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.