A janitorial firm operated by a former Operation PUSH president is among four minority or female-owned firms that Chicago Public Schools officials are seeking to ban from city contracts for the roles they allegedly played in a fence contract scam.
Total Facility Maintenance, based in Wood Dale and owned by Rev. Jimmie Daniels and his wife Dolores, could lose a $12 million janitorial contract in the city’s schools if a hearing administered by the district upholds the allegations, officials said Wednesday.
The three other companies under investigation are Chicago Architectural Metals Inc., JDR International and Fence USA. All are scheduled to go before a hearing officer May 30.
The investigation by the schools’ Office of the Inspector General began with two companies–Tru-Link Fences and Products Co., and Tru-Link Commercial–formerly owned by Michael and Helen Levin but run by their son James, a Democratic fundraiser who has filed for bankruptcy.
The Tru-Link companies won bids in 1998 and 2000 to perform work in the schools. They listed minority and women-owned companies as subcontractors to comply with city regulations, but officials say the subcontractors never performed the work.
Out of the $4.7 million the contracts’ authorized, more than $2.8 million was paid to Tru-Link, which kept about $1 million meant for the minority contractors, Interim Inspector General James Sullivan said (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
The subcontractors should be punished because they “allowed it to continue,” said Robert Hall of the district’s law department. “They didn’t come forward to say, `We’ve been listed as a minority subcontractor and we did no work.'”
In all, officials are seeking to bar 12 people associated with the six companies from doing business with Chicago Public Schools for three years. They also would be barred from doing work with other city agencies, officials said.
School documents list Total Facility Maintenance as being approved in 1998 and 2000 to do almost $992,000 worth of work.
Officials say the company was paid $3,500 in 1999 for undone work. The firm also is suspected of knowing Tru-Link drew up invoices that falsely indicated it had worked on the 2000 contract, Sullivan said.
Daniels, pastor of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Summit, said his firm was knowingly involved in only one contract and that it did the work.
“As I told the inspector general, anything else [Tru-Link] did, we were totally, completely unaware of,” Daniels said.
Officials allege Alfredo Von Samek of city-based Chicago Architectural Metals Inc. pocketed a $21,150 check from Tru-Link without performing any work after he found out he was listed on the contract bid.
Three other checks written for the same amount bounced.
Joseph Ruiz of JDR International, based in River Grove, and Edna Ramos of Fence USA, based in Chicago, both signed forms that falsely indicated their companies were paid for work listed on the 2000 contract, Sullivan said.
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School officials terminated their contracts with Tru-Link in 2001. That year, Tru-Link also lost a multimillion-dollar fence contract with the city because of poor performance, according to a city spokeswoman.
Tru-Link had won most of the city’s fence contracts in April 2000 after those contracts were rebid following a Tribune investigation that found billing irregularities by the previous contractor, G.F. Structures Corp.