Deputy US Marshal John T. Ambrose To Be Tried For Leaking Secrets To The Mob

CHICAGO — A former deputy U.S. marshal accused of leaking secrets to the Chicago mob about a protected witness committed "a criminal betrayal of trust," prosecutors said Monday.

John T. Ambrose, 42, took information from a secret file that "he knew was going back to an organized crime figure" and also lied about it when federal officials confronted him, said Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Markus Funk during opening statements.

Ambrose was charged in January 2007 with theft of Justice Department property, disclosing confidential information and lying to federal agents who questioned him about the leak. If convicted, he faces years in prison.

He has denied the allegations.

Prosecutors accuse Ambrose, whose father was a Chicago police officer convicted of corruption in the 1980s, of accessing a file of information valuable to organized crime and passing it to a former police officer.

The file, which contained information on Las Vegas mob man Tony "The Ant" Spilotro among other mob links, was kept at a site maintained by the Justice Department's witness security program. Spilotro and his brother Michael were later murdered and buried in an Indiana cornfield.

Ambrose had access to the file because he was assigned to guard the life of Nicholas Calabrese, who was the star witness in the government's landmark Operation Family Secrets investigation that ultimately sent three mob bosses to prison for life. Prosecutors have not alleged that Ambrose endangered Calabrese's life but said passing the information would effectively deliver it to the mob.

Defense attorney Francis Lipuma told jurors on Monday that his client was bragging about his job to William Guide, a former officer who went to prison in a corruption case, not passing along information.

"He was boasting about what he had done," Lipuma said, adding that no harm ever came to Calabrese, his family or federal agents.

Federal officials were alerted to the leak when alleged mobsters James and Michael Marcello were secretly taped talking about a mole within federal law enforcement. They said the leak was the son of a police officer who had gone to prison in a corruption case in the 1980s. Both Ambrose's father and Guide went to prison in that case.