Judge offers blow to proprietor of Cicero diner, will not reverse revocation of video playing license

More than seven months after the Illinois Gaming Board revoked a license that had allowed Jeffrey Bertucci’s Cicero diner to function video playing gadgets and pay out winnings, he was dealt one other blow to his potential money movement.

Cook County Judge David B. Atkins dominated Friday that the gaming board had been inside its rights to strip away the license from Bertucci’s Firebird Enterprises, Inc., operator of a 24-hour Steak N Egger franchise at 5647 W. Ogden Ave. within the close to western suburb.

The ruling tanked Firebird’s authorized efforts to reverse the July 31 revocation, at the very least for now, although Bertucci can attraction.

His attorneys had no rapid remark.

A spokeswoman for the gaming board stated the state authorities company, which finally reviews to Gov. JB Pritzker, “is pleased with the Circuit Court of Cook County’s ruling which reaffirms the IGB’s authority to ensure the integrity and safety of gaming as well as those who operate within it.”

In 2023 the Chicago Sun-Times found the gaming board had licensed Firebird in 2019 9 years after Bertucci testified below a grant of immunity at a federal racketeering trial that focused reputed mobsters and members of the infamous Outlaws Motorcycle Club.

Bertucci admitted on the stand that, earlier than video playing was legalized in Illinois, he’d been concerned in a mobbed-up video playing operation that illegally paid out winnings to patrons.

That may have been sufficient to disclaim him a video playing license when he utilized later, as one of many gaming board’s most important duties is to make sure the integrity of the trade and maintain out even the trace of mob affect.

But regulators licensed him anyway.

When the Sun-Times started asking questions in 2023, regulators stated they hadn’t identified about Bertucci’s testimony, regardless that it was reported in 2010 within the media.

The gaming board quickly proposed pulling Firebird’s license, but Bertucci appealed, setting a two-year administrative process in motion — during which he was allowed to keep operating his video gambling devices and rake in money.

More than $200,000 in “net terminal income” was collected during that two-year period.

Last year, an administrative judge sided with Firebird, saying that had Bertucci come clean about the full extent of his illicit gambling actions when he initially applied for a video gambing license, the gaming board would’ve awarded it anyway.

The gaming board pushed back on that point and pushed ahead on the revocation — which meant Bertucci’s machines were soon turned off.

Among other problems, Bertucci initially “lied to federal agents and the grand jury during the federal investigation” he later testified for, the gaming board wrote in its revocation order.

He also “partnered with known members of organized crime to engage in illegal gambling.”

Given all this, “we conclude that Respondent could not have demonstrated its suitability for licensure had these facts been known” at the time of licensing, agency officials said.

In awarding a license, the gaming board has to consider whether an applicant’s “background, including criminal record, reputation and associations, is not injurious to the public health, safety, morals, good order and general welfare of the people of the State of Illinois.”

Firebird sued, 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 the administrative 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.”

Atkins ultimately rejected Firebird’s arguments and wrote in his order:

“It is well settled that findings of fact by an administrative agency are considered to be prima facie true and correct, and courts will not interfere with the discretionary authority of administrative bodies unless the administrative decision is against the manifest weight of the evidence, or is exercised in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”