New home for Betty Loren-Maltese at halfway house

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.