Ruling expected soon from judge overseeing lawsuit brought by Cicero diner against Illinois Gaming Board

The legal battle between Illinois gambling regulators and a Cicero restaurant operator whose video gambling devices were ordered shut off amid questions about past connections to reputed mob figures appears to be coming to a head.

Cook County Judge David B. Atkins indicated this month he would rule soon on the lawsuit filed by Firebird Enterprises Inc. — which is overseen by Lemont businessman Jeffrey Bertucci and runs a 24-hour Steak N Egger franchise in the west suburb — against the Illinois Gaming Board after the agency revoked a license for the video gambling machines.

“This cause coming before the Court for Status, Plaintiff’s administrative review count having been fully briefed, all parties of record appearing, and the court being fully advised, it is ordered that: The matter is continued for written ruling on or before Friday, February 13,” Atkins recently wrote.

A lot is at stake for both sides.

For Bertucci, permanently losing his ability to operate video poker machines could hit his business hard in the pocketbook.

Since he was initially licensed for the machines in 2019, they’ve yielded more than $600,000 in net terminal income off millions of dollars in bets, records show.

A loss in court for the gaming board would not only constitute an embarrassment but potentially erode its ability to keep unsavory individuals out of the industry — one of the agency’s central tasks that’s been handled with mixed results over the years.

In 2023, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Bertucci admitted in a 2010 federal mob trial he had obtained video gambling devices for his diner from an amusement company linked to reputed mob boss James Marcello.

Bertucci also testified he had gotten other gambling machines from Casey Szaflarski, who was portrayed at the time by federal authorities as the mob’s video poker king — who is facing unrelated burglary charges in a pending Kane County case with two other reputed mob associates.

Bertucci admitted back then in court he had paid winnings to gamblers playing those devices — which at the time was illegal to do in Illinois — and shared profits with Szaflarski.

Granted immunity in exchange for his testimony, Bertucci was asked by a prosecutor: “Why is it that you only paid out people that you knew?”

Bertucci said, “Because it was illegal, and I didn’t want to get caught.”

The gaming board, which reports to Gov. JB Pritzker, licensed Firebird to operate video gambling machines at the diner in 2019 — with state officials saying more recently they hadn’t known about Bertucci’s earlier disclosures at trial.

After the Sun-Times began asking questions about Firebird in 2023, the agency moved to pull Bertucci’s video gaming license and turn off the gambling machines, arguing he hadn’t revealed all of his past troubles on his gaming board paperwork, or later in a routine interview with gaming agents.

Firebird sued this year, saying the gaming board “was aware” of Bertucci’s past “when it granted Plaintiff a license.”

The agency’s decision to revoke the license “was erroneous and contrary to law because” the gaming board, also known as the IGB, “granted Plaintiff’s establishment license in January of 2019 and repeatedly renewed Plaintiff’s license in January of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 even after the IGB was demonstrably aware of the very facts it claims not to have known when the license was first granted.”

Firebird’s lawsuit also asserted Bertucci was never “convicted of a crime related to illegal gambling or Grey Games,” the latter a term sometimes used to describe illicit payouts from gaming terminals in bars and restaurants.

That’s important, Bertucci’s suit says, because as an administrative law judge earlier observed, “the Legislature had chosen to limit” the gaming board’s “discretion to deny licensure to applicants who ‘facilitated, enabled, or participated in the use of’ Grey Games by narrowly defining ‘facilitated, enabled, or participated in the use of’ to mean actually convicted [emphasis from lawsuit] of illegal gambling.”

Former state legislator Lou Lang, once a point person on gambling legislation and now a lobbyist, said he hasn’t followed the lawsuit but recalls helping change the law so video gambling applicants “not convicted of a crime” aren’t “treated the same as people who were.”

Even with that distinction, Lang noted the gaming board retains wide discretion to deny license applications.

Indeed, nefarious associations are often enough of a reason, records show.

A gaming board spokeswoman said of the ongoing lawsuit, “We understand the judge announced an intention to issue a decision by February 13 on the Firebird case. As you know, the IGB does not speculate about pending litigation.”