When Cook County assessor’s office supervisor Ladvim Memisovski was approached by the FBI more than eight years ago about accepting benefits in exchange for lowered property assessments, he not only agreed to flip, he wore a hidden wire on a target of the investigation later that same day.
Over the next several years, Memisovski operated undercover, secretly recording nearly 100 in-person meetings with associates — including some who claimed to have ties to organized crime — and over 400 phone calls, his lawyers said in a recent court filing. His cooperation helped the feds charge former colleagues in the assessor’s office, crooked developers and even his own cousin.
Memisovski also cooperated against “various individuals who have not yet been charged with criminal offenses,” his lawyers say.
On Thursday, Memisovski saw the benefit of his eight years of assistance to the government, as a federal judge sentenced him to a year and a half of probation.
Memisovski, 47, of Summit, who joined the assessor’s office in 2005 and was earning about $127,000 a year as commercial group leader, pleaded guilty in 2022 to one count of bribery conspiracy with accepting home improvement services, jewelry, meals and sporting event tickets from the owner and an employee of Oakk Construction.
As project manager at Oakk, John Bodendorfer oversaw the work and materials put in at Memisovski’s personal residence, including a concrete pad, decking materials, dumpster usage, fascias and soffits, a fence, a gas line, heads for a sprinkler system, tile and windows, according to court records.
Bodendorfer’s boss, Alex Nitchoff, separately showered Memisovski with jewelry, meals, tickets to sporting events and other items, according to court records.
In return, Memisovski made sure that appeals of property assessments related to Nitchoff and his business associates, including two tied to Bodendorfer, were routed to him so he could extend deadlines for the filing of appeals and reduce assessed property values, court records show.
As part of the investigation, the FBI captured the conspirators talking about the scheme on wiretapped calls. On one July 17, 2018, call, Bodendorfer thanked Memisovski for a tax bill on one of his properties that was “so low it’s ridiculous” and said that he “couldn’t (expletive) be happier,” according to prosecutors.
Nitchoff pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2024 to five years in prison. Bodendorfer also pleaded guilty and received a sentence of probation earlier this year.
Memisovski’s cooperation was part of a lengthy investigation into widespread corruption in the assessor’s office, which has long been seen as a den of clout and patronage.
At the time Memisovski agreed to go undercover, the office was led by Joseph Berrios, the then-boss of the Cook County Democratic Party. Berrios lost his bid for a third term as assessor in the 2018 Democratic primary.
The results of Memisovski’s cooperation were mixed. Prosecutors secured convictions of his onetime colleague at the assessor’s office, Basilio Clausen, as well as a former high-ranking director in the office, Francisco Perez, who pleaded guilty to taking bribes from a lawyer to fix property tax assessments.
But charges against Memisovski’s cousin, Lumni Likovski, also an assessor’s office employee, were dropped by the U.S. attorney’s office before trial. Another defendant, suburban contractor Robert Mitziga, was acquitted by a jury of charges he helped arrange golf outings for Memisovski at an exclusive club in Bridgman, Michigan.
Meanwhile, the investigation branched out into other avenues of public corruption. The probe of Nitchoff’s businesses sparked an FBI raid on the office of then-Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin in June 2019. She stepped down from her seat while facing bribery charges but was deemed medically unfit for trial. Her former chief of staff, Chester Wilson, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge unrelated to Oakk Construction and was given probation
More Top Picks Best Av Receivers
.Memisovski had also been prepared to testify against former Summit police Chief John Kosmowski, who was convicted by a jury last year of taking a bribe from a local bar owner who needed a liquor license transfer, though prosecutors in the case ultimately decided not to call him, court records show.
In his sentencing memo recommending two years of probation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Rothblatt wrote that Memisovski’s corruption “erodes confidence in a system on which the city depends,” noting the “sticker shock” Cook County residents often feel when they get their tax bills.
“(Memisovski’s) scheme gave honest taxpayers good reason to doubt the system: the well-off and connected, who could help fund defendant’s lifestyle, got an inside track at the assessor’s office,” Rothblatt said.