At least eight public officials have been targeted in a sweeping federal probe of corruption in which an undercover “mole” recorded conversations about a wide range of alleged wrongdoing, from bribe-taking to illegal dumping, sources said Saturday.
Operation Silver Shovel emerged from under cover when FBI agents descended Friday afternoon on the offices and homes of Chicago aldermen and other local officials. The agents questioned prominent elected officials, executed search warrants and played a snippet of an undercover tape recording to one of the investigation’s targets–former Ald. Larry Bloom (5th), a politician universally considered squeaky clean.
Defense lawyers and federal sources characterized the four-year probe as a massive investigation that could rival past corruption scandals, including those that brought down aldermen, judges and other prominent politicians in the 1980s.
At least eight public officials are involved, but one source indicated that the number could go much higher. One defense lawyer said five people called his office Friday and Saturday seeking his services.
At the center of the case is John Christopher, a waste hauler with a criminal past and reputed ties to organized crime who agreed to wear a wire for federal investigators. Christopher spent four years making tape recordings for the U.S. attorney’s office, sources said.
Among those questioned Friday were Bloom and Ald. Jesse Evans (21st), the only two officials who confirmed that they were targets.
FBI agents also interviewed other public officials, including Water Reclamation District Commissioner Joseph Gardner, although it was not known whether he was a target of the investigation. Gardner could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Agents also visited the city’s Environment Department and other officials at the Water Reclamation District.
One source close to the investigation said the probe also focused on officials in the Illinois secretary of state’s office and two suburbs in west Cook County.
“This is the big (investigation), the one that comes along every few years,” one high-level law-enforcement source said.
Another federal source said Christopher had been “extremely active and extremely successful.”
That source likened it to the 1980s Operation Gambat investigation of corruption in the city’s 1st Ward, where mole Robert Cooley helped bring down two Cook County judges and two prominent politicians.
“It’s the next big thing; he’s going to be Cooley-like, maybe bigger than that,” the source said. “They’ve been hitting a lot of home runs.”
Some of the evidence developed in the new probe already has been presented to a federal grand jury, but no indictments or other charges have been filed.
Exactly what crimes are being investigated remained murky Saturday.
Defense lawyers and federal sources indicated that the investigation centered on city contracts for hauling construction debris–such as crushed concrete from roads–as well as leasing contracts. Federal sources indicated that another prong of the investigation centered on certifications for minority contractors.
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One defense lawyer said even a drug charge was involved.
“It’s as broad as an investigation as I have seen,” one defense lawyer said. “This guy Christopher moved in wide circles.”
Michael Falconer, a lawyer for Bloom, said the former alderman met Friday with FBI agents and intends to cooperate fully. Falconer said Bloom acted as a broker for Christopher and took a “modest fee as a broker” of about $2,000 for trying to locate a temporary dump site in the South Side’s 5th Ward.
At one point Friday, federal agents played a tape for Bloom made by Christopher of a conversation between the two.
“(Christopher) comes in and tries to make it sound like he’s making a payoff,” said Falconer, who also heard the tape. “It reflected making a payment to Larry, but there’s no corruption in the payment.”
FBI agents also questioned Evans on Friday afternoon. Evans said the agents repeatedly asked him whether he had accepted bribes from a dumping company, and he told them that he had not.
In fact, he said, he has moved to shut down the waste dumping in his ward.
Hugh McMillan, general superintendent for the Water Reclamation District, said the agents arrived there shortly after 4 p.m. Friday. They told officials, including district President Thomas Fuller, that search warrants were on the way for all documents involving two construction contracts awarded to a company that used subcontractors linked to Christopher, McMillan said.
Among the papers taken by agents were documents about minority subcontractors and real-estate transactions involved in construction work, McMillan said.
Agents also interviewed Gardner and district employee Peter Costa, who was acting purchasing agent when the contracts were awarded.
“The only thing they asked me about was what procedures were followed for purchasing, how we solicit bids,” Costa said.
Christopher became known to some in City Hall in 1990. That’s when neighbors of an illegal dump he operated began calling with complaints about dirt and dust. The neighbors also called on the U.S. attorney’s office to investigate Christopher and how a six-story pile of rocks, debris and dirt had grown at South Kildare Avenue and West Roosevelt Road.
At about the same time, Christopher agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and talk about his years of illegal dumping in the Chicago area and Indiana, sources said.
Federal prosecutors originally had targeted Christopher for defrauding the now-defunct Cosmopolitan National Bank.
Prosecutors had been investigating the bank’s chairman, James Wells, and his dealings with state Treasurer Jerry Cosentino.
Investigators wanted to know how Christopher, a man with an extensive criminal record and a dismal financial history, was able to borrow $2.5 million from Cosmopolitan for his trucking outfit–loans on which he defaulted.
Christopher had become a borrower at Cosmopolitan shortly after serving a four-year prison term. He was convicted on charges of bank fraud, possession of a silencer-equipped pistol and defrauding the City of Chicago in a phony billing scheme for plowing that wasn’t done during the 1979 blizzard.
While awaiting trial on the fraud charges, Christopher’s partner in the scheme began cooperating with the government. According to court documents, Christopher had bought a silencer-equipped pistol gun to be used against the partner.
Despite the prison term, Christopher’s business fortunes rose, and he won lucrative paving contracts in the south suburbs.
In 1991, Illinois State Police and state environmental authorities suspected that one of Christopher’s trucking firms was hauling waste from a junk yard in southwest suburban Summit to two illegal dump sites, one in Chicago and another in Cicero.
Investigators found that a Christopher employee was working at the Chicago site and that thousands of pounds of “auto fluff”–the non-metal waste from demolished cars–had been dumped at the site.
A few months later, investigators were tipped that Christopher was dumping at the Cicero site, and they discovered more of the waste product stored there.
They then drove to the auto scrap yard and began following trucks leaving the Summit facility. But instead of being led to the drive-in, the trucks drove to Gary.
Court records show that Christopher’s trucking outfit had teamed with an Indiana man, two organized crime figures and others to haul 300 million pounds of hazardous waste to the Indiana site from the junk yard. Gordon Head, the operator of the site, was convicted last year of operating an illegal dump.