Federal prosecutors indicted 22 people on April 29, 2026, in a wide-ranging gambling and extortion ring operating out of Gino’s Steakhouse in Merrillville and Paragon in Hobart.
Here’s what to know about Operation Porterhouse Parlay, including the key players.
What happened?
The 87-page indictment unsealed showed federal prosecutors charged 22 people in the illegal multi-state gambling and extortion ring based out of two northwest Indiana restaurants: Gino’s Steakhouse in Merrillville and Paragon in Hobart. They made arrests in Chicago, Boston, New York, Sarasota, Florida, California, Mesa, Arizona and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“We are coming after you,” U.S. Attorney Adam Mildred said of potential co-defendants. Particularly, they are focused on those who “took bets,” “collected debts,” worked as “support” or “protection” — i.e. threatening those who didn’t repay what they owed.
The Gerodemos Gambling Organization used websites, phone numbers and text messaging to have people place sports bets, which were placed in the Northern District of Indiana and throughout the country, according to the indictment.
The organization would set up bettors with an account number and password. The bettors were given a line of credit and didn’t have to put up their own money to place bets, according to the indictment.
The indictment detailed the lengths the gambling organization went to threaten multiple victims and their relatives with violence if their accrued gambling debts weren’t paid up.
In one incident, Ehab “Eddie” Mustafa, an ex-Gino’s cook, traveled to Texas in June 2025 and left a Papa John’s pizza box with roses and a note threatening a man called Victim 1’s college-age daughter.
“Do the right thing, or I’m heading to Valparaiso University…n’ get ahold of the Greek,” it read.
Who is involved?
The 87-page indictment detailing the alleged gambling and extortion activity between January 2021 and April 2026 names James “Jimmy the Greek” Gerodemos, of Schererville, and Dean “Dean Gem” Gialamas, of Naperville, as leaders of Gerodemos Gambling Organization.
The indictment includes other members of the Gerodemos family, who are longtime owners of both establishments, as well as former employees. The other people listed are:
- Chris Gerodemos of Crown Point
- Basam “Donny Brasco” Ibrahim of Portage
- Sanad “Sanad Taka” Ibrahim of St. John
- Peter “Pete Goodys” Pavlopoulos of Crown Point
- Filippo “Gigi” Rovito of Burr Ridge
- Michael “Michael Way Out” Campbell
- Ehab “Eddie” Mustafa of Merrillville
- Steve Armenta of Portage
- Samuel Nuzzo of Crown Point
- Alexander “Alex Gyros” Gagianas of Mesa, Ariz.
- Gus “Deans Runner” Kaporis
- Rami “Rami Straight Flush” Mansour of Merrillville
- Nenad “Butch Hunkee” Radoja of St. John
- Marcus “Vladimir Ganz” Ganz
- Paul “Paulie Scarf” Franze
- Athena Gerodemos of Schererville
- Elias Gerodemos of Crown Point
- James “Jim Macedonian” Strezovski of Merrillville
- Andrew “Caesars Andrew” Nguyen
- Giuseppe “Joe Polozzo”’ Manzi
The Gerodemos family is no stranger to running afoul of the law.
Police raided a since-closed Paragon restaurant in Schererville in 2013 for hiring and housing illegal workers. They did not own the restaurant at the time.
Newspaper archives also show James Gerodemos got six months in federal prison in 2014 after he pleaded guilty in an illegal fireworks case.
According to archives, he was found with enough fireworks, some of which were illegal to sell even with a license at the time, to equal 4,000 pounds of TNT, which is about the amount that was used in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, that killed 168 people and injured 850. That amount of fireworks is supposed to be stored about 75 yards away from any inhabited building, but Gerodemos stored the fireworks in a metal container just outside his store.
- Feds detail tangled web of ties in ‘Greek’ gambling ring
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What’s next?
A federal magistrate judge declined to release James “Jimmy the Greek” Gerodemos on May 4 during a detention hearing at the U.S. District Courthouse in Hammond.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson wrote how Gerodemos had paid former Lake County Sheriff John Buncich $10,000 per month to overlook illegal video poker machines at the Paragon restaurant in Hobart in the 1990s. Buncich was later convicted of public corruption charges and sentenced to 12.5 years in prison.
Benson also alluded to ways defendants with dual citizenship could go to Greece through a third country to avoid extradition. Federal prosecutors obtained a picture Gerodemos took earlier this spring with Frank Kollintzas in Greece. Kollintzas fled to Greece days before his sentencing in 2005 to avoid serving time in federal prison in the Sidewalk Six scandal.
Some of the 22 people indicted were released on bond.
