Three high-profile Illinois casinos have now faced allegations over contractors with reputed mob ties

The largest fine levied by the Illinois Gaming Board in recent memory — $3.2 million — was paid in 2003 by Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, whose investors at the time included Gov. JB Pritzker and members of his family.

Now overseen by Pritzker, who took office in 2019 and no longer owns a piece of Grand Victoria, the gaming board will decide if and how to fine Bally’s Chicago Casino for a similar offense: hiring a contractor with reputed mob ties.

The state agency, whose leaders are appointed by the governor, won’t tip its hand on the subject.

“The matter is still under investigation," a gaming board spokeswoman says.

Bally's officials wouldn't comment.

The severity of any fine or other penalty is sure to be an indicator of whether regulators believe the hiring of D&P Construction Co. Inc., on the River West construction site where a permanent Bally’s casino is being built was anything beyond a mistake.

A Chicago Sun-Times reporter spotted D&P dumpsters at the casino work site this spring and asked the gaming board about them.

Gambling regulators then temporarily halted the Bally’s construction. The dumpsters were removed, and officials said the company wasn't on an approved hiring list.

The FBI had long ago asserted that D&P had organized crime ties through the DiFronzo family, and the presence of the company's dumpsters at the work site of a Rosemont casino helped scuttle that project years ago.

With illicit gambling long a domain of organized crime in Chicago and elsewhere, as gaming was legalized in Illinois and around the country, rules were put in place to try to keep the mob away from those legalized operations.

Under Illinois state administrative rules, gaming companies can lose their licenses for “associating with, either socially or in business affairs, or employing persons of notorious or unsavory reputation or who have extensive police records, or who have failed to cooperate with any officially constituted investigatory or administrative body and would adversely affect public confidence and trust in gaming.”

In 2001, the gaming board proposed a $7.2 million fine against Grand Victoria for “violating a number of internal controls which resulted, in part, in the casino entering into business contracts with individuals who have been identified as being associates or members of organized crime," records show.

The violations involved the casino hiring a company tied to members of the Bastone family who had alleged organized crime connections to install an air-filtration system to cleanse the air of cigarette and cigar smoke. 

After discussions, that fine was lowered to $3.2 million, which was paid in 2003.

In 2015, the gaming board proposed fining Rivers Casino in Des Plaines — which landed a lucrative gambling license after the Rosemont project was tanked over fears of mob influence — $2 million after a Sun-Times reporter found that United Service Cos. was hired for security and cleaning work there.

United was long run by former cop Richard “Rick” Simon, who has had business and personal ties to reputed mob figures, including Ben Stein, his late friend and boss.

In 2016, Rivers agreed to pay a $1.65 million fine, the second-biggest fine collected over the past two decades or more, according to gaming board records.

This year, through May, Rivers reported more than $209 million in total adjusted gross receipts, tops among Illinois’ 17 casino sites. Bally’s was No. 5, at more than $52 million.

The gaming board’s next-largest fines include:

• $1 million in 2023 against Accel Entertainment, one of the state’s biggest video gaming operators, whose lobbyists include a company led by Michael Kasper, a former top aide to longtime Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. The gaming board initially had proposed a $5 million fine for violations involving illegal “inducements” to establishments to use Accel’s gambling terminals.
  
• $800,000 to Hollywood Casino Aurora in 2008 for sending promotional mailers to problem gamblers who had asked to be “self-excluded” from Illinois casinos.
  
• $750,000 to Hollywood Casino Aurora and Hollywood Casino Joliet in 2017 for “distributing marketing materials to individuals enrolled in the Board’s Self-Exclusion Program.”
  
• $600,000 to the former Empress Casino Joliet in 2005, when the operators “failed to enter information and incorporate the names of 240 IGB Self-Excluded Persons into its in-house computer databases and mailed promotional material to 23 IGB Self-Excluded Persons.”

The 10th-largest fine — $150,000 — came in 2023 against Waukegan’s The Temporary by American Place Casino, according to records that show the casino also was lax about letting problem gamblers in.