Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg has pledged the city will cooperate fully with investigators in connection with extortion at a local strip club. (Facebook)
Six people -- including police officers, a trusted consultant and relatives of the embattled mayor of a Chicago suburb -- were charged Wednesday amid a federal probe into the alleged shakedown of a strip-club owner and other various forms of corruption.
Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg wasn’t charged but a criminal complaint implicates him in the alleged yearslong extortion of the strip joint. His brothers Rommell Kellogg and Derrick Muhammad, and his cousin, Corey Johnson, face several corruption charges. Rommell Kellogg and Johnson are accused of extorting regular cash payoffs from a Harvey strip club owner to protect the club’s prostitution business.
Donald Luster, the former mayor of Dixmoor, is accused of soliciting bribes from the owner of a towing company in a nearby suburb. Luster served as a consultant to Harvey. In a third criminal complaint, two Harvey police officers and Muhammad, 70, were charged with falsifying police reports.
Federal agents on Wednesday seized evidence during raids on Harvey’s municipal building and its police department.
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“This morning the Federal Investigators entered the Harvey Police Department,” Kellogg said in a statement, according to FOX 32 in Chicago. “I have informed the Chief of Police to cooperate fully with the investigators.”
“I have informed the Chief of Police to cooperate fully with the investigators.”
According to the complaint, the manager of the unnamed strip club told authorities in 2017 that the club’s then-operator told him that Mayor Kellogg demanded $3,000 a month to allow prostitution to continue at the venue, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The manager also agreed to hire Johnson to work security at the club, according to reports.
Around 2007 or 2008, Kellogg doubled the payoffs – which were referred to as “rent” or “pizza” - to $6,000, the manager told authorities. When the owner refused to pay, the club was shut down three separate times, he said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“Tell your boss to just pay the man,” a Harvey cop said during the third visit, or words to that effect, according to the complaint. The operator eventually caved and paid the $6,000 each month. The strip club owner wore a wire while making payoffs between October 2017 and May 2018, prosecutors said.
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Kellogg – who is nearing the end of a 16-year run as mayor – has been embroiled in controversy involving strip clubs before. In 2003, he swore in a deposition that he had not received contributions from a strip club dubbed Club O. A Sun-Times investigation found the club donated $2,400 to his campaign. In 2004, Kellogg paid a $600,000 legal settlement to developers who accused the mayor of blocking plans to build a competing strip club.
The city of Harvey has battled financial troubles in recent years. In April, it laid off half of its fire department and a number of police officers as it struggled with its pension debt.
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