A major video gambling operator who is asking the state for permission to build a southwest suburban horse track and casino has long-standing business ties to a banking family whose financial involvement with mob figures helped sink a Rosemont casino, the Tribune has found.
Gold Rush Gaming owner Rick Heidner has partnered in numerous real estate deals with Rocco Suspenzi, chairman of the board at Parkway Bank and Trust. Together, they have borrowed millions from the bank in deals for convenience stores and gas stations in several states.
In 2003, the FBI and the Illinois Gaming Board exposed Suspenzi and son Jeffrey for concealing their own ownership stake, as well as that of a reputed mob figure, in the infamous Emerald casino project. At the same time, Parkway Bank made a seven-figure loan to another reputed mobster to finance his secret stake in the casino, according to Gaming Board records. Rocco Suspenzi invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination at a state hearing.
The Tribune also found that Heidner has a similar real estate partnership with Dominic Buttitta, who pleaded guilty to running an illegal bookmaking operation and skimming money from his South Elgin strip club between 2005 to 2009.
On Friday, Heidner’s name surfaced in a federal search warrant executed at Democratic state Sen. Martin Sandoval’s Capitol office last month. Information related to Heidner and Gold Rush was on FBI agents’ lengthy list.
In 2012, the Gaming Board granted Heidner’s Gold Rush a license to operate video gambling machines. Two board members recently told the Tribune that Heidner’s ties to the Suspenzis would have been an obvious red flag, but they had no recollection of being informed of the real estate deals by the agency’s investigators.
“If that was brought to the board’s attention, it would have been a definite no,” said Maribeth Vander Weele, who served on the Gaming Board when Gold Rush’s license was approved without dissent.
“It certainly would have been a big factor,” said former Judge Aaron Jaffe, who was Gaming Board chairman at the time. “But I don’t recall hearing anything like that.”
What Gaming Board investigators knew about Heidner at the time remains secret because Illinois gambling statutes exempt gaming license applications from open records laws. The Gaming Board, which declined to comment Friday, rejected the Tribune’s request to see the license application Heidner submitted for Gold Rush.
The Tribune found the business, financial and legal connections between Heidner and the Suspenzis, as well as Buttitta, in public land, court and business registration records. Nearly all of the documents were available from online databases maintained by government agencies across the country.
Heidner declined an interview through his attorney, who did not respond to written questions. Rocco Suspenzi and Dominic Buttitta could not be reached for comment.
Now Heidner is part of a team that wants to build a harness racing track and casino in Tinley Park. He’s partnered with the owners of Hawthorne Racecourse in Cicero.
The Illinois Racing Board has approved the horse track portion of the project. Heidner has not yet submitted an application to the Gaming Board for a casino license.
The racino was included in the massive gambling expansion that lawmakers and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker approved over the summer. Critics of gambling expansion say Illinois risks repeating the troubles of the past if the Gaming Board does not receive significantly greater resources to police the industry.
They point to the Emerald debacle nearly two decades ago as the worst-case scenario of what can go wrong in a state long plagued by corruption: a swirl of insider dealing, mob influence and attempts to deceive state regulators. When the investigation ended, Rosemont lost its gaming license, which was eventually awarded to Des Plaines and became the Rivers Casino.
Jaffe complained for years that his agency was understaffed to deal with the advent of video gambling in 2012. If the Gaming Board voted on Heidner’s license without knowing of his ties to Suspenzi, that does not bode well for the state policing the more complicated schemes that may come with sports betting and new casino licenses, said Jeff Cramer, a former assistant U.S. attorney who looked into the ill-fated Rosemont casino deal.
“There are bright people who work there, but they are not equipped to do deep-dive investigations. This is one small example. Put that on steroids,” Cramer said. “It won’t be just people from Illinois. They’ll be coming from Ukraine. They’ll be coming from Macau. You see private equity companies and funds being set up to take advantage of gaming. If the people and sources of funds are known on Day One, those people and sources of funds could change on Day 30.”
Cramer prosecuted Jeffrey Suspenzi on Parkway-related bank fraud and tax evasion charges in 2006. Federal investigators probing the bank as part of the Emerald case found that Jeffrey Suspenzi, then an assistant vice president of the bank, had embezzled nearly $500,000 from a client’s line of credit. He pleaded guilty in 2006 and served a two-year sentence of supervised release.
Reached by phone Friday, Jeffrey Suspenzi declined to answer questions about his family’s ties to Heidner.
“That was a very long time ago, and I don’t have anything to do with that,” he said.
