When Adolfo Garcia got on the phone with the man he knew as Angelino Escobar in November 2024, he was in deep trouble.
The Illinois Department of Revenue was investigating him for nonpayment of sales tax and the state Department of Labor was investigating him for failing to pay his employees on time. His ex-wife and children were facing eviction because he was behind on child support payments.
To top it off, he owed money to a connection of Angelino Escobar’s, whose real name is Jawad Fakroune, and he believed that connection to be associated with the mafia. He’d already paid $124,000, he told Fakroune on the phone, and wanted to know how much more he’d have to pay.
“I will do my best and do everything in my power to sell everything that I have to give you your (expletive) money,” he said in a phone call that he’d allowed the FBI to secretly tape and play for jurors on the 19th floor of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Wednesday.
“Do it quick,” Fakroune replied. “You’re out of time. Just go do it. You’re out of (expletive) time.”
About two weeks and several tense phone calls later, a young woman with long, blonde hair, blue jeans and a black jacket walked smiling into Garcia’s now-shuttered River North oyster and martini bar Yours Truly.
A video camera from the oyster bar, looking through the branches of a gilded Christmas tree, captured a short conversation between Garcia and the woman, Zoe Salafatinos, before Garcia handed Salafatinos an $8,000 check to bring Fakroune.
Hours later, prosecutors allege, Fakroune would attack Garcia in the bar’s kitchen and threaten him and his children with murder if he didn’t repay a $1.5 million debt he owed him. About 14 months and one “naked jaunt” down a Manhattan street later, authorities arrested Fakroune and charged him with extortion stemming from that alleged attack.
But Fakroune’s attorneys argued during opening statements Tuesday that there was never a line of credit extended from Fakroune to Garcia, and that while they’d never ask the jury to endorse the way Fakroune acted toward Garcia in the kitchen of Yours Truly, bad behavior didn’t equate with breaking the law.
“Bullying is not a federal crime,” defense attorney Damon Cheronis said. “This was a toxic business relationship that blew up in the ugliest way possible, but there was no extension of credit.”
By November 2024, Fakroune and Garcia’s business relationship was indeed strained. The two had partnered on a litany of failed restaurant concepts in many of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods and suburbs, sometimes alongside some of the better-known names in the restaurant scene.
There was the bottomless brunch joint in West Loop. The short-lived Mexican concept in Wrigleyville. An American-style bistro in Highland Park that spent months shut down after the July 4, 2022, mass shooting that left seven people dead and dozens more wounded.
Garcia, the government’s star witness in the case against Fakroune, took the stand Wednesday morning for testimony that prosecutors said they expected to stretch into Thursday. His first few hours detailed a tangled web of debts taken out to satisfy older debts, bouts of rage and helplessness and heavy drinking over the years he spent in apparently fruitless pursuit of a successful restaurant venture.
Almost immediately, Garcia testified to his own shortcomings in the industry, which had been his professional home since he arrived in the U.S. from Mexico in 1996 and started to work as cleaning staff and later as a line cook, busboy, server and bartender before he first took a stab at running his own enterprise around 2002.
“Do you consider yourself to be a good restaurant operator?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Rothblatt asked.
Garcia said he did not.
“Do you consider yourself to be good with finances and money generally?” Rothblatt asked.
“Absolutely not,” Garcia said. “I suck as an operator, I’m a failure as an operator. All I can say is I tried.”
Garcia, wearing chunky black classes, a blue sweater and gray pants, referred to Fakroune exclusively as “Mr. Angelino” throughout his testimony Wednesday. He testified that he believed Fakroune to be a son of the Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and that their partnership had weathered serious financial issues, Garcia’s struggles with alcoholism, the serious consideration he gave to killing himself and Fakroune’s short temper.
He testified that Fakroune pulled a gun on him three times in his frustration over Garcia’s trouble turning a profit and repaying loans. At the same time, Garcia said, he had landed in hot water with the Illinois Department of Revenue and the Department of Labor because he was prioritizing those repayments to Fakroune, who he said avoided being listed on official paperwork as a rule.
“We needed the cash flow to continue to make the payments that I had promised Mr. Angelino,” he said. “I was taking money that belonged to my employees and the government to pay Mr. Angelino Escobar and my child support.”
Garcia testified that there came a point when he wrote a suicide note apologizing to his victims, including Fakroune.
“I don’t want to get killed by that man, I owe money to the government, I owe child support, I am completely up to here. … I want it to end,’ he said, his voice breaking. “I tried to seek for help. I’m being constantly reminded that i’m a failure, I’m a fraud. … I’m not a man, and a father of my kids.”
But by March 2023, he and Fakroune were in talks to open the only restaurant that Garcia still operates, Lincoln Park’s Americano. But a year later, two months before Americano was set to open, the restaurant’s liquor license got held up over nonpayment of taxes from the by-then shuttered restaurants in Highland Park, Wrigleyville and River North. Garcia owed the state $250,000, he said, and Fakroune told him not to panic.
A lawyer named Lisa Duarte, who Garcia testified was looking after a trust for Fakroune and previously worked as an aide to Gov. JB Pritzker, helped him arrange an agreement to repay the debt with the Department of Revenue. Duarte has not been charged with wrongdoing and is not expected to testify.
Garcia testified that Fakroune loaned him around $120,000 to cover his obligations to the state, which came from a man so far only discussed in open court using the last name Rubino. Prosecutors allege that Fakroune falsely claimed Rubino was an Italian mafioso.
Garcia spent the spring and summer making payments to Department of Revenue alongside weekly payments of $4,000 to Fakroune, he testified. Yours Truly, the only restaurant of his still operating at that time, wasn’t bringing in enough cash to cover those obligations, so he was calling in favors and loans from other friends when he needed to.
“I was late on (the payments) but I never missed anything,” he said — mostly because Fakroune had warned him multiple times “not to (expletive) around with him.”
Much of Wednesday afternoon’s testimony consisted of replays of phone calls that took place over October and November 2024, in which Garcia repeatedly asked Fakroune if they could come up with different repayment options and how much money he had left to fork over.
On a Nov. 12, 2024, call, Fakroune told Garcia that “when (expletive) hit the fan, it hit the fan.”
Garcia testified that he “100 percent” believed he was “(expletive) around with people related to the mafia” and that he took Fakroune’s statement as a warning about not getting into trouble with the lenders. Rothblatt asked what trouble would constitute.
“Getting killed,” Garcia said.
On another call, a week later, Fakroune was captured on tape telling Garcia, “things with Rubino, you put me in a bad position with him” and that he had gotten into it with the lender. He agreed to pay $8,000 to Fakroune days afterward, he said.
And then Rothblatt pulled up the video from Yours Truly, and the jury again watched the recording of Salafatinos walking into the restaurant to take the envelope with the check.
Trial will resume Thursday, with Garcia expected back on the witness stand to complete direct examination.
