In the early morning of Oct. 9, 2021, then-Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez saw a way to turn a murder scene into a business opportunity.

A young woman had been gunned down outside a hookah lounge, and Lopez showed up at the scene, law enforcement documents say. While his deputies investigated the killing, Lopez approached the restaurant’s landlord to suggest he shut down the business.

Soon after, Lopez texted the head of an illegal gambling empire — one investigators say he’d been secretly working with for the past two years. The man had been scouting, without success, for locations in Osceola where he could open a new casino, and now the sheriff thought the building that housed the Red Star Restaurant & Hookah Bar seemed perfect.

“Call me right away,” Lopez wrote. “We did a raid, a

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