The sprawling far northwest suburban home of a Chicago area restaurateur whose establishments are pulling in millions of dollars through video gambling was burglarized earlier this year — with one of the three men arrested for the heist a South Side resident once described as the Chicago mob’s video poker kingpin.
Casey Szaflarski, 67, was indicted May 28 on felony charges related to the burglary of the residence in unincorporated West Dundee on or about March 18, according to court records. His next court date is scheduled for December.
Szaflarski and his alleged accomplices — including reputed mob-connected burglar Paul Koroluk and Louis Capuzi, Jr., son of a former state legislator — are accused of obtaining “control over property of the owner,” including “currency and/or jewelry” between $10,000 and $100,000 in value, records show.
Other charges include residential burglary.
It’s unclear all that was taken, and how the home was picked by the thieves, but the homeowner, who the Chicago Sun-Times isn’t identifying publicly, dismissed questions about ties to video gambling.
“One has nothing to do with the other,” he said, declining to elaborate but saying of the burglars: “They knew what they were doing, I think.”
The restaurant group headed by the victim includes more than a dozen establishments, most with video gambling machines that altogether have brought in more than $30 million in net terminal income, according to Illinois Gaming Board records.
Amy Johnson of the Kane County sheriff’s office, which is handling the investigation, declined to answer questions, including whether the three men are suspected in other break-ins.
She said the case is still a “pending investigation and being worked on.”
Szaflarski was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2012 as part of a federal prosecution involving allegations that he oversaw a lucrative, mobbed up video gambling empire under now-imprisoned Cicero mob boss Michael “The Large Guy” Sarno.
Paying out winnings from video gambling terminals was illegal in Illinois for many years, but common as the mob provided machines to bars and other establishments and split the profits with them — and sometimes dealt with competitors violently.
The dynamics began changing in 2009 when the General Assembly passed a law legalizing and regulating video gambling, though the first of those machines didn’t come online until 2012.
A resident of Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, Szaflarski was released from federal custody in 2015.
With the proliferation of video gambling, and the infusion of cash, a number of gaming sites — including casinos — have been hit by crooks in the region.
Koroluk, 67, has a lengthy police record that, as the Sun-Times reported in 1998, “includes multiple arrests for unlawful use of a weapon, possession of a silencer, battery, burglary, arson, assault, possession of burglary tools and theft.”
“Though he did get hit with an eight-year sentence on an unlawful use of a weapon charge in 1992, Koroluk’s record also reflects an almost magical history of getting his cases dismissed, particularly by judges before whom he appeared repeatedly,” the Sun-Times wrote.
When he and other men were arrested following break-ins in Long Grove in the 1990s, authorities recovered more than $1 million of jewelry, clothes and other items, according to a published account.
Koroluk is an associate of reputed members of the mob’s Grand Avenue crew, once led by late mob boss Joey “The Clown” Lombardo that more recently was allegedly overseen by reputed mob figure Albert Vena.
Capuzi, 68, has an arrest history but his attorney, Jed Stone, says of the latest burglary case: “Louie is an older man in bad health — there’s no evidence he was in the house, outside the house, that he took anything.”
In fact, Capuzi was dealing with a flat tire at the time of the reported break-in, Stone said.
Capuzi’s late father and namesake was an Illinois legislator and deputy coroner associated with what was called the West Side Bloc, a group of politicians with ties to reputed organized crime figures.
Once convicted in a bribery scandal, the elder Capuzi eventually saw the conviction reversed, according to published accounts.
An attorney for Szaflarski, Ed Wanderling, declined to comment.