CHICAGO — Betty Loren-Maltese was expected Monday to arrive at a Salvation Army halfway house on South Ashland Avenue.
She will be there to finish out the rest of her 120-day probation after spending almost seven years behind bars.
Loren-Maltese and five co-defendants – including purported mobsters – were convicted of racketeering in 2002 for using a bogus insurance company to bilk taxpayers out of more than $10 million from 1992 to 1996.
Prosecutors said they used the money to buy a horse farm and a golf course among other things. Loren-Maltese always maintained her innocence.
Among the others convicted with Maltese were alleged Cicero mob boss Michael Spano Sr. and Emil Schullo, one-time head of the Cicero police department.
At one time, Loren-Maltese had houses in Cicero and Las Vegas, but the government seized those properties.
Now, friends Loren-Maltese is broke, homeless and in need of a job.
As part of her probation, she has to give the Town of Cicero at least 20 percent of any paycheck she gets, until she pays back $8 million in debt.
Before the racketeering conviction of Loren-Maltese and five others, federal agents spent years investigating the small, blue-collar suburb just west of Chicago that was known as a haven for corruption since the 1920s, when Al Capone made it the hub of his bootlegging empire.
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services