By Andrew Martin and Ray Gibson
Tribune staff reporters
Published March 19, 2002

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records from City Hall related to a mob-connected family whose janitorial company has won tens of millions of dollars in city-related contracts since Mayor Richard Daley took office.

In a subpoena dated Feb. 11, federal prosecutors asked the city's deputy budget director, Bill Cerney, to deliver "all employee expense tax records" filed by four companies, at least three of which are directly related to the Duff family, whose ties to organized crimes date back four decades.

The request, signed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles Ex, seeks records from the companies dating to Jan. 1, 1998. The companies are Windy City Maintenance, Windy City Labor Service, Remedial Environmental Manpower and Remedial Daily Labor.

Cerney was instructed to deliver the records to the grand jury on Feb. 14. The subpoena was obtained by the Tribune under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

The Duff family has held fundraisers for the mayor and provided campaign workers for Daley-supported candidates.

A federal grand jury also sought records on at least one Duff company, Windy City Maintenance, from the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (McPier), which oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier, sources said. Windy City Maintenance, a janitorial firm, has held a cleaning contract with the authority since 1996, and the authority board is expected to decide whether to renew its contract in the coming weeks.

Officials with the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment. The Duffs' attorney, James Streicker, could not be located for comment.

Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, said city officials were cooperating.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating the Duffs for more than two years, a probe prompted by a July 1999 Tribune investigation that found Windy City Maintenance, which had won tens of millions of dollars in government contract set-asides for woman-owned firms, was actually run by men in the Duff family.

The Tribune also reported that a day labor company controlled by the Duffs, Windy City Labor, was supplying non-union labor to liquor distributors whose employees were represented by a union run by the Duff family, a possible labor violation.

To date, the federal investigation has focused on those labor violations by the Duffs' union, the Liquor and Wine Sales Representatives, Tire, Plastic and Allied Workers Union, sources said.

The latest subpoena suggests the investigation has now expanded. Though federal prosecutors asked city officials for records on Windy City Maintenance in January 2000, there has been little additional evidence they were actively pursuing the Duffs' contracts at City Hall.

The Tribune reported Windy City Maintenance had used its status as a woman-owned company to win millions in contracts from the Daley administration and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, a joint city/state agency. The city requires that 25 percent of all contracts be awarded to minority- and woman-owned firms.

The company had earned its woman-owned status by stating it was owned and operated by Patricia Green. The Tribune found Patricia Green was actually Patricia Green Duff, and the company was run by her husband, John Duff Jr., and their sons.

In the years since Daley took office, Windy City Maintenance had been hired to clean up after city festivals such as Taste of Chicago and to provide janitorial services at the Harold Washington Library, the International Terminal at O'Hare International Airport, Navy Pier, McCormick Place and several police stations.

Remedial Environmental Manpower was formed in 1988 by Patricia Green and William Stratton, an African-American who was a longtime employee of the Duffs' union. Stratton was also a director for Windy City Maintenance.

Remedial Environmental Manpower's initial request to be certified as a minority-owned company in 1993 was rejected by the city because Stratton "appears to be substantially reliant on James Duff," one of the sons, an investigation found. However, a year later, Stratton convinced city officials he owned the company, though city officials said they lost documents explaining why they approved the company's minority certification.

Though it had virtually no business beforehand, Remedial Environmental Manpower was selected in 1995 as the main subcontractor on the city's massive blue-bag recycling program, a contract that pays the firm as much as $9 million a year.

It was not known what, if any, connection the Duff family has to Remedial Daily Labor.

After the Tribune investigation, Daley vowed his own investigation of the Duffs' companies. The results of the city probe concluded Windy City Maintenance was controlled by a woman when it first got city business but eventually was taken over by the Duff men. There was no evidence of willful wrongdoing, according to administration officials.

Patricia Green's husband, John Duff Jr., once testified on behalf of mob boss Anthony "Big Tuna" Accardo, who faced income-tax fraud charges. Duff's testimony helped the mobster's defense but ultimately cost Duff his job as a city investigator.

He later pleaded guilty to embezzling union funds in Chicago and Detroit and spent 17 months in prison.

One of his three sons, John Duff III, has also been associated with organized crime.

He once testified mob boss Ernest Rocco Infelice gave him a break on a gambling debt, and he boasted about his organized-crime ties when he was arrested in Florida in 1993 for threatening to kill a police officer, charges that were later dismissed.