Columnist Jeff German: Rizzolo comes out swinging vs. FBI

Friday, March 7, 2003 | 5:40 a.m.

RICK RIZZOLO came out of his first courtroom battle with FBI agents last week like a heavyweight fighter who had just won the first round of a championship boxing match.

But he also had the look of a man who knows he's facing an opponent with the ability to deliver a knockout in the later rounds.

Dapperly dressed in a pinstriped business suit, Rizzolo was jubilant and defiant outside the courtroom as he railed away at the FBI agents who disrupted his lucrative topless nightclub business at the Crazy Horse Too.

"I just don't believe they are as dumb as they act," Rizzolo said after his lawyers had arranged the return of the business records seized in last month's FBI-led raid on his club.

This wasn't the first, nor will it be the last, time an FBI target has taken jabs at the intelligence of his pursuers.

And it won't be the last time that Rizzolo will criticize FBI agents, who are gathering evidence against him with the hope of obtaining a criminal indictment.

Though he's wealthy and has friends in high places -- and a battery of lawyers in his corner -- Rizzolo is in the unenviable position of having to take on the unlimited resources of the FBI and the Justice Department.

Once they consider you a bad guy, these agencies keep coming at you.

Rizzolo last week rapped FBI agents for thinking they would find evidence that he has been making tribute payments to organized crime families in Chicago and New York.

He said he'd have to be an idiot to associate with mob figures, since the FBI probably has been watching him 24 hours a day the past couple of years.

"If I'm being muscled into making tribute payments, why don't they (agents) come to me and offer me protection?" he asked. "They know there's nothing there."

At the same time, Rizzolo acknowledged for the first time that he was associated over the last seven years with a topless club in Chicago that has the same name and look as his club in Las Vegas.

But he said last month's raid cost him his $10,000-a-month consulting contract with the Crazy Horse Too in Chicago.

Rizzolo downplayed the organized crime ties of a couple of his employees.

He said Vinny Faraci, the son of John Faraci, a soldier in New York's Bonanno crime family, and Rocco Lombardo, the brother of Joseph Lombardo, a ranking member of the Chicago mob, have nothing to do with the business of their relatives. Rizzolo described both employees as hard workers who have never been in trouble with the law here.

Faraci, Rizzolo said, worked his way up the ladder from bartender to shift manager, and Lombardo simply is a floorman, or host, who makes sure customers stay happy.

For the moment Rizzolo has an answer for everything.

But that's not saying a whole lot because we know very little about this investigation right now. The FBI is keeping a tight lid of secrecy over it.

As it turned out, Round One wasn't a total victory for Rizzolo last week.

His lead lawyer, Tony Sgro, tried to persuade U.S. Magistrate Peggy Leen to unseal the FBI affidavit that persuaded her to authorize the Crazy Horse Too search. The affidavit is expected to show the extent of the FBI's investigative resources in this probe, most likely its use of wiretaps, informants and undercover agents.

But Leen said that, because there's no indictment, it's too early to make the affidavit public.

"I won't allow you to get through the back door what you can't get through the front door in this proceeding," Leen told Sgro.

Later, as Rizzolo blasted FBI agents outside the courtroom, some of those very agents, who are barred by federal law from publicly discussing the investigation, walked by with a look of confidence on their faces.

They had the look of heavyweight fighters prepared to go as many rounds as it takes to knock Rizzolo out.