Once linked to mobbed-up video gambling network, Cicero diner operator sues regulators to keep gaming license
Facing the loss of a lucrative video gaming license over long-ago accusations of illicit gambling payouts, connections to reputed mob figures and dishonesty with state regulators, the operator of a Cicero diner sued the Illinois Gaming Board this week to undo its revocation order.
Filed Monday, the suit by Jeffrey Bertucci’s Firebird Enterprises Inc., includes a request to a Cook County judge to let the video gaming terminals inside Bertucci’s Steak N Egger franchise in the near western suburb operate while the case is litigated, letting the cash continue to roll in, at least temporarily.
The gaming board — which reports to Gov. JB Pritzker and regulates casinos, sports gambling and video poker and slots in Illinois — decided Thursday to revoke Firebird’s license, ignoring Administrative Law Judge Michael Coveny’s recommendation that a board effort to strip it away be dismissed.
The lawsuit, the latest back-and-forth over this issue, argues in part that Bertucci was never convicted of an illegal gambling offense, so the gaming board doesn’t have the right to revoke his ability to operate the gaming terminals.
The agency alleges that amid the license application process prior to its licensing of Firebird in 2019, Bertucci “misrepresented the extent and duration of his involvement with and use of coin-operated amusement devices for illegal gambling purposes” in his “license application and an interview” with gaming board agents.
The gaming board also said, “Bertucci’s background and associations would have disqualified him from licensure had he candidly advised the board of his criminal history.”
Bertucci was arrested over making gambling payouts years earlier when that was still illegal in Illinois. And he testified under immunity at a 2010 mob trial that he had continued to pay out from the machines gotten from reputed organized crime figures after that.
But Firebird’s lawsuit states: “Significantly, neither Mr. Bertucci nor Plaintiff have ever been 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, restaurants and other establishments.
The suit points to Coveny’s reasoning “that because the allegations about Mr. Bertucci’s past conduct all related to Grey Games, Section 45 (a-5) of the Illinois Video Gaming Act (230 ILCS 40/1, et seq.) (‘VGA’), which had passed specifically to address applicants with Grey Games in their pasts controlled the outcome.”
“Judge Coveny pointed to the fact that in Section 45 (a-5) the Legislature had chosen to limit the 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.”
“Because it was undisputed that Plaintiff and Mr. Bertucci had not been convicted of any such crimes, Judge Coveny recommended” the gaming board’s revocation complaint be tossed “because Plaintiff demonstrated by clear and ‘convincing evidence standard of proof’ ... that its owner ‘did not participate, enable or facilitate in the use of coin-operated machines for illegal gambling purposes, as a matter of law [emphasis from lawsuit], and the Board’s Amended Complaint was solely based on that issue.”
The suit said Coveny dismissed the gaming board’s “attempt to ignore Section 45 (a-5) observing that, "The Board’s powers, extensive as they are, do not include ignoring a VGA amendment it apparently was strongly opposed to.’”
Gaming board officials had no comment on the lawsuit, which states the agency “switched off” the terminals Friday at the Steak N Egger at 5647 W. Ogden Ave.
They’ve previously said the agency hadn’t known about all of Bertucci’s baggage — especially his testimony at the trial involving reputed mob figures and the Outlaws Motorcycle Club — and had they, Firebird wouldn’t have been licensed.
The agency is tasked with ensuring the integrity of legal gambling, and that includes keeping those with unsavory associations away from the industry.
But the lawsuit also says the agency “was aware” of Bertucci’s past “when it granted Plaintiff a license.”
The agency’s decision to revoke the license last week “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.”
Neither Bertucci nor his lawyer had immediate comment.