It wasn’t too long ago that the gambling industry was once almost always synonymous with organized crime.
You don’t have to be much of a high roller to get the connection, the subject of films like Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” and real-life courtroom dramas that, at times, are more colorful than the big-screen tales.
At one of these legal proceedings here in Chicago in 2010, restaurant owner Jeffrey Bertucci testified that Casey Szaflarski — a man federal authorities described as the mob’s video poker king — provided him with a few gaming devices at his Cicero Steak N Egger diner.
Szaflarski “routinely collected money from the machines” he gave Bertucci and “divvied up the proceeds,” the Sun-Times reported at the time.
