Contractor sentenced to 5 years in federal prison for paying kickbacks to ex-Bloomingdale Township highway boss, inflating contracts
A west suburban contractor was sentenced Tuesday to five years in federal prison for participating in a scheme to provide kickbacks to the elected head of the Bloomingdale Township Highway Department in exchange for approval of invoices with inflated prices and for sewer and dump-leveling work that was never performed.
Mario Giannini, 60, was convicted by a jury earlier this year of 14 counts of wire fraud after the alleged orchestrator of the scheme, ex-Highway Commissioner Robert Czernek, pleaded guilty and testified against him.
In rejecting defense calls for probation, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said Tuesday that Giannini saw “an opportunity for easy money” in Czernek, an elected official operating with a relatively large budget and very little oversight.
Kennelly said that when it comes to public corruption, others in Giannini’s position need to know that a prison cell likely awaits them if they are caught, or “pretty much all bets are off.”
“What they’re thinking about is, am I gonna have to do time for this?” Kennelly said.
Before the sentence was handed down, Giannini’s attorney, Heather Winslow, read a written statement from him to the court saying he’s “been punished enough” during the three years since his indictment, with longtime customers of his company, Bulldog Earth Movers, walking away and an onset of stress-related health issues.
“My life will always have a question mark on it,” the statement read.
Giannini’s sentence came six months after his co-defendant and girlfriend, Debra Fazio, was acquitted in rare fashion by Kennelly, who ruled in the middle of the trial that prosecutors had failed to prove Fazio had knowledge of the scheme or intentionally participated in it.
Fazio and her son were in Kennelly’s courtroom Tuesday to support Giannini.
Czernek, 71, pleaded guilty to one count of honest-services wire fraud and agreed to cooperate. He told jurors that Giannini first proposed the kickback scheme during a visit to the township quarry a few months after Czernek was appointed as highway commissioner in 2012.
“He said, ‘We can make some money on this,’ ” Czernek testified.
Czernek told the jury that over the next eight years, he used his official position to approve more than $700,000 in payments for stone delivery, dump-leveling and storm sewer invoices submitted by Bulldog Earth Movers.
As part of the scheme, the invoices had been artificially inflated by overcharging for the stone and billing for hours of sewer and dump-leveling work that was never performed, according to Czernek.
He concealed the fraud by leaving handwritten notes for Giannini in various secluded places on Bloomingdale Township Highway Department property, as well as in a barbecue grill at Giannini’s home.
The notes included a description of the work and number of hours purportedly spent by Bulldog on various projects. Fazio later submitted invoices to the township that repeated Czernek’s notes word for word, according to his testimony.
Testifying in his own defense, Giannini told the jury he never overcharged the township for any services and denied telling Czernek that they could “make money” off of any scheme.
Claiming to be “terrible at paperwork,” Giannini said he trusted the numbers Czernek was writing down on the notes, which he simply handed off to his office.
“He’s the road commissioner and I’m working for him,” Giannini testified. Later, he added, “I mean you don’t get any higher than he is. I mean he’s in charge of the whole township.”
In asking for an eight-year prison sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Saurish Appleby-Bhattacharjee wrote in a recent court filing that there was “only one plausible motive” for Giannini’s conduct: greed.
He also said Giannini’s self-serving testimony was riddled with lies and showed he is “remorseless for his acts.”
Winslow, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Giannini had a reputation as a hardworking and honest businessman, and that in most cases, the work he contracted to do for Bloomingdale Township was completed.
“The idea that he was motivated by greed is laughable,” said Winslow, who is appealing the jury’s verdict.
In pleading guilty, Czernek agreed he received nearly $206,000 in ill-gotten gains and will forfeit assets seized as part of the investigation, including about $28,000 in cash, a 1981 Corvette, a 2014 Lexus RX 350 and a 1966 Buick Wildcat.
