Former Summit police Chief John Kosmowski has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for taking a bribe from a local bar owner in exchange for assisting with a liquor license transfer.
Kosmowski, 58, was convicted by a jury last year of conspiracy, bribery and obstruction of justice. U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger handed down the 36-month sentence on Wednesday. He was ordered to report to prison on Oct. 15.
In asking for a four-year prison term, prosecutors wrote in a recent sentencing filing that Kosmowski was “willing to put aside his oath and duty to the law” in order to line his own pockets.
In doing so, prosecutors said, the police chief acted more like the criminals he was supposed to investigate, and was caught on undercover wiretaps calling a cooperator “a rat” and musing that “there is no truth” as he coached a witness on how to lie to a federal grand jury.
“When law enforcement commit crimes — especially the type here — public confidence is shaken,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Hasten wrote. “Any loss of public faith in law enforcement makes it more difficult for the overwhelming number of honest and upright officers to do their job.”
Kosmowski’s attorney, Thomas Leinenweber, argued for probation with a period of home confinement, describing Kosmowski as a dedicated family man whose life was defined by service, beginning in 1989 when he joined the Palos Hills Police Department as a 19-year-old cadet.
“He did not drift into law enforcement,” Leinenweber wrote in a court filing in March. “He chose it as a vocation. For decades, he worked nights, weekends, holidays — the hours when others were home with their families.”
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Leinenweber also argued Kosmowski has already paid an enormous price for what amounted to a one-off crime, and sending him to prison would be unnecessary to achieve justice.
“The public message here is unmistakable: even a long-serving police chief can lose everything,” Leinenweber wrote. “Career destruction, felony conviction, and supervised probation send a powerful deterrent signal.”
While the charges against Kosmowski were relatively low-level, the case was an offshoot of a larger corruption probe that netted indictments against then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval and a slew of other suburban elected officials, police chiefs and political operatives on the take.
Jurors heard a number of names from that investigation during the testimony of key cooperator Bill Mundy, the former Summit public works director and “unofficial mayor” who admitted taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from developers and others seeking to do business in the town.
Among them: Omar Maani, the red-light camera company executive who also wore a wire for the FBI and allegedly paid off Mundy to buy properties in Summit, and Boris Nitchoff, the now-deceased developer who was implicated in parallel bribery investigations into former Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin and employees of the Cook County assessor’s office.
Mundy and Kosmowski were charged in an indictment in 2022 with conspiring to accept $10,000 from Kris Hodurek, the owner of the Fire Station Pub in Summit, in exchange for helping secure the transfer of a liquor license to a relative.
According to prosecutors, Kosmowski received the bribe payment from the owner in March 2017 and then gave Mundy his $5,000 cut later that day. In the meantime, Mundy called Summit Mayor Sergio Rodriguez and, with Kosmowski listening in, urged the mayor to approve the transfer, the charges alleged. Rodriguez was not charged with any wrongdoing.
Mundy secretly cooperated with the investigation and was the prosecution’s star witness against Kosmowski, testifying about a series of FBI wiretaps capturing them talking about the scheme.
“Kris gave me the money as a loan. I gave you $3,000 because just, in general principle, you need the money,” Kosmowski said to Mundy in one recorded conversation.
“You think anybody’s gonna buy that?” Mundy replied. “I love you like a brother, but this is (expletive) up.”
Kosmowski, though, warned that the feds were closing in and it was important for them to be on the same page.
“There’s a statute of limitations coming up — that means that they’re going to be indicting soon,” Kosmowski said. “Here’s the thing, no matter what we say, remember this: It’s gonna be their version against ours. It always is. It was a loan from me to you. That was that.”