On Nov. 25, 2024, a young woman with long, blonde hair, blue jeans and a leather jacket walked smiling into the 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 the owner of Yours Truly, Adolfo Garcia, and the blonde woman, Zoe Salafatinos, before Garcia handed Salafatinos a check to bring to her boss.

Hours later, prosecutors allege, Salafatinos’ boss would attack Garcia in the kitchen of the now-shuttered bar and threaten him and his children with murder if he didn’t repay a $1.5 million debt in the oyster bar’s kitchen. About 14 months and one “naked jaunt” down a Manhattan street later, authorities arrested that man, whose real name is Jawad Fakroune, and charged him with extortion stemming from that alleged attack.

By that time, the two had been partners in 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 city’s 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 wounded dozens more.

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 of testimony 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 grey pants, referred to Fakroune exclusively as “Mr. Angelino” throughout his testimony Wednesday morning. He testified that he believed Fakroune to be a son of the Columbian 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 cashflow 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, he said, which came from a man Fakroune claimed was an Italian mafioso.

Garcia spent the spring and summer making payments to Illinois Deptartment 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.”

Prosecutors said they expected to play tapes of the alleged attack and threats Wednesday afternoon in court as direct examination continued.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/21/restaurateurs-testimony-extortion/