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Former FBI organized crime expert James Wagner said casinos have traditionally been a magnet for organized crime and money laundering because of the enormous amounts of cash that flow in and out of their coffers daily.
“There is every reason to be concerned about the Outfit getting their hands into the gaming expansion,” said Wagner, who also ran the Chicago Crime Commission for several years. He advised state investigators on the ties between Emerald investors and the Chicago Outfit, as the mafia here is known.
Emerald’s tainted history
Investigators had been suspicious of Rosemont’s casino bid from the start. After an East Dubuque casino along the Mississippi River went out of business, lawmakers and then-Gov. George Ryan decided to move the gambling license to Rosemont, a suburb near O’Hare International Airport controlled for a half-century by Donald Stephens.
The mayor known as “The Don” had long lobbied for a casino to add to his convention center and the indoor stadium now known as Allstate Arena. He also was no stranger to allegations of mob ties. The mayor once bought a hotel from Outfit kingpin Sam Giancana, who also loaned the money.
Stephens was acquitted in a 1980s mail fraud trial. His co-defendant in that case, construction company owner Isaac Degen, is a longtime member of Parkway Bank’s board.
Gaming Board investigators scolded Stephens after discovering that he had moved ahead with building a parking garage for the casino before he had a gaming license, in violation of state law. The parking garage was partly financed by Parkway under Suspenzi’s leadership. Some of the construction was done by a company linked to John “No Nose” DiFronzo, a Chicago mob boss.
In 2003, Gaming Board investigators learned from federal authorities that the Suspenzis had a secret ownership stake in the Emerald that included Vito Salamone, who the board and the FBI contended had links to organized crime.
Rocco Suspenzi told the Tribune at the time that the partnership with Salamone was initiated when his son Jeffrey Suspenzi brought him to their offices at Parkway to discuss the idea. Their ownership was hidden behind the disclosed stake of Salamone’s brother, Joseph, who owned an Oak Park grocery store. Rocco Suspenzi said he had only known Vito Salamone previously as a customer of the bank.
The Gaming Board brought in Abner Mikva, a former federal appellate judge and White House adviser, to preside over the Emerald proceedings. In a late 2005 report, Mikva described how the Suspenzis and Parkway Bank facilitated the secret involvement of reputed mobsters in the casino’s ownership.
“… (T)here was in fact a secret memorandum of agreement, not provided to the Gaming Board, which showed that (Vito Salamone), as well as officers of the Parkway Bank and Trust Company, were sharing in the ownership interest,” Mikva wrote.
“Rocco Suspenzi was the chairman of Parkway Bank and Trust, and he as well as the Salamone brothers and Jeffrey Suspenzi were all subpoenaed to testify in this proceeding. All of them refused to testify, claiming their Fifth Amendment rights when asked questions about the secret agreement or any other questions pertaining to Emerald,” he added.
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Mikva’s report also described how another reputed mob figure, Nick Boscarino, used a Parkway loan to secretly invest $1.5 million in the Emerald project. The report also detailed ties between Vito Salamone, Boscarino and Stephens to DiFronzo and other figures the FBI claimed were linked to organized crime.
Ties between Gold Rush’s Heidner and a key player involved in the Emerald scandal should be a cause for concern, said Barry Gross, a former chief deputy in then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office. He helped lead the state’s probe of the Emerald in hearings before the Gaming Board.
“Absolutely, based on their history … it should be a red flag,” said Gross, who is now retired.
Heidner-Suspenzi partnership
The Suspenzis’ secret ownership in the failed Rosemont casino was made public in May 2003, setting off a media firestorm.
Six months later, Heidner formed two new limited liability corporations with the Suspenzi Family Corp. — the same instrument Rocco Suspenzi used for part of the Emerald stake his family had shared with Vito Salamone, who had alleged mob ties. State records show that the Suspenzi Family Corp. is controlled by Rocco and wife Toni.
Together, the Heidner-Suspenzi LLCs bought several commercial buildings in Illinois and at least four other states. In most cases, the purchases were financed with loans from Parkway, land records show.
In late January 2012, Heidner filed papers with the Illinois secretary of state to remove the Suspenzi name from the LLCs they shared. In most cases, the Suspenzi Family Corp. was also removed from the listed corporate managers.
Two weeks later, the Gaming Board approved Heidner’s video gambling license.
The name changes appear to have been cosmetic. Numerous records show Heidner and Suspenzi continued to do business together.
