No Rosemont mob, study says
Village-funded report disputes critics' accusations

By John Chase and Michael Higgins
Tribune staff reporters
Published September 10, 2004

Despite assertions to the contrary by gambling regulators, the Illinois attorney general and other critics, Rosemont on Thursday released a report it commissioned that says the village and its mayor are not only free of mob influence, but also one of the few U.S. communities that can make that claim.

The report, which so far has cost the northwest suburb's taxpayers $65,000, was written by a former FBI agent and signed off on by two former U.S. attorneys, including Dan Webb, a prominent criminal defense attorney who prosecuted Donald Stephens 20 years ago and began working for Rosemont in 2001.

Last spring Rosemont asked Peter Wacks, a private investigator who used to work for the FBI in organized-crime cases, to investigate the suburb after assertions were made, including by Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan in March, that Stephens and the village had connections to organized crime.

The report's release comes as the Illinois Gaming Board staff is in the process of determining whether the Biloxi, Miss., casino company Isle of Capri should be allowed to buy the state's only unused riverboat casino license and build a casino in the suburb. The license is currently held by bankrupt Emerald Casino, whose plans to build a casino in Rosemont were scuttled by the board after it determined that owners lied to regulators and misled them about having investors with links to organized crime.

Although the report the village commissioned concludes that Rosemont is cleaner than most other places, it did not look at other communities.

"Today, Rosemont is among those few municipalities free of elements evidencing any indicia of [organized crime] influence," the report concluded.

Wacks' report examined a wide range of contacts that Stephens has purportedly had with organized-crime figures over the years, beginning with former mob boss Sam Giancana, from whom Stephens purchased a hotel in 1963.

The report concludes that such contacts were either casual or a creation of the media.

"Does buying a motel from a known [mob] member make you connected or associated with him? Does it mean that you are associating with a known [mob] member?" Wacks asked in the affidavit. "`No' is the simple answer to these questions."

What's more, the report portrays Stephens as something of a mob buster and says that after he helped incorporate the suburb near O'Hare International Airport and became its mayor, he supported laws that pushed organized crime out of town.

"We keep reading and hearing about what bad people we are, we thought maybe we'd find out," Stephens said at a downtown news conference before refusing to answer questions. "I would urge you to read the report and let's get the facts and stop the innuendoes."

Wacks submitted the report to Peter Vaira, a former chief of the U.S. Chicago Organized Crime Strike Force and Webb, who as U.S. attorney for Chicago in the 1980s prosecuted Stephens twice on charges of filing false tax returns and public corruption related to mail fraud. Stephens was found not guilty in both cases, and in 2001 Rosemont hired Webb, now in private practice, as part of its efforts to attract a casino to Rosemont.

Wacks, who resigned from the FBI in 1997, based his investigation almost entirely on a review of public documents. It did not include any current FBI papers other than those parts of an administrative hearing aimed at stripping the license from Emerald, said Rosemont Village Atty. Robert Stephenson.

The biggest accusations the report attempts to blunt include comments Madigan made tying Rosemont, Stephens and organized crime, as well as an internal Gaming Board memo in April that discusses updated information regarding mob influence in Rosemont.

Wacks' report disputed a Gaming Board memo that said the mayor; Nick Boscarino, who the board says has ties to the mob; and William Hogan Jr., a former Teamsters boss, had meetings in Rosemont in 2002. Boscarino had been charged earlier that year with ripping the village off as part of an insurance scheme. The report said Stephens cut ties with Boscarino and noted that the FBI did not list him as a member of organized crime.

Madigan's office, which wants to resume administrative hearings aimed at stripping the license from Emerald, which probably would kill the license sale to Isle of Capri, said, "Upon resumption of the revocation hearings, these matters will be resolved in a professional manner." The report raises questions about how law enforcement determines whether people have mob connections, noting that some FBI reports are not corroborated when they are passed along to agencies such as the Gaming Board. But officials with Madigan's office and the board say their job is to prevent gambling from having even the appearance of impropriety.

Although Wacks' report consistently sides with Stephens on a string of controversial associations, in some cases records paint a more complicated picture.

For example, Wacks found nothing troubling in Stephens' relationship with Anthony F. Daddino, a friend of the mayor's since high school. Wacks said the FBI never considered Daddino to be a mob associate, but federal prosecutors called him "a longstanding associate of the Chicago organized crime structure" in 1990, a year after he was convicted of conspiracy and attempted extortion for his role in shaking down a pornography shop owner.

At Daddino's sentencing, a prosecutor said his refusal to cooperate with the government showed Daddino had "chosen not to unalterably sever his ties with that organized crime group."

But Stephenson said Thursday that despite that characterization, Daddino was not an "associate" of organized crime. The term, in FBI parlance, refers only to people who participate in a mob-owned business such as a strip club; not to bookies or extortionists who merely share profits with organized crime, Stephenson said.

Stephens and other Rosemont officials wrote to a federal judge on Daddino's behalf in 1989.