While suburban restaurateur Gigi Rovito’s criminal history dates back more than 30 years with a teenage rape and drug conviction, the FBI and U.S. prosecutors said they first focused on Rovito’s organized crime connections in 2012.
Filippo Rovito is known as “Gigi” at his Capri restaurant in southwest suburban Burr Ridge, and despite being 52 years old, he calls himself “the kid” on his ever-widening social media footprint. Thursday morning will be the latest entry in the Gigi Rovito file, when he stands with more than a dozen other defendants for arraignment on federal charges tied to an illicit gambling and extortion operation. But for the popular Chicago restaurateur, it won’t be the first time he’ll be the focus of a federal criminal case.
When Rovito posted $1 million cash bond, he left the Hammond, Indiana, courthouse wearing a government transmitter on his left ankle to ensure he stayed on home monitoring or went to work at his Capri restaurant.
Federal authorities allege that Capri was among the locations that played a role in some of Rovito’s illicit activities. And not for the first time.
According to a U.S. appellate court decision, in 2013, Rovito was the go-between for the double leg-breaking of someone who owed money to the mob. The defendant was close Rovito associate Mickey Davis. According to the FBI, Davis came to Capri in 2013 and dropped off a $5,000 retainer for Rovito to arrange the debtor’s “thorough beating.”
Davis was convicted, but Rovito wasn’t charged in the 2013 case – despite what former assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Safer calls “damning” evidence against him.
“I can only guess that they did not have him on tape,” said Safer. “I believe they had, based on the description of the evidence, they had his brother on tape recorded phone conversations, but they did not have him on tape-recorded phone conversations. And in these mob cases, it is typical that the government would want to have either objective evidence like money, passing hands, or tape-recorded conversations before they charge someone.”
Federal agents say the double leg-breaking order came from Outfit boss Salvatore “Solly D” DeLaurentis – someone whom mobologists say isn’t keen on his underlings having a large public presence.
Chef Gigi’s frequent social media videos, pushing menu items such as “Wiseguy Meatballs,” and gladhanding with real-life wise guys, may already have landed him in hot water.
“Now Gigi Rovito personally casting a very, very wide net on the internet and paling around with hoodlums from different cities, things like that,” observed gangland researcher and veteran Chicago Outfit expert John Binder. “I’ve heard that Solly DeLaurentis is not very happy about that. His profile is way, way, too high. And supposedly he’s been warned about this. Rovito has been told over the past two years – so you know, you’ve got a you’ve gotta cool it. This isn’t really how we want our people operating; yet he hasn’t done that.”
We are awaiting comment from Gigi Rovito’s attorney Tom Breen about these previous criminal case matters.
Breen has now filed a new motion to adjust the terms of Rovito’s million-dollar bond, asking an Indiana judge that the suburban resident be allowed to leave home for three hours each Sunday to attend Mass at Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago’s Little Italy, where a previous Rovito court filing said he was once “man of the year.”
The government is not objecting to his church attendance.
