Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Hired Truck figure lands $39 million city contract
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters
Former Hired Truck kingpin Michael Tadin has snared a three-year, $39.4 million contract to operate and maintain one of three waste transfer stations that Mayor Daley once attempted to lease.
Tadin-owned M.A.T. Leasing was chosen to operate the largest of the three facilities at 750 N. Kilbourn -- where city crews once sorted through garbage for recyclables in blue bags -- after assembling a sub-contracting team that includes two firms that cashed in on the scandal-plagued Hired Truck program.
South Chicago Trucking Corp., a women's business enterprise, and B.B.D. Trucking, a minority-owned company, will each receive a $2 million share of the Tadin contract.
With 43 trucks paid by three city departments, B.B.D. was the largest black-owned company to ride the Hired Truck gravy train. One of its drivers pleaded guilty in 2005 to stealing city asphalt and delivering it to a private job site while driving a B.B.D.-owned Hired Truck.
"I wasn't aware of that. I don't know what that driver did. But, the owner of the company I've known for 25 years," Tadin said Tuesday, noting that he under-bid his closest competitor by $2 million.
The new contract appears to fly in the face of Tadin's 2004 pledge to wash his hands of city business.
But, he said, "We never precluded ourselves from public work. We were talking about Hired Truck."
The contract to operate the transfer station at 3757 W. 34th Street was awarded to Heartland Recycling on the strength of owner Thomas Volini's $15.6 million bid, records show.
The third center, at 1633 W. Medill, will apparently remain in the hands of Allied Waste Transportation.
Tadin is the perennial city trucking magnate whose $1.25 million loan to a security company co-owned by Ald. Patrick Huels (11th) forced the 1997 resignation of Daley's former City Council floor leader. Tadin's trucking company had received a $1.1 million city subsidy with Huels' help.
Tadin was the undisputed king of Hired Trucks, emerging from the pack, even after City Hall accused the company of over-billing and agreed to spread the wealth to other firms. No over-billing was ever documented.
The program was disbanded in 2005 after the Chicago Sun-Times disclosed how politically-connected companies were paid to do little or no work.
MAT Leasing was awarded the three-year contract because it was the low bidder for the work covering that part of the city, said Shannon Andrews of the Department of Procurement Services.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Cook County court clerk gets three years for bribery
February 23, 2010
By RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter
A Cook County Circuit Court clerk was sentenced today to three years in prison after pleading guilty to bribery, admitting he took money from a Texas woman and falsely promised her he would pay off a judge in exchange to win her jailed husband’s release.
Angelo Colon, 48, first met Eduardo Suke’s wife in September 2008, when she was trying to bail out her spouse on drug-trafficking charges, according to prosecutors. Colon, of the 3000 block of North Kolmar, allegedly presented a phony business card and took $3,000 from the woman at that meeting at a fast-food restaurant near the 26th and California courthouse.
Colon met the woman another time with a private investigator and continued to promise he’d help if she kept making payments, prosecutors said. At that meeting, the victim was asked to surrender Suke’s two identification cards as a member of the Kickapoo Nation.
Colon had the woman wire the remaining $10,000 to him in five separate transactions between Nov. 4, 2008, and Jan. 13, 2009, prosecutors said.
Colon’s arrest is part of an investigation into financial corruption, according to state’s attorney office spokeswoman Sally Daly, who said there was no evidence Colon ever contacted a judge to seek the jailed man's release.
Colon had been employed at the clerk’s office since 1999.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Kevin Trudeau held in criminal contempt, facing jail time
Kevin Trudeau, the slick, silver-tongued infomercial king and best-selling author amassed a fortune over years of persistent, late-night hawking.
This week, he made the wrong sales pitch.
Trudeau was found in criminal contempt of court Thursday and nearly had handcuffs slapped on him after he asked his supporters to email the federal judge overseeing a pending civil case brought against him by the Federal Trade Commission.
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said he was flooded with hundreds of “harassing, threatening and interfering” emails, locking up the judge’s email system and shutting down his Blackberry for part of the day.
“This is direct contempt — that’s how I view it,” Gettleman said. “He interfered with the direct process of the court.”
Gettleman hauled Trudeau into court a day after he posted a message on his Web site with his appeal. Gettleman ordered Trudeau to turn over his passport, pay $50,000 bond and warned he could face future prison time.
Gettleman, on his own authority, can sentence Trudeau to up to six months in prison. In addition, the judge referred the matter and the emails to the U.S. Marshals Service, which investigates threats to judiciary.
“This is the first time we are addressing an email blast or something that’s disrupted the court’s email system,” said Acting U.S. Marshal John O’Malley.
Trudeau, who also hosts his own radio show and has served prison time for credit card fraud, appeared in court tanned and tieless, wearing a black mock turtleneck and navy blue suit coat.
Trudeau, who has a residence in Hinsdale, refused to talk after court, even remaining silent when twice asked his age. He’s 47.
After being called on the carpet by the judge, he sent a follow-up email to his supporters telling them:
“That was a mistake. It was wrong to make that request,” Trudeau said. “Please do not under any circumstances communicate with the court or Judge Gettleman.”
“I don’t have confidence in your client,” Gettleman told Trudeau’s lawyer. “I do insist that, if he is to avoid custody today, he post bond.”
The Federal Trade Commission has labeled Trudeau a fraud and got a court order in 2004 to curtail his business.
Trudeau has sold millions of books, in part with the pitch that the government is trying to keep him from telling dieters the truth with his “The Weight-Loss Cure They Don’t Want You to Know About,” which has become a best-seller.
Gettleman previously has banned Trudeau from making infomercials for three years, fined him more than $5 million, then raised that fine to more than $37 million — the amount the FTC figured Trudeau made on the book via his infomercials. An appeals court said the ruling was too broad and sent it back to the judge. Gettleman was still weighing the matter when he was deluged with emails Wednesday.
Trudeau has pitched miracle health cures, also saying the government wants to keep the public from knowing about natural remedies.
In a recent on-air radio broadcast, Trudeau talks about wanting to land a TV show. If Fox gave him the chance, he said he’d be: “Bigger than O’Reilly. Bigger than Glenn Beck.”
Stephen Barrett, the creator of Quackwatch.org, has for years labeled Trudeau a fraud.
What led the late-night miracle-cure hawker to criminal contempt charges in Chicago:
* Kevin Trudeau's Shop America USA as well as Natural Cures Inc. are in Elk Grove Village.
* Trudeau has a home in Hinsdale.
* In 2008, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman banned Trudeau from infomercials for three years and ordered him to pay more than $5 million in profits from his book, The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About. It was the second contempt finding in four years. An appellate court said the ruling was too broad and sent it back to Gettleman, who was poised to revise his ruling in March.
* Gettleman has previously stated that "the infomercial[s] falsely and intentionally led thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of consumers to believe that the Weight Loss Book would describe an 'easy,' 'simple' protocol that, once 'finished' would allow the consumer to 'eat anything' he or she wants."
* Gettleman hit Trudeau with criminal contempt and threatened him with prison time after Trudeau urged supporters to flood Gettleman's e-mail in-box
“He struck me as somebody who (believes he) is omnipotent. That is, no one can touch him,” Barrett said. “That’s almost been the case.”
