Longtime Chicago-area political operative Patrick Doherty didn’t mince words a few years ago when an associate brought up the prospect of doing business in the notoriously corrupt suburb of McCook.
“It’s all contingent on what you can give,” Doherty told the associate, Omar Maani, about the obligatory campaign donations to Doherty’s boss, then-McCook Mayor Jeffrey Tobolski, according to court records.
Maani, who was secretly recording the September 2019 conversation for the FBI, said, “It’s like you’re paying a little tax.”
“Right. Juice,” Doherty replied, according to court records. “Street juice….I hope we can get it before (Tobolski) goes to jail. I hope we can retire.”
That discussion was highlighted several times in a federal courtroom Wednesday, where Doherty was sentenced to more than five years in federal prison for a wide range of corruption schemes stemming from a sprawling federal bribery investigation involving red-light cameras.
In handing down the 64-month sentence, U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman said he was struck by the “pervasiveness” and duration of Doherty’s corrupt practices, which included bribing a state senator, paying off a suburban trustee, and shaking down a businessman looking for help with a land deal in McCook.
“This was not only a way of doing business, it was a way of life,” Guzman said.
In rejecting a call for leniency, Guzman singled out Doherty’s 2019 conversation with Maani about street juice, which a term typically used by mobsters to describe interest payments on illegal loans.
“This is not street juice,” the judge said. “It’s corruption.”
Guzman also said that Doherty’s “betrayal at the local level” causes ordinary citizens to lose faith in their elected officials, undermining the democratic political system and ultimately “the very foundation of our way of life.”
Doherty, 67, admitted in a plea agreement with prosecutors that he helped funnel payments from an employee of red-light camera company SafeSpeed LLC to former state Sen. Martin Sandoval in exchange for the senator’s help in Springfield. At the time, Doherty was moonlighting as a sales agent for SafeSpeed.
He also admitted he participated in a scheme with Tobolski, who doubled as a Cook County commissioner, to shake down a business owner seeking to purchase land in McCook.
The 24-page plea also included several newly revealed schemes. In one, Doherty admitted to bribing another public official — identified only as Public Official B — to give village contracts to SafeSpeed. Among the illicit offerings, according to the plea, were membership to a Countryside cigar lounge and “30 to 50 people to work for Public Official B and Public Official B-backed candidates for free.”
Doherty also admitted using his position as Tobolski’s longtime chief of staff to obtain benefits such as meals, sporting-event tickets and travel from a business owner in exchange for promoting a pilot program in Cook County that would use the business owner’s products.
In addition, Doherty admitted filing false tax returns over a four-year period that substantially understated his taxable income, according to the plea.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Ardam asked the judge for up to about six years in prison, saying the “sheer number of public corruption cases that continue to be uncovered” in the Chicago area “are a glaring sign that there is a desperate need for deterrence.”
Doherty’s attorney, Michael Monaco, said that aside from his crimes, Doherty was a tirelessly supportive family man who took time to coach sports and help others in need. He also said Doherty suffered a heart attack recently and has several acute health issues, putting him in the “winter of his life.”
“Mr. Doherty is a broken man. It’s over there is nothing left.” Monaco said.
Before the sentence was handed down Wednesday, Doherty stood hunched at the lectern and apologized for his crimes, saying his decisions had “ruined” his life.
“I feel sorry for what I’ve put my family through,” he said. “The last three years have been hell.”
Doherty is the latest to be sentenced in a probe that stretched from Chicago’s southwest suburbs to the Capitol building in Springfield, where federal agents raided Sandoval’s offices in fall 2019, thrusting the case into the public spotlight.
Sandoval pleaded guilty to bribery charges in early 2020 and was cooperating with the ongoing investigation before his death later that year of COVID-19 complications. Also convicted were a handful of suburban mayors — including Tobolski — and other political operatives. Charges against several others are pending.
Doherty was initially indicted in 2019 on charges he conspired Maani, one of Safespeed’s founders and biggest rainmakers, as well as John O’Sullivan, then the supervisor of Worth Township, to pay $4,000 in bribes in exchange for the official support of an Oak Lawn trustee to add SafeSpeed cameras at additional intersections.
Additional charges were later added alleging he directly bribed Sandoval, at the time the powerful head of the Senate Transportation Committee, in exchange for Sandoval opposing legislation adverse to SafeSpeed and “obtaining IDOT approvals for (SafeSpeed’s) red-light cameras.”
Doherty’s plea agreement stated that Doherty and Maani agreed to make monthly $2,000 payments to Sandoval through a company affiliated with the senator’s family. Doherty also agreed to pay for car repairs for one of Sandoval’s personal vehicles, the plea stated.
Sandoval, meanwhile, admitted to taking at least $70,000 in government-supplied cash from Maani in return for acting as SafeSpeed’s “protector” in the state Senate.
Maani, who wore a wire as part of the sprawling federal investigation, was charged with bribery in August 2020 and has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office. He is no longer affiliated with SafeSpeed.
SafeSpeed and company CEO Nikki Zollar have not been charged and deny any wrongdoing. In a statement released after Doherty’s sentencing Wednesday, the company said it “remains profoundly disappointed that a former shareholder was engaged in alleged criminal conduct and that this person allegedly recruited outside individuals, including Patrick Doherty, to help further criminal activities.”
“Their actions were done without SafeSpeed’s knowledge and without SafeSpeed’s authorization,” the statement read. “SafeSpeed fully supports the federal government’s investigation into public corruption and will continue to aid their efforts in any way it can.”
Last month, the Tribune reported that unsealed court records revealed for the first time that Zollar and another top SafeSpeed official were caught on undercover FBI recordings talking about giving the mayor of suburban Crestwood contributions and other perks at the same time their firm was pressuring him to increase ticket revenue.
The company declined to comment for that story, citing ongoing civil litigation with Maani.