Daley friend's blue bag deal
Today, he splits his time between mansions in Oak Brook and Palm Beach, Fla., and a million-dollar condo on North Michigan Avenue.
He drives a 2006 Bentley. And a 2006 Range Rover.
At 58, Barbara is a neighborhood guy who made good, amassing a fortune through trucking and real-estate deals with the city of Chicago since the 1970s.
Barbara is a longtime friend of Mayor Daley, other friends say. Barbara was a guest at a christening party for the mayor's first grandchild. The mayor and Barbara have gone sailing together on Lake Michigan.
Barbara is a grandson of Bruno Roti Sr., who was one of Chicago's earliest organized-crime bosses and an associate of Al Capone, according to FBI files. Roti also was the patriarch of a family that has had ties to City Hall --and the mob -- for three generations.
Barbara's friends call him a self-made man, though he began landing city deals while his late uncle, Ald. Fred B. Roti, was a powerful City Council member. Accused of representing the mob's interests, the alderman eventually went to prison for fixing court and zoning cases.
Barbara has continued getting city deals under the Daley administration. And those deals may have been far more lucrative for him than previously known, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
Barbara and other Roti family members have been leasing trucks to the city of Chicago for decades. At least 17 companies in the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program were owned by Roti relatives and associates -- including Barbara's father, wife, mother-in-law and daughter's in-laws. They were among 165 companies Daley fired in 2004, after the Sun-Times reported the city often paid for trucks that ended up doing nothing, leading to an ongoing federal investigation.
Separate from the Hired Truck Program, Barbara made a fortune hauling garbage to landfills. More than 60 percent of his business in 1994 and 1995 had come from the city of Chicago, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The bottom seemed to drop out in 1996. Barbara lost 30 percent of his city business that year -- $14 million -- after City Hall gave a competitor, Waste Management Inc., a contract to run a recycling program in which Chicago homeowners put glass, bottles and paper into blue plastic bags.
A year later, Barbara sold his companies -- Fred Barbara Trucking, his Shred-All Recycling garbage transfer station, and his Envirotech landfill in Downstate Morris -- to American Disposal Services, Inc., for what was widely reported to be $58.5 million.
But the deal may have been far richer. SEC records show Barbara could have made more than $100 million on the deal -- including $30 million if American Disposal was able to wrest the city's recycling contract from Waste Management. Five years later, the city awarded the recycling contract to Allied Waste Services, which had bought American Disposal. Allied, the low bidder, now employs Barbara as an operations analyst, with an annual salary of $500,000, according to city records.
It's not clear whether the company paid Barbara the $30 million after it won the city's recycling contract. Barbara didn't return numerous calls in recent weeks. Allied officials declined to comment.
Allied's city recycling contract is worth as much as $187 million because the city extended the company's contract last fall for two years, an extension worth $73 million, city records show.
Chicago's recycling program has been widely criticized by environmentalists and aldermen. Just 13 percent of Chicago homeowners take the time to buy the blue plastic bags for cans, bottles and paper. Since Allied took over the program, less material is being recycled, city records show.
Barbara has grown richer since Daley took office in 1989, but Barbara's friends say his success isn't based upon his friendship with the mayor.
"I'm not saying he isn't a friend of the mayor. [But] he built the business before the mayor was the mayor," said someone who knows Barbara well and spoke only on the condition he not be identified.
Barbara has other powerful allies besides Daley:
*Timothy Degnan, the mayor's top political adviser. Degnan and Barbara were among four partners in a townhouse project in Bridgeport, the mayor's old neighborhood.
*Cook County Commissioner John Daley, the mayor's brother, who is also an insurance agent. Barbara and his wife have purchased insurance for their trucking companies from Daley.
*Terry Newman, an attorney, and Michael Marchese, a developer, who are both part of the mayor's inner circle.
*Mayor Daley's Hispanic Democratic Organization, run by Victor Reyes, the mayor's former political enforcer. Since 2003, Barbara has donated $9,500 to HDO, a patronage army at the center of the hiring scandal at City Hall.
*The Palumbo family, which had a huge road-building business until the company was convicted of crimes and barred from any road project involving federal funding.
Barbara also is friends with Chicago restaurateur Phil Stefani. Barbara's Range Rover often is parked outside Stefani's 437 Rush restaurant.
