Cicero Town President Convicted of Racketeering Loses Supreme Court Appeal; Jan. 23 Resentencing Set

Former Cicero, Ill. Town President Betty Loren-Maltese, who is already scheduled to be resentenced later this month, was denied an appeal earlier this week on her conviction of racketeering by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Loren-Maltese and her co-defendents were convicted of stealing from Cicero taxpayers in the amount of $10 million dollars from 1992 through 1996 by creating a bogus insurance company. She is already serving an eight-year prison term. The high court refused to even consider Loren-Maltese’s appeal of her 2002 conviction.

Loren-Maltese is scheduled to be resentenced Jan. 23 because a federal appeals court ruled in September that a federal judge made an error during the sentencing phase, according to an account in the Associated Press.

Investigations have gone on for years in this small, blue-collar suburb just outside the Chicago city limits that has been known as a haven for corruption since the 1920s, when Al Capone made it the hub of his bootlegging empire.

Others convicted were alleged Cicero mob boss Michael Spano Sr. and Emil Schullo, one-time head of the Cicero police department.
A appeals court ruling last fall said that Loren-Maltese and five others convicted in 2002 of corruption should be resentenced.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that U.S. District Judge John F. Grady, who presided over the three-month trial, made an error in imposing the sentences. The opinion said that after Judge Grady miscalculated the amount of the loss at $10.6 million and then rounded the number down to below $10 million. Under federal sentencing guidelines, the greater the loss, the harsher the sentence and Grady’s decision cut 10 months or more off the sentences.