Illinois gamblers and Illini fans are finding a tangled web if they try to bet on their beloved orange and blue home team in the Final Four on Saturday because…
Although sports betting has been legal since 2020, it is illegal to bet on the Illini or any other NCAA team in Illinois.Will the Chicago Mob reap the benefits of a law that prohibits sports betting on in-state college teams? NBC 5 Investigates’ Chuck Goudie reports.
Illinois gamblers and Illini fans are finding a tangled web if they try to bet on their beloved orange and blue home team in the Final Four on Saturday because a state law prohibits that. Some may turn to another option: bookies who report to the Chicago Outfit. It's not recommended and not legal - but with the Illini in the Final Four, the mob may be secondary winners.The crime syndicate is poised to take advantage of a situation like that and try to boost their revenue, according to Chicago legal and law enforcement experts. “If you can't place a bet online and in other traditional methods now that we see in betting on applications and on platforms and other things that whoever is out there still in this business absolutely are going to take advantage of this,” said Chicago criminal defense attorney and longtime Outfit observer Joe “The Shark” Lopez. “It's the only way to place your bet unless you go outside the state and you go somewhere else.” Lopez, a legendary Chicago attorney has a handle on the Outfit -or what he says remains of it in 2026 - after representing numerous mob figures during the decades. But not as many Outfit clients as the old days - when this man was the Chicago mob's top oddsmaker: Don Angelini, known as"the Wizard of Odds," was the Outfit's go-to bookmaker for decades until his death at age 74 in 2000. Now - the octogenarian boss of the Outfit - Salvatore Solly D DeLaurantis - is a lifelong gambler who, in a 1993 jailhouse interview, told Chuck Goudie that the mob was nothing more than a collection of gamblers.“Their sports bookies may be giving much better odds to the gamblers than some of the legal bookies. They did that for years,” said Binder, author of a new book called “The Chicago Outfit During the 1960’s." “They used run on the edges of the state racetracks. The Outfit would have their own guys inside the major racetracks walking around, and you could bet with them and get better odds than the state of Illinois would give you at the window,” Binder recalled. There also is customer allegiance to illicit sports bookmakers, said Binder. “I think that have developed, shall we say, customer relationships with their old bookies, and if they like the guy, they'll just keep betting with him.”“They threatened people, the people who fall behind on their juice loans get threatened,” he said. “I suspect a lot of them believe that the Outfit is still capable of some sort of a violence or some sort retaliation against them in one way, shape or form, even though the Outfit isn't putting bodies in trunks of cars like back in the bad old days.” Attorney Lopez said bookmaking is part of the Mob’s repertoire of rackets. “I'm sure there's still floating card games, because there always have been, there always will be, and there's always people that know somebody that it's gonna take a bet from, that's just how it is. Gamblers know other gamblers, and they know where to go to make a bet,” he said. Both Lopez and Binder agree that you can't just cold-call a bookie and try to place a bet on the Illini or anything else.But in betting circles that is typically not difficult to find. And Lopez notes that in today's criminal justice environment, federal agencies are focused more on crimes other than illicit gambling - and so the corner bookie may not be as suspicious.
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