Barbara "is very generous with our staff,'' Stefani said.
Barbara also quietly has been a big donor to Misericordia, a North Side home for disabled children and adults.
Barbara grew up in Chinatown, the neighborhood just north of Sox Park that still has an Italian enclave.
And, despite a lifestyle of luxury cars, expensive trips and posh homes, "he always says he's from Chinatown,'' the Barbara associate said. "He goes back to the neighborhood, when he's in town, every day.''
Barbara's mother, Josephine Roti, is the youngest daughter of Bruno Roti Sr., a mob boss who died in 1957. Barbara's father, Anthony, was a truck driver for the city's street department who struck out on his own, leasing trucks to the city for decades.
Like many boys from Chinatown and Bridgeport, Barbara graduated from De La Salle Institute, a Roman Catholic high school at 3434 S. Michigan also attended by Mayor Daley and other politicians.
Barbara's classmates included former Ald. Patrick Huels (11th), who resigned in 1997 in a scandal over his taking a $1.25 million loan from Michael A. Tadin, whose trucking headquarters was built with a city subsidy. At the time, Tadin and Barbara were partners in a real estate company that had leased land to the city.
When Barbara was in high school, teachers picked up on his sharp mind, the Barbara associate said.
"They used to say that, if he'd paid attention, he'd be the smartest guy in the class," he said.
After graduating in 1967, Barbara married his high school sweetheart, Linda, and went to work for his father's trucking company. He started his own business in 1976 and soon started landing city contracts.
"It wasn't because of his father that he got to where he was at," Stefani said. "He did it on his own."
As a businessman, Barbara is driven, the associate said. Barbara not only knew all his employees' names, he said, but also those of their children.
"He was at work at 5 a.m.," he said. "And, if you were supposed to be there at 5 a.m., you'd better be there. He was the last guy to leave. He could build a truck, he could drive a truck, he could do it all."
Three years after he started his business, Barbara was accused, along with his father and other trucking company owners, of overbilling the city for snow removal during the 1979 blizzard that cost Mayor Michael Bilandic his job. The Sun-Times could find no records to show the outcome of those investigations.
Over the years, City Hall insiders have attributed Barbara's success with city contracts to his late uncle, Ald. Roti, whom the FBI identified in 1999 as a member of the mob. Barbara bristles at suggestions that he got his city contracts through his uncle's clout, the Barbara associate said: "He loved his uncle, but he said, 'I have to dig myself out of a hole all the time because they perceived somebody helped me.' "
While Barbara was building his business, he repeatedly got into trouble with the law.
Barbara was a young trucking executive with three small children when he was arrested for extortion in an FBI sting at the bar in Lake Point Tower on Dec. 6, 1982, accused of helping a loan shark collect money from an undercover FBI agent -- a charge for which he ultimately was found not guilty.
Barbara and three reputed mobsters -- including his cousin, Frank "Toots'' Caruso -- were accused of going to the bar to meet the undercover agent, who was posing as someone refusing to repay an illegal, high-interest $20,000 "juice loan." The FBI agent said his life had been threatened if he refused to pay.
When Barbara was arrested, he had no identification and told the FBI his name was "Frank Bruno Russo,'' court records show, and had a gun in his vehicle.
Arrested with Barbara were: Caruso; Joseph "Shorty'' LaMantia, a top lieutenant to mob boss Angelo "The Hook'' LaPietra; and LaMantia's son, Aldo Piscitelli Jr. Like Barbara, the others also were eventually acquitted.
LaMantia had threatened to "cut the heart out'' of the undercover agent and "stick his head with an icepick'' if the loan wasn't repaid, according to court records. LaMantia had a 30-year arrest record, including charges of armed robbery, burglary and syndicated gambling. He pleaded guilty in 1996 in a separate case to racketeering.
During the case involving the undercover FBI agent, Barbara's lawyer argued that Barbara "never made a threat'' to the agent and that "he was playing a video game in that bar'' the night he was arrested.
Prosecutors said in court documents in the case that Fred Barbara Trucking was "deeply involved" in illegal gambling with the mob's 26th Street Crew. Barbara's "trucking company is used as a cover . . .,'' prosecutors wrote in 1983. "An analysis of Barbara's telephone records makes clear his deep involvement in this gambling operation.'' But Barbara was never charged with gambling.