For instance, outside of Illinois, Heidner did not change corporate names. In New York, Florida, Texas and California, they are still doing business as Heidner Yormark Suspenzi Properties LLC.
In addition, an affidavit filed in a 2017 slip-and-fall lawsuit at a Hillside strip mall revealed that the complex was owned by one of Heidner’s other business entities, the Suspenzi Family Corp. and West Chicago businessman Terry R. Yormark, court records show.
Jeffrey Suspenzi also was named in the case because he was the registered owner of the snow removal contractor whom the owners employed to plow the strip mall, records show. The case was settled.
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Over the years, Heidner often has turned to Parkway Bank to finance his projects. In May 2012, four months after Heidner removed the Suspenzi name from several LLCs, a bank trust that Heidner, Yormark and Suspenzi controlled borrowed $6 million from Parkway, using the Hillside strip mall as collateral, land records show.
More recently, in September 2018 Heidner borrowed $350,000 from Parkway against a Franklin Park strip mall he owns.
Rocco Suspenzi is still chairman of the board of the holding company that owns the bank, according to state corporate filings. Federal banking records show the Suspenzi family owns about 14% of Parkway’s stock.
Property deal with a bookie
In 2005, Heidner and Buttitta formed Heidner-Buttitta Properties LLC. Together, they borrowed $956,000 to buy a building in Elgin that is leased to a bar and grill currently known as D Hangout. Heidner’s Gold Rush supplies video gambling machines to the bar.
At the time the two created the corporation, Buttitta was deeply immersed in what federal authorities said was a yearslong criminal conspiracy to run an illegal gambling operation out of his strip club a few miles away. Federal prosecutors brought charges just days before Heidner was granted a state video gambling license.
Authorities alleged that between 2005 and 2009, Buttitta ran an illegal “sports bookmaking operation” out of Blackjacks Gentlemen’s Club in South Elgin. Buttitta and his son, Anthony, hid gambling “agents” on the payroll of the strip club to make it appear as though they had legitimate sources of income, prosecutors alleged.
Investigators also found that between 2002 and 2009, the Buttittas collected $3.7 million from dancers who were required to pay a daily fee to perform at the club. The money was never declared as taxable income, and they destroyed the daily logs of those payments, according to court records.
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Charges came down on Feb. 2, 2012. A week earlier, Heidner had removed Buttitta’s name from their corporation — on the same day he removed the Suspenzi name from several corporate entities.
On Feb. 16, the Gaming Board awarded Heidner a license to operate video gaming machines.
On Feb. 23, Buttitta pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion crimes.
Heidner’s plan to expand his gambling business
Earlier this year, Heidner hosted a fundraiser for Cubs star Anthony Rizzo’s cancer charity at his Barrington-area home, a 20,000-square-foot house sitting on 14 acres.
Heidner has been in the public eye because of his various business interests.
At a recent Chicago budget town hall meeting hosted by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Heidner stood in line with others during the question period and beseeched the mayor to grant him a private meeting so they could discuss bringing video gambling into the city. Heidner bills Gold Rush as the state’s third-largest video gaming operator, with more than 480 locations.
In the meantime, he is pushing forward with a plan to build a harness-racing track and casino on state-owned land near Interstate 80 and Harlem Avenue that used to be the Tinley Park Mental Health Center.
At a Sept. 17 Racing Board hearing, Heidner made a detailed presentation on the racetrack casino he plans to build with Hawthorne Racecourse President Tim Carey.
Drawings showed a hotel and entertainment complex to complement the gambling and racing operations. Racing Board members expressed enthusiasm for the prospect of having a new track to help prop up the lagging horse racing industry.
Heidner made a previous attempt to enter the horse racing industry with a failed bid to buy the bankrupt Balmoral Park in Crete in 2016. Heider told the Racing Board it was during that process that he became deeply enamored of people in the horse industry.
In pushing to build a new track in Tinley Park, Carey said that he and Heidner would “give the horsemen what they lost with Balmoral and Maywood,” a track that closed in 2015.
As the hearing drew to a close, Racing Board Chairman Jeffrey Brincat discussed the proposal.
“I enjoy seeing a presentation from my friend Tim Carey, and … what I hope is going to be a new friend, Rick Heidner,” Brincat said. “But that’s not why the administration has us up here. It’s to look out for Illinois racing.”
One board member asked whether staff had conducted a background investigation of Heidner, and was assured that nothing objectionable had been found.
A week later, the Racing Board awarded Heidner’s venture racing dates for December 2020.
dheinzmann@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @davidheinzmann
