Convicted bookmaker with mob links and ties to Hired Truck probe charged with running illegal sports betting
By JASON MEISNER
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
OCT 05, 2020 AT 11:58 AM


A convicted bookmaker with long-standing ties to the Chicago Outfit has been charged once again with running illegal sports betting business.

Gregory Emmett Paloian, 66, of Elmwood Park, was accused in a criminal information filed late Friday of running the gambling operation over a four-year period beginning in 2015


Paloian operated his business in Chicago, Elmwood Park and Melrose Park, the information alleges. As part of the charges, prosecutors are seeking forfeiture of $274,000 from Paloian as well as a 2017 Audi.

Defendants charged via a criminal information typically intend to plead guilty. Paloian’s attorney, Joseph Urgo, declined to comment Monday.


Court records show Paloian has an extensive criminal history that includes mob connections and friendships with some colorful Chicago characters.

Paloian was a longtime friend of John “Quarters” Boyle, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax fraud in connection with accepting bribes from trucking companies when he worked for the city’s Transportation Department, the Chicago Tribune reported in 2005.


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In his youth, Paloian worked at Riis Park, on the city’s Northwest Side, where Boyle’s late father was the supervisor, according to the Tribune report.

His felony record includes a 1980 conviction on charges of extending juice loans to gamblers. Federal prosecutors said in one court filing Paloian had dozens of other arrests on his record, including one in 1995 when Chicago police spotted him writing down suspected wagers at a basketball facility in Elmwood Park.

When officers approached, Paloian shoved bunches of paper in his mouth and “fell to the ground and rolled around" until he was able to swallow them, prosecutors said.

In 2002, Paloian pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges alleging he’d been running an illegal gambling ring under the protection of West Side Outfit boss Rocky Infelise that raked in millions of dollars over at least two decades.

In court filings from that case, prosecutors said Paloian admitted that if his customers couldn’t pay the debts, he would threaten to refer them for juice loans to feared mob enforcer Jimmy Inendino.

“Paloian said that a bettor would be told cannons would be pointed at his head if he didn’t pay,” prosecutors wrote in a 2002 sentencing memo.

The operation was taken down in 1998, when federal agents raided Paloian’s family home and discovered a secret room concealed by a mechanized wall in the basement, court records show.

Inside, they found $157,000 in cash stacked in safes and on tables, as well as jewelry, loose diamonds, gold krugerrands and a voice-changing device and soluble paper that bookies often use to record bets, court records show.

Paloian was sentenced to 3½ years in federal prison in that case. In 2005, the Tribune reported that Paloian had been allowed to participate in Chicago’s scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program for more than a year after he was initially charged.

In fact, Paloian’s firm, Ruff Edge Inc., still had trucks participating in Hired Truck Program for months after he pleaded guilty, according to the Tribune report.

Among the evidence seized at City Hall by federal investigators was a handwritten note dated July 11, 2002, from a city official who said that the boss of the Hired Truck Program, Angelo Torres, had called “and told me to knock off four trucks that Ruff Edge had on.”

Paloian was never charged as part of the Hired Truck probe.