A Chicago police officer was sentenced Thursday to 15 months in federal prison for his role as a top bookie in a multimillion-dollar sports gambling ring that allegedly included the now-pardoned brother of Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.

       In rejecting calls by Nicholas Stella’s attorney for a sentence of time served, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall said it was difficult to “estimate the damage to the public” that’s done when an officer thinks he is above the law.

       “It’s not just harmful to our sense of security within the city, but it’s harmful to all those good officers out there who are trying to do their jobs with integrity,” Kendall said during the hearing, which was held by video conference.

       The judge specifically noted that Stella was accused of throwing away his cellphone before federal agents could seize it and was also arrested for physically attacking his girlfriend at a Rosemont casino while free on bond earlier this year.

       Before he was sentenced, Stella issued a lengthy apology to the court and his victims, saying his lifelong gambling addiction — which he said began in grammar school when he’d wager on games of Scrabble — led him down a wrong path, much like a drug dealer who uses his own product.

       “I did use my own product, and I used it too much,” Stella said, at one point pausing to choke back tears. “Every dollar I took in, I gambled away.”

       Stella, a 19-year veteran of the police force, also said that he never used his police powers as part of the scheme. But the judge rejected that notion, saying those who knew Stella was a cop likely “had some sense” that it was safe to participate in the illegal operation.

       “The truth is, once we put that uniform ... we have to hold ourselves up to the highest level of integrity,” Kendall said.

       Stella is currently on “inactive” status with the department. His lawyer, Michael Clancy, said he will be fired and likely lose his pension because of the conviction.

       Stella, 43, was charged in February 2020 with working as one of the top agents for the illegal gambling organization run by Orland Park businessman Vincent “Uncle Mick” DelGiudice, recruiting and managing bettors who placed millions of dollars wagers with him and others.

       Also charged in the alleged scheme was Casey Urlacher, the mayor of north suburban Mettawa and brother to Brian Urlacher. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump just hours before leaving the White House in January.

       Stella, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in April, admitting in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he personally managed hundreds of gamblers who wagered millions of dollars between 2016 and 2019 through DelGiudice’s offshore website, unclemicksports.com

       Stella split any earnings with DelGiudice and kept him up to date on how his gamblers were doing. In one text in December 2018, Stella told DelGiudice, “Between my two big losers in Minnesota, they’ve dumped 73K,” according to his plea agreement.

       In asking for a sentence of up to 18 months, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ankur Srivastava said the gambling ring was “not just a group of buddies getting together and betting on the Bears game” at a bar on Sundays.

       Nor was it a victimless crime, according to prosecutors, who wrote in a recent court filing that Stella “preyed upon vulnerable individuals, many of whom were hopelessly addicted to gambling.”

       “The government has met with victims whose careers, marriages, family life, and lives were jeopardized and harmed by their affiliation with the gambling enterprise,” the filing stated.

       Clancy, meanwhile, said his client was on disability leave with the Police Department during the time he was a bookie and spent most of his time on a bar stool gambling away any earnings.

       “If (investigators) went to one of these bars he hung out at, they would’ve saw him sitting at a poker machine with a beer in his hand,” Clancy said. “He gambled in grammar school, he gambled in high school, he gambled before he was a police officer, he gambled while he was a police officer.”

       Still, Clancy said Stella, who is also a former Marine, “understands the disappointment” that people might feel over a cop getting caught committing crimes.

       “Seeing on the news that a police officer was involved in a gambling ring is not good for the Chicago Police Department, it’s not good for the city, it’s not good for anyone,” Clancy said.

       jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

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