D&P Construction Co. Inc., shouldn’t have been used by contractors building the new Bally’s Chicago casino on the banks of the Chicago River.
That much seems clear, given that:
- The waste hauler wasn’t on the Illinois Gaming Board’s list of approved construction firms;
- The company was identified years ago by the FBI as associated with reputed mob leaders Peter and John DiFronzo, brothers who have since died;
- Bally’s officials admitted they screwed up in allowing the company’s dumpsters to be on-site.
But six months after the use of D&P came to light, the gaming board won’t say if or when they may issue a fine.
We “cannot speculate about or discuss additional corrective measures or potential disciplinary action that may result from any potential violation by Bally’s or anyone else,” a spokeswoman for the agency says.
Bally’s wouldn’t comment.
A similar case a decade earlier involved Rivers Casino hiring a janitorial contractor run by a man with reputed mob ties. Within about three months, the gaming board had wrapped up its review and proposed a $2 million fine against the owners of the Des Plaines gambling complex.
The fine was negotiated down to $1.65 million the next year and paid.
Both instances came to light because of the Chicago Sun-Times and caught the gaming board off guard even though its mission includes rooting out potential organized crime influence in the gambling industry — something it’s done unevenly over the last two decades.
The gaming board spokeswoman said: “The IGB follows the facts and law wherever that leads when investigating alleged violations and assessing whether to impose potential discipline.”
“Each case has its own timeline and follows the duration dictated by the process. There is nothing further to address or share until our process is complete.”
Other gaming board investigations have varied widely in length in recent years, records show.
Four years elapsed from the time gaming board agents spotted unlicensed employees in off-limits areas of the Argosy Casino Alton until the downstate house of chance was slapped with a $25,000 fine in February 2024.
But it only took a few months for the board to stick American Place Casino in Waukegan with a $150,000 fine after a series of slip-ups allowed dozens self-identified problem gamblers onto the gaming floor over a seven-month stretch in 2023.
The gaming board is overseen on a day-to-day basis by an administrator, Marcus Fruchter, and governed by a panel whose members are appointed by the governor and responsible for voting on significant licensing and disciplinary matters.
Their next public meeting is in December, but it’s unclear whether the Bally’s troubles will come up then.
Fruchter has been tight-lipped on other fronts, refusing to discuss why a South Side trucking firm that also isn’t on the gaming board’s list of approved contractors was spotted on Bally’s site by a reporter after the D&P debacle and whether that constituted another potential violation.
Fruchter’s office has also declined to release whatever records they may have on individuals licensed for video gambling who, prior to its legalization more than a decade ago, were involved in illicit gambling.
In 2023, the Sun-Times discovered that the operator of a Cicero diner that was licensed by the gaming board to offer video poker and the like had been arrested in a gambling sting decades earlier and, separately, had testified under immunity in a mob gambling trial in federal court.