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A man charged with running an illegal gambling operation will be permitted to attend his daughter's wedding on one condition: He is not permitted to speak to the groom's father.
U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman imposed his own code of silence after a federal prosecutor said the groom, Frank Caruso Jr., was convicted in the beating of a 13-year-old boy and his father, Frank Caruso, had ties to the Chicago mob.
"You are not to have any conversations with Mr. Caruso," Guzman told defendant Casey Szaflarski, who is on house arrest while awaiting trial. "If you do, I'm going to put you in jail immediately."
A copy of the guest list was also order to be given to the federal prosecutors.
Szaflarski, 52, has pleaded not guilty to gambling and tax offenses. He is one of eight men indicted in a federal investigation of organized crime in Chicago's western suburbs.
According to the Pantagraph of Bloomington, Illinois, The investigation began after a powerful pipe bomb wrecked the offices of a video gaming distribution company in suburban Berwyn in February 2003.
Prosecutors said it was the mob's way of announcing that it wanted no competitors horning in on its monopoly on video gaming equipment in the area, that paper reported.
Szaflarski operated a different video gaming company. Millions of dollars were reportedly earned by the mob each year from illegal gambling involving such equipment.
