Posted on 03/12/2010 9:24:48 AM PST by Thebaddog
A father and son who operated the Boston Blackie's burger restaurants were charged Thursday with ripping off nearly $1.9 million from two banks in a check-cashing scheme, and authorities said they arrested the father on the U.S. border as he was trying to enter Canada.
The allegations caused a new round of political embarrassment for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, whose family owns Broadway Bank and has long known the father and son.
The Blackie's operators are accused of writing bad checks from their accounts at Broadway to other banks as part of their alleged scheme. Longtime Blackie's operator Nick Giannis gave Giannoulias more than $114,000 in campaign contributions for his treasurer and Senate campaigns.
Giannoulias was in a state of "shock and disbelief" at the news, according to his campaign, which announced he would donate an equivalent amount to local charities.
Giannis, 62, his son, Chris, 38, and restaurant manager Andy Bakopoulos, 38, were charged with defrauding Charter One and Washington Mutual banks. Chris Giannis also was charged with two counts of being an organizer of a continuing financial crimes enterprise. Nick Giannis was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Detroit while attempting to enter Canada after he failed to surrender to authorities and investigators sent out a nationwide alert.
Prosecutors said the men participated in a so-called check-kiting scheme in which they wrote checks from bank accounts that didn't have enough money and deposited those checks at Charter One and Washington Mutual. They then withdrew money from their Charter One and Washington Mutual accounts before the checks actually cleared, or in some cases stopped payments on the checks.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagobreakingnews.com ...
Beware of Greeks baring bounced checks.
It’s the Chicago way.
Land of Lincoln.
Wasn’t Boston Blackie a TV series way back when?
?
Alexi Giannoulias, sounds like a real class act.
Ain’t nothing wrong with that it’s a democrat.
lol....Were they trying to abscond to Greece and live like kings over there?
Before he was a good guy, Boston Blackie was a Safe Cracker. There is also a Freeper that goes by that name.
Yes, I remembered that post.
0_0
They had some reason for thinking that they would get away with this? Maybe with the right political connections it would work. Somebody wasn’t in the loop.
Don’t know about any TV series, but it *was* a radio show serial, “Boston Blackie was a character who was hounded by a local police detective that Boston Blackie was constantly outwitting and had a beautiful, marriage minded, love starved girlfriend, who was involved in many of the plots ala a female cross between ‘Lois Lane’ and ‘Jimmy Olsen’ rolled into one.
If you are interested in the radio show, send me an FRmail, and I can clue you into a place that you can listen to Old Time Radio episodes from the show.
Boston Blackie Movie Series: Over a span of nine years, Chester Morris starred in fourteen films as Boston Blackie, a former thief now on the right side of the law. He brought to the role a delightful offhand manner and sense of humor and got to pursue his hobby—performing magic—in a couple of episodes.
From Meet Boston Blackie (1941) to Boston Blackie’s Chinese Venture (1949), Morris played Blackie. Regulars included Richard Lane as a frustrated police detective; George E. Stone as Blackie’s talkative, dim-witted buddy; and Lloyd Corrigan as a dizzy millionaire pal. SOURCE Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide
The only time I’ve ever heard the phrase “Boston Blackie” was in a Jimmy Buffet song, don’t remember the name/album but it’s where he sings about wishing he had a pencil thin mustache and two-tone Rickie Ricardo jacket, now I know the ‘rest of the story’!
Ohhhhhh Yeahhhhh....Forgot about the movies....They play some of them every once in a while on TCM, or AMC...usually late night or early Sat mornings.
Never heard about the Buffet song, but “Boston Blackie” was more like Simon Templar than Superman. A smart criminal who had turned over a new leaf as it were, and had friens in high and low places, but was a perennial suspect of the poluice any time someone ended up dead or something went missing therefore to clear himself, he usuallyy ended up having to fing the real criminal to clear himself...And he always seemed to be somewhere around when something went down.
>Bo)
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