A businessman whose lobbying efforts to legalize sweepstakes machines are part of the federal criminal case against state Rep. Luis Arroyo also runs a political action committee with close ties to Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.

James T. Weiss — a son-in-law of Joseph Berrios, the former Cook County Democratic Party chairman and county assessor — owns and operates sweepstakes machines. Weiss also runs the Alliance of Illinois Taxpayers, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, largely from personal injury law firms allied with Madigan. Other donors include individuals with ties to Madigan’s political organization.

Weiss is chairman and treasurer of the PAC. His mother Mary Murray is president. The secretary is John Hynes, a Chicago firefighter who is part of Madigan’s political organization and a friend of the speaker’s son Andrew Madigan.

Murray and Hynes are on the PAC’s board of directors with Jennifer Scaccia, the office manager of the Del Galdo Law Group that’s headed by attorney Michael Del Galdo, who serves as the municipal attorney for the town of Cicero and several other suburbs. Del Galdo’s law firm has given money to the Weiss PAC.

The PAC has raised $630,000 since it was created seven years ago and has given money to help elect candidates including Cicero Town President Larry Dominick. The PAC also spent nearly $20,000 on fliers in 2016 to defeat state Rep. Kenneth Dunkin after the Chicago Democrat broke ranks with Madigan and sided with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on key votes.

Weiss, a Bridgeport native whose grandfather Edward Murray was a deputy treasurer under former Chicago Treasurer Miriam Santos, has had several contracts with the Chicago Public Schools allowing him to park cars on school playgrounds around Wrigley Field and other sporting venues.

A year ago, Weiss created another company, Collage LLC, which has spent more than $80,000 lobbying state legislators to legalize sweepstakes machines, which look like now-legalized video poker machines. The sweepstake companies operate in a gray area in which they are neither illegal or legal, but they are outlawed by the city of Chicago.

Weiss lobbied Ald. Gilbert Villegas (38th), whose proposal last year to legalize sweepstakes machines in Chicago failed.

Arroyo, a Chicago Democrat who also was lobbying city officials to legalize sweepstakes machines on behalf of V.S.S., a company owned by John Adreani, who was fired from the Chicago Police Department over his connections to a convicted drug dealer.

Arroyo was arrested last Monday, charged with attempting to bribe an unnamed state senator to introduce legislation to legalize sweepstakes machines. Arroyo allegedly told the senator — who was secretly recording their conversations for federal investigators — he’d be paid $2,500 a month by Arroyo’s client. The Sun-Times has identified the senator as Terry Link, a Democrat from Vernon Hills, though Link says he was not the senator.

Madigan threatened to oust Arroyo, who resigned his Illinois House seat on Friday.

Weiss operates valet parking companies with restaurateur Iman Bambooyani, and they have more than $2 million in contracts through next year to use specific public school parking lots. A Sun-Times investigation last year found they had used a convicted sex offender to park cars on a playground just east of Wrigley Field.

Weiss comes from a politically connected family. His mother Mary Murray once worked for a commissioner at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, and her father Edward Murray worked in the city treasurer’s office until Santos fired him. He ran an unsuccessful campaign to oust Santos, then became a cash manager for the Chicago Public Schools. Edward Murray also had ownership stakes in two restaurants at Navy Pier.

About four years ago, Weiss married former state Rep. Toni Berrios, whose father was the Cook County assessor who ruled on property tax appeals filed by law firms including the speaker’s firm, Madigan & Getzedanner. Joseph Berrios lost his re-election bid last year.

The former assessor is a lobbyist in Springfield, representing the Illinois Gaming Machine Operators, which opposes efforts to legalize sweepstakes machines.

Weiss and his mother also run two Bridgeport charities, aided by powerful political allies including Cook County Commissioner John Daley and his nephew Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), Andrew Madigan and former state Rep. Dan Burke, D-Chicago, brother of Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th). One of the charities, Benton House, is a former settlement house that operates an emergency food pantry. The other is a scholarship fund.