A federal judge ruled that six former officers of the failed Emerald Casino bid in Rosemont owe creditors $272 million for losing the company's gaming license.

The casino was under construction at the time of the investigation, but was soon halted and eventually demolished. Much of Rosemont's expansive entertainment district now rests on the former.

The six men each owe $45.3 million for failing to comply with the Illinois Gaming Board's rules and regulations, which resulted in the state agency yanking the company's gaming license in 2005 in an unprecedented move, wrote U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer in an opinion released Tuesday.

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Pallmeyer's opinion found former Emerald officers Walter P. Hanley, John P. McMahon, Joseph McQuaid and Kevin D. Larson liable for the loss of the gaming license, which inevitably led to the bankruptcy of the company. The judge also ruled against the estates of father and son Donald F. Flynn and Kevin F. Flynn, who died in 2011 and 2013 respectively.

Frances Gecker, Emerald's bankruptcy trustee, sued the six men as well as a seventh former officer -- who Pallmeyer determined was not responsible for the loss of the gaming license -- to recoup losses by nearly 100 different creditors, said Gecker's attorney Catherine Steege of Jenner & Block. Steege said the estate of former Chicago Bears Hall of Famer Walter Payton was one of the creditors owed money by Emerald.

'I'm very pleased with the ruling and everybody worked very hard to get there and we'll see where it goes from here,' Gecker said.

Gecker had initially sought more than $500 million from the defendants, which was the value of one of the bids for the state's 10th gaming license. But Pallmeyer based the financial verdict on the purchase price of the gaming license that eventually went to the operators of Rivers Casino, which is located just down the road from Rosemont in Des Plaines.

The Emerald Casino saga had auspicious beginnings and always lingered under a pall of controversy that finally came to a head in 2001 when state regulators began looking into allegations of mob ties with potential investors.

The state finally revoked the corporation's gaming license after determining that the board had lied to regulators and withheld information from the state that casino operators are required to disclose.

The casino was under construction at the time of the investigation, but was soon halted and eventually demolished. Much of Rosemont's expansive entertainment district now rests on the former casino site.

Attorneys for the defendants refused comment regarding Pallmeyer's verdict.

Steege said the parties are due back in court later this month. She said Pallmeyer's opinion didn't address at least three other claims in the suit and her opinion needs to be officially entered as a judgment before moving forward.

In a stinging blow to what once seemed an unstoppable deal, the Illinois Gaming Board on Tuesday rejected a planned Rosemont casino, concluding that top officials of the would-be riverboat had misled the board and that some investors had links to mob figures.

'The investigative record establishes the insidious presence of organized crime elements associated with this proposed project that cannot be ignored,' Gaming Board Administrator Sergio Acosta said in a statement to the board.

The board's 4-1 vote against the boat project delivered a severe setback to Rosemont Mayor Donald Stephens and the financial backers of the casino, known as the Emerald, who were once so confident of approval that they sank more than $10 million into the casino's construction.

Stephens and a consortium of powerful gambling interests had mounted a major lobbying effort that resulted in authorization of the casino as the centerpiece of a 1999 gambling law. The law also tied the Rosemont casino's profits to horse racing subsidies.

The decision highlighted the newfound rigor of a board that not long ago was considered little more than a rubber stamp for the gambling industry. Indeed, within an hour of rejecting the Emerald project, the board announced it had persuaded Jack Binion, the controversial owner of the Empress casino in Joliet, to sell his boat and get out of gambling in Illinois.

That agreement effectively ends Binion's appeal of a board decision last summer that declared him ethically unfit to run a casino in the state.

The Rosemont decision was a serious blow to the principals of Emerald Casino Inc., run by former Waste Management Inc. executive Donald Flynn, who thought they had the casino's approval locked up after passage of the gambling law, which allowed for a new casino in Cook County.

Before the vote, Acosta said that Flynn and his son, Kevin, Emerald's chief executive office, 'have repeatedly made false and misleading statements' to the board.

The decision outraged Kevin Flynn, who complained that he and his father hadn't had a fair opportunity to rebut the allegations. He described his father as 'stunned' by the decision and vowed an appeal of the board's ruling to an administrative law judge and, if necessary, into the courts.

'It's absurd,' Kevin Flynn said. 'We still don't know what these so-called misleading statements are. I may win the appeal, but I don't know how I get my reputation back.'

In making his recommendation against Emerald, Acosta gave scant details of the reasons for the denial, though they may be more fully spelled out in a formal letter to be sent to Emerald officials in a few weeks. A staff report detailing the investigation into the Emerald is confidential.

But Acosta said staff investigators found evidence that two of Emerald's proposed investors 'have close associations with Chicago organized crime figures.'

Acosta also noted that 'known members of organized crime control at least one firm that has done work at the Rosemont site.'

The Gaming Board has questioned Emerald officials about construction site contracts with D&P Construction, which is controlled by a relative of reputed top mob figure John 'No Nose' DiFronzo.

In addition, Acosta said he has 'serious concerns' that board approval would make it difficult for casino regulators to monitor effectively 'future efforts by organized crime to compromise the integrity of the proposed casino.'

According to a high-level Gaming Board official, who declined to be identified, one of the investors in question was Nicholas Boscarino, who once owned a fork-lift leasing company with both Stephens and William Daddano Jr. Daddano is listed by the Chicago Crime Commission and other law-enforcement groups as a member of the Chicago crime syndicate.

The official also said that some of the allegedly misleading statements by the Flynns were related to a lawsuit brought against the Emerald by California billionaire Marvin Davis, who alleged that he had been promised a stake in the casino in exchange for lobbying help. After providing that help, Davis claimed, the Flynn's reneged on the deal.

For almost two years, the fate of the Emerald and its many politically influential investors has been closely watched statewide. After extensive lobbying by gambling interests and Rosemont, lawmakers in spring 1999 passed legislation that appeared to guarantee Emerald the right to move it

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