In an interview with the Sun-Times two years ago, Barbara called the allegations "old news.'' And he said he has nothing to do with mobsters.
"Show me my connection to organized crime," Barbara said then. "Did I turn the corner? You show me anything in the last 24 years that reflects to that nature."
The Barbara associate said Barbara complains that "nobody acknowledged the two words at the end of the trial -- 'not guilty.' They walk around acting like he committed a crime."
Over the next 13 years, Barbara would be accused of other crimes, though all the cases ultimately were dismissed:
*In one, Ricky Meisner, one of Barbara's truck drivers, accused Barbara of striking him in the leg with a 2-by-4 while they were at Barbara's trucking offices in July 1988.
*A week later, Meisner accused Barbara of damaging his motorcycle's gas tank, lights, seat and carburetor in an incident near Barbara's Chinatown home.
*And, in 1991, Barbara was charged with battery for allegedly striking his sister-in-law while she was in the process of divorcing Barbara's brother, Bruno Barbara.
Barbara's arrests didn't stop him from getting more city contracts.
Under Mayor Harold Washington, Barbara teamed with a Washington ally, Howard Medley, a black trucking executive, to win a lucrative contract that had been set aside for a minority contractor to haul city garbage to landfills.
"Fred Barbara is a damn good businessman,'' Medley said in a recent interview. "When Fred Barbara bids on something, he's going to make money. Some people bid and lose their shirts. He's never going to lose his shirt.''
Barbara continued hauling city garbage to landfills under several mayors, including Daley.
After Daley took office in 1989, Barbara, with Tadin, also began leasing land to the city. They bought 29 acres at 40th and Ashland for $510,000 and leased it to the city for use as an auto pound for $300,000 a year. The city paid more than $2.6 million in rent before it shut down the auto pound and ended the lease.
Tadin and Barbara ended their business relationship in 2002, Tadin's attorney told the Sun-Times two years ago.
That was the same year the city turned the recycling program over to Allied Waste -- the company that pays Barbara $500,000 a year -- dropping Waste Management, which had used Tadin's trucking companies to haul garbage.
In the mid-1990s, Barbara and his family left Chinatown for DuPage County. He filed for divorce in 1996, ending his 29-year marriage to his high-school sweetheart.
Barbara's divorce file provides a glimpse of his wealth at the time:
*He promised to financially support his ex-wife, Linda Barbara, for as long as she lives, even if she were to remarry. He agreed to pay her a base of $200,000 a year, adjusted annually for inflation, until she dies, according to court records.
*Barbara also agreed to give his wife half of their savings -- $5 million of the estimated $10 million they had invested in certificates of deposit.
*He gave her a $2.5 million home in Oak Brook and a $750,000 condo in Lake Geneva, agreeing to pay the real-estate taxes as long as his ex-wife owns those properties. He kept a home in Hinsdale and a condo on Lake Shore Drive.
*Barbara had a financial interest in seven companies: the three companies he sold a year after his divorce plus T&B Ltd., a real estate company he owned with Tadin; Riva, Inc.; and Lakeside Bank.
Barbara has since gotten remarried to his former secretary, Lisa Humbert, who owned Karen's Kartage, a company that was in the Hired Truck Program.
The Barbara family is still in the garbage business. Barbara's son, Anthony, has followed his father into the waste-hauling business, running City Wide Disposal Inc., a private garbage collector.
These days, Barbara runs a company called Fred Barbara Investments. He has an industrial park in Kankakee and other real estate investments in Florida and Texas.
Barbara is among several mayoral friends who invested in Park Grill, the restaurant that was given a sweetheart contract to operate in Millennium Park.
Barbara keeps in shape and travels -- something he rarely made time for until he sold his businesses. While running his trucking company, Barbara once took a vacation to Italy, friends recalled: He left on a Thursday and returned the following Monday.
Barbara also collects antique cars, including a 1932 Auburn, a 1940 Ford and a 1966 Cadillac.
But he is itching to get back to business, according to people who know him.
"He's going back to work is what he says,'' said another associate. "He's gotten off the kick of traveling. After he sold the business, he bought some Bentleys and some Rolls-Royces. But he's tired and wants to go back to Bridgeport and go into trucking.''