October 8, 2004
BY TIM NOVAK AND
STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporters
A stocky Naperville area contractor was led in handcuffs into a
federal courtroom Thursday, charged with lying to federal agents about
bribing a City of Chicago official to get hired truck business for his
wife's company.
Martin McDonagh, 36, was the third person in two days to be arrested
in the rapidly escalating federal investigation of Mayor Daley's Hired
Truck Program. He is the first person to be arrested for allegedly
bribing a city official.
McDonagh ran Elliott Inc., a trucking firm in the name of his wife,
Jane, that got into the Hired Truck Program last year when there was
supposed to be a freeze on new companies joining.
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SCANDAL
FALLOUT
Here's the scorecard since the Chicago Sun-Times exposed
waste and corruption in Mayor Daley's Hired Truck Program last
January.
Arrests: Three city employees -- Angelo Torres,
ex-gang member who ran the Hired Truck Program; Gerald
Wesolowski, a high-ranking Water Department official accused of
being a bagman, and John Boyle, an engineer for the
Transportation Department accused of taking more than $150,000
in bribes. One trucking company owner was also accused of lying
about alleged bribe.
Resignation: Bill Abolt, director of the mayor's
budget office that oversees the Hired Truck Program.
Reforms: Daley tossed out all 165 companies that
provided dump trucks to the city, but they could reapply if they
met stringent standards.
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Elliott Inc. not only joined but thrived, making $188,203 over 16
months from the four city departments that hire out privately owned dump
trucks to work at city job sites.
McDonagh was interviewed by federal agents at his Naperville home in
June and was asked about a city Transportation Department official, who
is not identified in the criminal complaint.
"Why does that name sound familiar?" McDonagh asked the agents,
saying he knew the name from somewhere but didn't know from where.
Perhaps it was from the 381 calls made between McDonagh's cell phone
and the city official's.
Or the $19,700 in checks -- bribes, investigators believe -- McDonagh
wrote to the city official in May and August of last year.
The complaint contends McDonagh knew the city official well.
McDonagh, speaking in an Irish brogue, answered a federal magistrate
judge's questions Thursday but had little to say as he was besieged by a
swarm of television cameras and reporters outside the courthouse.
With the arrest of McDonagh, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary
Shapiro said federal prosecutors were sending a message.
"If they lie to us, we're going to charge them if we can prove it,"
Shapiro said.
Anyone who committed wrongdoing in the program should get a lawyer
and come in and talk to federal prosecutors, Shapiro said.
"If this is about naked self-interest, as it often is, they ought to
consider if they want us as enemies too," Shapiro said.
The Sun-Times first exposed the waste and corruption, including
bribery, in the Hired Truck Program in a three-day series in January.
On the third day of the series, the FBI arrested the former head of
the program, Angelo Torres, for alleged attempted extortion and expanded
its probe to the entire program. Since then, federal agents have
subpoenaed thousands of pages of records from the city and interviewed
all of the participants in the Hired Truck Program.
So far, four people have been arrested in the investigation, three of
them city employees. And more arrests are expected.
Why hire thief?
'We give 2nd chances,' Daley says
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City
Hall Reporter
Mayor Daley on Thursday defended his decision to give a second chance
to a convicted felon who stole millions from the state tollway -- a
position that allegedly allowed John Boyle to shake down companies in
the city's Hired Truck Program.
"Sometimes you think a person can do better," the mayor said. "Many
times, people do commit acts in the past and get hired. Yes they do --
both in the public and private sector.. . . We give people second
chances. Everybody does."
Only after repeated questioning did Daley acknowledge the painfully
obvious.
"It was a mistake," he said.
City Hall's hiring blunder became evident this week when Boyle, a
$32.55-an-hour hoisting engineer in the Transportation Department, and
Gerald Wesolowski, a $94,872-a-year director of administration for the
Water Management Department, became the second and third employees
charged in the Hired Truck scandal.
Daley refused to say who was responsible for clouting Boyle onto the
city payroll. But he insisted the convicted thief had "no official role"
in deciding which trucks get hired to haul debris from city construction
sites.
To hear the mayor tell it, Boyle either bluffed contractors into
believing he could deliver business they would have gotten anyway or
"corrupted the system" by sharing bribes with those in power.
As the federal investigation continues to climb higher in the City
Hall food chain, aides said the mayor's senior staff is trying to find
out who on the city payroll might have been on the receiving end of
Boyle's largess. A criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday mentions
everything from cash and campaign contributions to steaks and a swimming
pool.
"He was a hoisting engineer. He did not have the power to do things,"
Daley said.
Boyle was convicted in 1992 of embezzling millions of dollars from
the state toll authority.