A man already convicted of threatening to castrate and kill a Chicago restaurateur has pleaded guilty in a separate case to funding his lavish lifestyle by bilking millions of dollars from investors, including a professional basketball player and a former aide to Gov. JB Pritzker.
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Jawad Fakroune, 46, faces up to about 19 years in prison after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court on Wednesday to one count each of wire fraud and tax evasion, court records show. He is already serving a 6½-year term after a jury convicted him in January of attacking his former business partner, Adolfo García, in an effort to collect on hundreds of thousands of dollars in restaurant loans.
In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Fakroune acknowledged he failed to pay taxes on nearly $8.4 million of income between 2020 and 2024, resulting in a tax loss of about $3.3 million to the IRS and state Department of Revenue.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin set sentencing for Dec. 1.
Fakroune, who moved to Chicago after being convicted of fraud in New York, is a Moroccan national who often pretended to be the son of a Colombian drug lord and lied about connections to the Chicago mob, according to prosecutors. A fixture at Rush Street night spots, Fakroune rubbed elbows with the city’s social elites as he peddled investments to women he dated, often promising whopping returns.
His trial earlier this year offered a fascinating window into Chicago’s often-cutthroat restaurant industry and a network of people who were duped by his false promises. Among them was Lisa Duarte, a lawyer and former Pritzker aide who, according to testimony at trial, was looking after a trust for Fakroune and helped García arrange an agreement to repay the debt with the Department of Revenue.
On Wednesday, Fakroune admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he swindled Duarte out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by lying to her about a $250,000 investment in gold that he purportedly made on her behalf.
According to the plea, Duarte, identified as Individual F, later paid Fakroune at least $168,000 in cash as reimbursement for the investment, which Fakroune had never actually made. She also paid his $9,500 monthly rent for a Chicago condo and made monthly payments toward a mortgage for Fakroune’s sprawling, $1.8 million mansion in suburban Lemont, the plea stated.
Duarte served as Pritzker’s first assistant deputy governor for budget and economy and is now in private practice. She could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Another scam Fakroune admitted to in the plea agreement involved an unnamed professional basketball player, identified only as Individual E.
According to the plea, shortly after Fakroune got to know the player in 2022, he convinced him to invest $2.45 million in a business in California involving shipping containers and a marijuana grow operation. Fakroune promised Individual E monthly returns on his investment and that he could “redeem” the money at any time if he wasn’t satisfied.
Rather than invest the money, Fakroune used it to further his lavish lifestyle, including to purchase the Lemont residence on 135th Street, pay rent for a home in New York, fund restaurant meals and shopping at designer stores, buy high-end watches and pay for a brand-new Cadillac Escalade, the plea stated.
The plea also outlines a series of other scams involving various ventures, from coffee shops to a Mexican restaurant.
One victim, Individual L, paid Fakroune a total of $2.85 million in 2024 in a purported investment in a marijuana business, when, in truth, Fakroune used much of the money in weekly payments of $20,000 to himself, which he used to pay the remaining balance on his Lemont mortgage, the plea deal stated.
“In order to make the investment appear legitimate, Fakroune showed Individual L marijuana packaging, which he claimed was derived from his marijuana grow operation,” the plea agreement stated. “Fakroune also staged phone calls with purported investors in the marijuana grow operation to make it appear to Individual L that she had invested in a marijuana company.”
In one case, Fakroune arranged a FaceTime call with Individual L and another woman, whom he falsely represented was his mother, according to the plea. During the discussion, Fakroune reassured Individual L that she would get a 30% return on her investment “and that he intended to marry Individual L.”
“In truth, the woman on the phone call was not Fakroune’s mother,” the plea stated.
Fakroune moved back to New York while he was under investigation, according to court records. When the FBI went to arrest him there in December 2024, he fled nearly naked out a back door as two female acquaintances watched in shock. He then ran nearly a mile down the chilly streets of Manhattan with a black garbage bag over his head as a smock, entering a high-end Italian restaurant and asking for clothes, records show.
Fakroune was eventually arrested in January 2025 at a home in Michigan City, Indiana.
The judge in Fakroune’s extortion trial barred prosecutors from mentioning the alleged escape. But the jury did hear graphic details of Fakroune’s threats to García’s life, which culminated with the beating at Yours Truly, a short-lived wine and cocktail bar in River North, on Nov. 25, 2024.
Security camera footage watched by the jury showed García standing alone in the bar’s basement when Fakroune, dressed in a long, gray coat and black baseball hat walked in and demanded money. “Get my money,” he said. “Ready tomorrow. Or I (expletive) kill you. …. I will hunt you down, man. Every day, every night. Believe that.”
The two wound up in the kitchen where Fakroune stalked García around a stainless steel table, punched and kicked him and shouted questions and threats as García, holding his head from an earlier blow, begged him to “please, just stop.”
García testified he took Fakroune’s statements so seriously he slept with a butcher knife beside his bed that night.
In a phone call secretly taped by the FBI the day after the encounter, García told Fakroune he was trying to get the $8,000 that Fakroune had demanded. “I’m already a dead man walking by your standards, so (expletive) it,” García said on the call.
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“I hope you understand that,” Fakroune replied.
“I do, thank you,” García said. “You told me last night 9,000 (expletive) times.”