when it was in its infancy during the 1920s.
Following in his ancestors' footsteps, federal records first reported by the ABC7 I-Team revealed that Rudy Fratto was considered a major threat to major mob witness Nicholas Calabrese.
Testimony by reformed mob hitman Calabrese helped put away top hoodlums during the Family Secrets trial. Rudy Fratto was not charged in that case.
Also, he was photographed over the years by federal surveillance teams during meetings with mob leaders. In 2001, he was seen at a secret Outfit summit where the takeover of video-poker turf in the suburbs was being hatched.
On another occasion, Rudy Fratto was observed meeting with former Chicago Police Chief of Detectives William Hanhardt. The duo was plotting of a proposed gangland hit, according to testimony in 2002 during a sentencing hearing in Hanhardt's jewel theft case.
The hit did not occur, and Hanhardt is serving a federal prison sentence, exactly where Rudy Fratto is headed - a little sooner than later.
