Illinois Republican Party

Giannoulias Called 'Jaws' Giorango a 'Very Nice Person'
10/11/2010

Chicago Tribune, March 15, 2006:

But Giannoulias said that since he became a full-time senior loan officer, he has met Giorango at the bank “a few” times.

He described Giorango as “a very nice person” and questioned whether Giorango actually was a criminal. “Is he a crime figure?” Giannoulias asked. “I don’t know what the charges are that makes him this huge crime figure.”

The Capitol Fax Blog, March 17, 2006:

Here’s more about Giorango, from Knight-Ridder’s archives.

From Laws’ 20th-floor condo at 405 N. Wabash Ave., the muscular riverfront skyline spilled into a crosshatched quilt of lights. Here, perched near the Sun-Times building, Laws ran a lucrative arm of the “Circuit,” an upscale prostitution ring that flourished in Chicago and 10 other U.S. cities between 1995 and 2002, federal court papers show.

The prostitutes, who charged $350 to $1,000 an hour, stayed in each city a week or two, in swank apartments maintained by madams such as Laws. The Circuit’s midtown Manhattan penthouse was a romper room of cocaine and Viagra, courtesans in slinky eveningwear and pay-for-sex pathos. […]

What sort of man paid for sex on the Circuit? Court records show they included well-connected business executives such as real estate investor and former bookie Michael Giorango, a twice-convicted Chicago bookmaker who reinvented himself as a real estate investor who controlled Miami Beach hotels and more than a dozen Chicago properties.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Giorango promoted the Circuit operation of Miami madam Judy Krueger by encouraging her prostitutes to work from one of his Miami hotels and by using the women to entertain and entice his business associates. “There was a parasitic relationship between (Giorango) and Judy Krueger’s prostitution business,” federal prosecutors wrote in court papers.

Giorango declined to comment. In January, a federal jury in Miami convicted him of violating the Travel Act by using a telephone in interstate commerce to promote Krueger’s operation, according to a Justice Department press release and court records.

Chicago Tribune, April 27, 2006:

Giannoulias, the senior loan officer and vice president of his family's Broadway Bank, previously described convicted bookmaker and prostitution ring promoter Michael Giorango as "a very nice person" and dismissed his relationship with Giorango as someone he had met at the bank "a few" times.

But on Wednesday, Giannoulias said he traveled to Miami "about a year or two ago" to inspect property the bank had financed for Giorango and met with him there. Giannoulias declined to provide details of that meeting.

Meet the Press, October 10, 2010:

"I didn't know the extent of their activity."

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