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Top state casino enforcer resigns
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Acosta returning to prosecutor job

By Douglas Holt
Tribune staff reporter

August 21, 2001

The man who helped steer the Illinois Gaming Board through a number of
critical decisions, including denying a license to the owners of the stalled
Rosemont casino, announced his resignation Monday to return to a job as a
federal prosecutor.

Sergio Acosta said he wasn't pressured to leave a job where he often clashed
with gambling interests.

"This is strictly a personal decision on what's best for my family in terms
of career," Acosta said. "That's really it."

Before Acosta took over the job as Gaming Board administrator in July 1999,
the panel was often considered a cheerleader for the industry.

But during his two years, Acosta, 41, helped alter the board's posture,
forcing casino boss Jack Binion to give up his gambling interests in Illinois
and recommending that a license for a casino in Rosemont be blocked.

Acosta's last day will be Sept. 14, the day of the Gaming Board's next
meeting. He will return to the criminal division of the U.S. attorney's
office, where he worked for nine years before Gov. George Ryan recommended
him to the regulatory post in what the governor described as an effort to
empower the board to enact strong rules to control casino gambling.

Board Chairman Gregory Jones said he tried to dissuade Acosta from leaving
the Gaming Board's top job, in which he oversees more than 100 employees
charged with conducting background checks on prospective casino operators and
enforcing restrictions on riverboat gambling.

"I think it's quite a loss to the board," Jones said. "I think he's done a
terrific job."

One of Acosta's first challenges came in late 1999 when then-Chairman Robert
Vickrey called for a vote on whether to allow Binion to buy the Joliet
Empress without asking Acosta for a recommendation from staff members who had
spent hundreds of hours investigating Binion.

But Vickrey resigned soon after it was disclosed that an internal Gaming
Board report accused Binion of a "trail of poor business practices,
regulatory violations and financial malpractice."

Under Acosta, the board in June 2000 found Binion ethically unfit to operate
an Illinois casino. Binion was allowed to sell the riverboat this year.

After shepherding a 16-month investigation of proposed owners of the Emerald
Casino in Rosemont, Acosta in January recommended that the board deny the
group permission to open and to revoke its casino license.

Acosta said organized crime interests were associated with the project. He
also said casino owner Donald Flynn, a former Waste Management executive, and
his son, Kevin, Emerald Casino's chief executive officer, repeatedly made
false and misleading statements to the board.

Emerald Casino has sued the Gaming Board and is fighting the decision in a
hearing before an administrative law judge.

With the Emerald investigation complete, observers said any new administrator
would be hard-pressed to reverse the findings of the staff that worked under
Acosta.

"Those facts are really developed by the administrator and his staff," said
Susan Gouinlock, executive director of the Illinois Casino Gaming
Association, a trade group. "I don't know that there will be much difference
with a new administrator."


Copyright (c) 2001, Chicago Tribune