Billie Dent was waitressing at Sweet Basil Café last month when she and about 20 coworkers learned they were out of work the hard way – Sangamon County sheriff's deputies arrived and evicted the restaurant from the building.
"We had one table of customers in there at the time; we asked if they could finish their meal and the deputy was like, 'Yeah.' And then they proceeded to have the locksmiths change the locks," she said.
Dent, a mother of nine, said it was a struggle to get her final paycheck.
She said she phoned her former employer and said, "I just want what you owe me for work." According to Dent, he said, "Aren't you on public aid?" and hung up.
She was not alone in wanting to be paid.
Sangamon County court records show that the landlord was awarded a judgment for $116,230: $114,703 in rent plus $327 in court costs and $1,200 in attorney's fees.
The company's website still lists the Springfield location at 4241 Conestoga Drive, along with other restaurants in Champaign, Peoria, Rockford, Skokie and Hanover Park.
Sweet Basil Cafe's legal problems appear to extend beyond Springfield. On Jan. 11, a Chicago law firm, Justicia Laboral LCC, filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging that the parent company for Sweet Basil Cafe violated the Illinois Minimum Wage Law and Fair Labor Standards Act. That case is pending.
Dent said money has been a continual issue for the restaurant, which opened in Springfield in 2020.
"People were getting paid, (but) they were never getting paid on time," she said. "I was there for three-and-a-half years. When I first started, our paydays were Sunday. We would never get paid until Monday. No big deal, because you can't cash a check on Sunday anyway. Well, then Mondays would come, and we wouldn't get paid, or they would write us a check off of a different account, and we would bounce them. At one time, nobody would cash their checks in Springfield – no banks, currency exchange, Walmart – because their checks bounce."
The Illinois Secretary of State website lists Jim and Denise Karonis of Riverwoods, Illinois, as managers for The Sweet Basil Group, which has its principal address in Peoria. The business entity's status is listed as "involuntarily dissolution" as of Aug. 9.
Jim Karonis told Illinois Times he recently changed his first name to Dimitri, which he said is the Greek form of James. He was initially known as James Karonis prior to other legal problems, after which he started listing himself as Jim on official documents.
He insisted that the Springfield café was doing well.
"(Paychecks) were late because we live several hours away. ... But there were no financial difficulties. And when we left, we paid everybody and we walked away," he said.
But Dent remembers things differently.
"Every other month, CWLP was coming to turn off our lights because they weren't paying the bill," she said. "We would literally have to call them after they turned the lights off, like, 'Hey, Denise, the city just turned off the power.' And we would have to sit there for an hour, two hours or three hours, until they paid the bill and the city would come back out and turn the lights on."
Dent said Springfield employees eventually received their final paychecks.
As for the back rent, Karonis said he believes the judgment against him is in error. He said his lawyer was tied up in federal court in Chicago at the same time as the Springfield hearing so the judge did not have an opportunity to hear his side of the story.
He contends that the original landlord granted him the building rent-free for one year but when someone new purchased the building, the owner demanded to be paid rent for the period under the previous owner.
This is not the first time Karonis has been in the news. A 2001 Chicago Tribune article said he was sentenced to six years in state prison for forgery, insurance fraud, aggravated insurance fraud, arson and organizing a conspiracy to commit aggravated insurance fraud.
According to the Tribune, one common scam Karonis used was claiming that a fire extinguisher accidentally discharged, causing a financial loss in terms of spoiled food and lost business. Prosecutors argued that those incidents were staged.
At several of his businesses and homes, he used forged sales slips to make phony claims that lightning had struck the building and ruined electronic equipment, the article stated.
While speaking with IT, Karonis blamed his criminal convictions on a "bad divorce" and a "bitter woman."
"In my opinion, (there are those) that deserve to be in prison, and there are many people that ... don't deserve to be in there. And when you go through a bad, bad divorce, people do crazy things and say things and do things."
