Burr Ridge Restaurateur's Wife Can Go To London With Friends

BURR RIDGE, IL – Federal prosecutors wanted to bar a Burr Ridge restaurateur's wife from going to London with her friends.

But a judge ruled in her favor.

The case at hand involves 53-year-old Burr Ridge resident Filippo "Gigi" Rovito. He owns Burr Ridge's Capri Ristorante and the nearby Are We Live lounge.

He faces felony charges for his involvement in an alleged gambling ring. Outside of work, he is largely restricted to his house.

In late September, Rovito's lawyer, Todd Pugh, requested that his client's wife be able to get her passport to travel to London for six days in December.

For the past three years, Pugh said, Rovito's wife's trip with her girlfriends had been postponed because of circumstances beyond her control.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in northwest Indiana, where the case is based, opposed the request.

Prosecutors said they did not object to Rovito's three previous requests – attending a Sunday Mass, going to a wedding and expanding his hours to work at his restaurant and tending to personal errands.

As with other defendants, the court required Rovito's wife to surrender her passport as a condition of releasing her husband, prosecutors said.

"Rovito, a twice-convicted felon involving sex related offenses, has continued to nibble away at his bond conditions," Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Benson said in a brief. "Enough should be enough. Neither Rovito, nor his wife, should have any more of the previous bond conditions altered. To do so diminishes securing Rovito’s attendance for trial."

He added, "(P)erhaps during the pendency of these proceedings Mrs. Rovito should limit her vacations to the United States rather than foreign countries."

Magistrate Judge Andrew Rodovich sided with Rovito.

"It is highly unlikely that a brief trip to London by Mrs. Rovito would increase the risk of flight by her husband," the judge said.

Rovito was charged with operating an illegal gambling business and conspiracy to collect extensions of credit by extortionate means.

According to the indictment, another defendant, James Gerodemos, told other suspects that Rovito stated he would "knock" a gambling debtor's "lights out and shove his head into a machine."