August 8, 2021 – One of alleged Chicago Outfit underboss James (Jimmy I) Inendino’s top bookies is at death’s door. Last week, veteran Cicero crew bookmaker Greg Paloian was granted a medical delay for his report date to federal prison where he’s slated to serve two and a half years for an illegal gambling and money laundering conviction.
The 66-year old Paloian’s doctors don’t think he’ll make it that long. Paloian was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 brain cancer and reportedly has only months left to live. He pleaded guilty back in January stemming from an October 2020 bust of his Elmwood Park and Melrose Park sports betting racket and was sentenced to 30 months in prison in April.
Paloian’s rap sheet includes convictions for racketeering, bookmaking and loan sharking. Both local and federal authorities have linked him to Jimmy I’s Cicero regime for decades. Because of his Armenian heritage, Paloian can never be “made” into the Chicago mafia, a mainly Italian organization.
As part of 1998 racketeering case, Paloian admitted his friendship with Inendino and the fact that he would send his bookmaking customers in need of a street loan to “Jimmy I.” The feds suspect Inendino, also sometimes referred to as “Jimmy the Ice Pick” or “Jimmy from the Currency Exchange,” of taking part in multiple gangland murders as a member of the Outfit’s long-defunct “Wild Bunch” execution squad. The Wild Bunch acted as the Cicero crew’s enforcement wing during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Inendino, 78, has led the Circero crew since 2010. Per sources, he was recently promoted to the organization’s No. 2 slot. Jimmy I did eight years in federal prison for racketeering in the 2000s,
When the feds raided Paloian’s residence in 1996, agents discovered $200,000 in cash, a cache of jewelry and a box containing uncut diamonds and South African Krugerrand. A Paloian-owned trucking company was probed in the much-covered Hired Truck Scandal from the early 2000s, however, he was never indicted in the case.
This article was originally posted here