A suburban contractor was sentenced Thursday to more than 6½ years in federal prison for causing a potential “environmental disaster” by leaving large amounts of cancer-causing asbestos material during the 2023 demolition of a Waukegan medical campus in order to line his own pockets.
Carl Fioravanti, 58, of Highland, Indiana, pleaded guilty in June to wire fraud and tax fraud as part of the scheme, admitting he collected more than $1.8 million from the general contractor for the job even though he knew the Lake Behavioral Hospital site had not been fully remediated, then falsified records and lied to state and federal regulators to try to cover it up.
When the general contractor later learned — “to its horror,” as prosecutors put it — that enormous amounts of asbestos material had been left commingled with other ordinary demolition debris, it was forced to spend more than $26 million in site cleanup and legal and regulatory expenses, court records show.
Fioravanti, the former president of Lansing-based Alliance Environmental Solutions, also admitted in his plea agreement that he lied about safely removing asbestos in another contract for the demolition for the old Harvey Hotel in the south suburbs, and that he avoided paying more than $2.7 million in state and federal taxes by filing falsified individual and corporate tax returns over eight years.
In handing Fioravanti the 80-month prison term, a clearly furious U.S. District Judge Franklin Valderrrama said of all the fraud cases that have come before him, he could not think “of a more callous example of an individual seeking and pursuing the almighty dollar.”
Valderrama said he found it particularly egregious that Fioravanti kept up the scheme even though he knew that demolition workers would soon be going in with heavy equipment based on his lies, which would send an untold amount of carcinogenic material airborne.
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The judge referenced photos of the site submitted by prosecutors showing the workers standing next to exposed beams without any masks or other protective gear, with no idea that suspected asbestos coating was still there.
Even more “frightening” than being exposed themselves, Valderrama said, was that the workers could have carried “those same particles on their clothing back to their families, back to their loved ones, back to their children.”
Because asbestos exposure takes years, and sometimes decades, to manifest into serious health problems, it was unknown if anyone at the site or in the surrounding residential neighborhood will suffer physical consequences, the judge noted. But he said that didn’t change the seriousness of Fioravanti’s crimes.
“The ultimate explanation for your callous behavior was greed — how to make more money,” Valderrama said, his voice rising to a shout. “And the health consequences of your workers be damned, the health consequences for those demolition workers be damned, the health consequences for those neighbors living there be damned, as long as you, Carl Fioravanti, made a buck.”
In asking for up to 97 months in prison, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman said that of all the people in the courtroom, Fioravanti knew best the inherent dangers of asbestos, making the impending “environmental disaster” entirely foreseeable to him.
“But he did it anyway,” Chapman said.
Fioravanti’s lawyers, Adam Sheppard and Barry Sheppard, asked for leniency, acknowledging he cut corners after getting in over his head with the hospital demolition, but saying he never set out to hurt anyone. They also argued that Fioravanti built an otherwise successful business and had no criminal record.
Before the sentence was handed down, Fioravanti stood in court dressed in a blue suit and read a written apology to the court and anyone he’d harmed, saying he “made choices I knew were wrong.”
“I panicked, I lied, I altered documents, I made the situation worse,” he said, appearing to choke up near the end of his remarks. “I wish I had a better explanation for why I allowed myself to get to this point, but I do not.”
In addition to the 2023 hospital demolition, Fioravanti also admitted he’d lied to regulators about asbestos removal from the 2018 job at the scandal-plagued Chicago Park Hotel near 170th and Halsted streets in Harvey, which had been contracted out by the Cook County Land Bank Authority.
Both projects were bid to the same main demolition contractor — KLF Enterprises — which in turn used Fioravanti’s company for specialized asbestos removal. The Tribune has previously reported that KLF was owned by James Bracken, a clout-heavy trucking, demolition and excavation operation who was also under investigation by the FBI.
In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Fioravanti admitted directing employees to dump asbestos-filled debris in with other materials that was later put in a Bracken-owned landfill unfit for hazardous materials. When federal investigators subpoenaed his company as part of the ongoing probe, Fioravanti had manifests altered to hide the fact the asbestos had been disposed of improperly, according to the plea.
Bracken has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
After court Thursday, Fioravanti’s attorney said his plea did not include any agreement to cooperate with federal investigators on other investigations.