The FBI investigated Rommell Kellogg — a brother of former Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg — for more than two decades while federal agents uncovered layer upon layer of corruption in the south suburb.
Then in 2023, a jury found Rommell Kellogg guilty of collecting more than $800,000 in bribes from a strip club in exchange for keeping the doors open and allowing prostitution. Rommell Kellogg, whose name is spelled Rommel in his own court filings, claimed he was entrapped by the government.
Derrick Muhammad, another brother of the former Harvey mayor, is now close to having his corruption case wrapped up, too.
Prosecutors, hoping to send a strong message discouraging such corruption, asked the judge to sentence Rommell Kellogg to 46 months in prison. But in a sentencing memo, his lawyer noted his advanced age, now 73, along with his poor health, his lack of a criminal record and the fact that he wasn’t an elected official.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman sentenced him to only a day in jail, which she considered to be served, along with two years of supervised release. He was ordered to repay $47,500 in government funds he allegedly took as bribes during the investigation.
The government also says he should forfeit another $800,000 he raked in from the club over the years. Prosecutors have said the scheme generated about $36,000 a year from 2003 to 2007 and about $72,000 a year from 2008 to 2017, before an FBI informant paid the bribes with government money until 2018.
The government’s forfeiture request is pending.
The judge has ordered Kellogg not to communicate with Alicia Arnold, 56, the former operator of the strip club, Arnie’s Idle Hour, or with the FBI informant.
Last year, Arnold was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for failing to pay taxes on revenue from the club’s strippers and from backroom prostitution, along with obtaining a fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan.
Muhammad, the former mayor’s 77-year-old brother, pleaded guilty last month to federal charges of using his position as a Harvey police supervisor to steer vehicle-towing jobs to private companies in exchange for bribes from 2011 to 2019. He faces sentencing Feb. 18.
In 2020, he was sentenced to nine months in prison for using his badge to cover up a felon’s possession of a stolen Uzi assault weapon found in a towed vehicle.
Even though corruption swirled around former Mayor Eric Kellogg since the early 2000s, he’s never been charged with a crime.
But in the criminal complaint filed against his brother Rommell in 2019, prosecutors said Eric Kellogg masterminded the shakedowns of Arnie’s Idle Hour. Eric Kellogg wasn’t named in that complaint, which referred to him as “Individual A” and “mayor of the city of Harvey.” Sources have confirmed he was Individual A.
The former mayor, who left office because of term limits in 2019, couldn’t be reached for comment.