Scavo convicted; where's it gonna lead?

Vito Scavo, the former Melrose Park chief of police, was convicted of 22 of 22 counts of corruption today. Also convicted were Gary Montino, Scavo's deputy chief, and Michael Wynn. Scavo faces up to 20 years in prison. See Proviso Herald (Jolie Lee), Chicago Tribune (Mike Robinson, AP), ABC7 (Chuck Goudie) or CBS2 (STNG).

What can I add?

Some people involved in Proviso politics like Jesse Martinez and Mike Manzo (both of whom have run against Ron Serpico for village president of Melrose Park) see Ron Serpico as being the central figure in bad (if not corrupt) government in in Proviso Township.

In the indictment against Scavo some of the malfeasance goes back to 1996. August Taddeo was village president until at least 1998.

So, it seems possible that Scavo was "the big fish" and Serpico was Scavo's guy. The Melrose Park police force provided the base of power in the Village of Melrose Park. Scavo picked Serpico to be his candidate for village president because he knew Serpico wouldn't interfere with the criminal schemes Scavo was running in the police department.

Serpico didn't have an intention of reforming things, but the corruption was there before he arrived.

What are the pieces of the puzzle?

Scavo was convicted and will now be looking to cut a deal. With whom did Scavo have interactions with?

Serpico
District 209 (Scavo's security company was paid to guard the PMSA building)
Who else?

Anthony Bruno has been charged with tax evasion. With whom did Bruno have interactions?

Ric Cervone, a former board member at District 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park elementary schools), was charged in the same indictment that convicted Scavo. With whom did Cervone interact?

Who else is in the mix?

CBS rehashes Melrose Park little league story

CBS2 (Dave Savini) has a new story on Melrose Park's missing little league money. It doesn't seem like there are many new facts.

The Cook County State's Attorney had the Little League case for years, but just two weeks ago passed it on to the Feds as part of a bigger investigation into other Melrose Park corruption. They wouldn't say why they waited so long. The office dropped the 1993 felony forgery case against Zito.

Earlier in the story:

The [Illinois AG's] office is also investigating past little league board president and brother of the mayor Terry Serpico. Zito has pointed the finger at him the past, he maintains his innocence and says he passed a polygraph.

Details of indictment of Melrose Park PD personnel

On Thursday, July 19, 2007, at the request of the U.S. Attorney, Northern Illinois District, a grand jury empaneled in December, 2005 returned indictments against seven Village of Melrose Park employees connected to the police department. The indicted include former chief of police Vito Scavo, two deputy police chiefs Gary Montino and James Caputo and one District 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park elementary schools) board member, Lt. G. Ric Cervone. The other personnel indicted were Michael “Mickey” Caliendo, Michael Wynn and German Cepeda.

The indictments were for extortion, ghost-payrolling, mail fraud, obstruction of justice and tax evasion.

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Scavo owned one private security company (DOD Security Consultants, Inc., “a for-profit unlicensed private security contractor agency”) and recruited clients for IFPC Worldwide, Inc. (Who are the officers and agent of IFPC?) Caputo and Caliendo, a civilian supervisor of part-time officers, also operated a security company called “Police Department Security” out of the Melrose Park Police Department.

The indictment alleges that these security companies used village police officers paid by taxpayers to provide security while the clients paid the private companies. In some cases the contracts were made under threat or misrepresentation. The security companies charged above the market rate for their services. Clients felt they could not decline the services without experiencing retaliation from the chief of police of the police department.

Taxpayers were also cheated out of legitimate police services because private security work took priority over village policing duties.

Montino is alleged to have billed Cinemark for hours he didn't actually work and ordered private security personnel to wear shirts and jackets identifying them as police in violation of Illinois law.

Also, Scavo tricked Navistar into letting him use their parking lot. Navistar thought it was providing a public service to the village. Scavo was charging people to park the cars and keeping the money.

The first grand jury investigation began in Spring, 2005.

Capitol Fax Blog posted the indictment.

I'll have more on the indictment later.

CBS2-Chicago had a useful summary.

Charges in the indictment returned Thursday include:

-- Scavo, 59: 10 counts of mail or wire fraud, nine counts of filing false individual or corporate federal income tax returns, and one count each of racketeering conspiracy, extortion and obstruction of justice;
-- Montino, 51: one count of racketeering conspiracy and four counts of mail fraud;
-- Caliendo, 64: one count of racketeering conspiracy and seven counts of mail or wire fraud;
-- James Caputo, 63, former deputy police chief who resigned in 2004: four counts of mail or wire fraud;
-- Cervone, 56: two counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice;
-- Michael Wynn, 53, a part-time police officer: three counts of mail fraud; and
-- Cepeda, 40: one count of extortion.

Chicago Tribune (Sara Olkon and Joseph Sjostrom) also covered the story.

POL, Stroger campaign committee fined over $250K

CBS-2 (Sun-Times News Group):

State officials want to slap more than $250,000 in fines on Cook County Board President Todd Stroger’s campaign committee for failing to properly report contributions.

Election officials say it is one of the biggest penalties they have leveled, and it comes after months of complaints about problems with other Stroger-related campaign accounts.

The Stroger campaign failed to report 78 contributions before the election. That seems like no big deal, if they were small contributors. But it appears the contributions total over $250,000.

That's almost $3,300 per contribution. How many of those contributions you figure came from high ranking county employees and companies doing business with the county?

BTW, it seems like some of the local committees are not in compliance with election law about disclosure. More on this later.

CRIME, FBI joins search for Anthony Zizzo [MP]

CBS2 (Sun-Times News Group):

This FBI is joining forces with local authorities to locate a 71-year-old Westmont man, suspected of being associated with the Chicago LCN crime family, officials announced Monday.

The article uses the abbreviation "LCN" for "La Cosa Nostra". Proviso Probe covered the disappearance.

MEDIA, 17-year old girl called a "Ho" in the media [B, H]

Daily Herald:

Berkeley--A 17-year-old girl has been charged with running a prostitution service out of her suburban Chicago home using the popular Web site Craigslist.

[Redacted] arrest followed a routine search of the site's classified message boards, said Hillside Police Detective Carlo Viscioni.

Don't the media and police departments usually protect the identity of perpetrators under 18 years old?

This girl has not only her name all over the Internet, but her picture is on at least one Chicago media outlet website.

Seriously, why did the police release her name? And why did the media outlets run with it?

[UPDATE: The young woman was charged as an adult, so Illinois law provides for releasing her name. Brian Montopoli of CBS shared my skepticism that it was a good idea.]

GOV, Claypool and Peraica propose cutting management to preserve services

CBS2 (Derrick Blakley):

Opponents of Cook County Board President Todd Stroger are using a new strategy in the fight over the budget....

Tony Peraica and Forest Claypool [sic] hailed as conquering heroes by unionized nurses after they and 10 other County Commissioners proposed a budget that saves hundreds of union jobs.

CBS2 has video.