A former south suburban official pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to plotting to pay bribes to get lucrative red-light cameras installed in Oak Lawn.
John O’Sullivan, a onetime Worth Township supervisor and state lawmaker, admitted to conspiring with longtime political operative Patrick Doherty and an executive representing red-light camera company SafeSpeed to pay $4,000 in bribes to receive the official support of an Oak Lawn trustee to put the ticketing cameras at additional intersections.
O’Sullivan, an ally of former House Speaker Michael Madigan, joined a long line of former elected officials and political operatives who are cooperating with the wide-ranging federal corruption investigation involving everything from red-light cameras to suburban liquor licenses.
Preliminary sentencing guidelines call for up to two years in prison, according to O’Sullivan’s 17-page plea agreement. As part of his deal, O’Sullivan must provide truthful testimony when called upon. If he does so, prosecutors will recommend a reduced sentence. U.S. District Court Judge Harry Leinenweber did not set a sentencing date on Thursday.
O’Sullivan worked as a paid “sales consultant” for SafeSpeed, moonlighting in the job to help the company expand in the west and southwest suburbs.
The SafeSpeed executive, Omar Maani, was cooperating with federal investigators and recorded calls and meetings between the three men for the FBI. Maani was charged last year with bribery conspiracy as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with prosecutors, who have said they will dismiss the case if he continues to cooperate.
Doherty also has been charged as part of the same scheme and is awaiting trial.
O’Sullivan’s background includes many stops in Cook County politics. Worth Township is one of Madigan’s political strongholds.
O’Sullivan was a staffer of then-Cook County Commissioner Ed Moody, long a top member of Madigan’s vaunted political army who also was briefly Cook County recorder of deeds. Moody’s name arose as a ComEd contract employee making $4,500 a month during last year’s Republican-backed House investigation into Madigan’s role in the separate federal bribery case against ComEd.
The company agreed last summer to pay a $200 million fine in a federal case in which prosecutors said the firm hired Madigan associates in hopes of persuading him to back the utility’s Springfield agenda. Neither Moody nor Madigan has been charged in the ComEd investigation.
O’Sullivan served a brief stint as an appointed state House member and voted as a lame duck in January 2011 for a 67% increase in the income tax rate driven by Madigan.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle later put O’Sullivan on the county payroll as an $85,000-a-year regional superintendent at the Cook County Forest Preserve District. But O’Sullivan only worked for the forest preserve for a short time before resigning over what officials said were resume discrepancies.
It wasn’t the first time O’Sullivan had departed a county job. He was fired from a position at Stroger Hospital for allegedly falsifying time cards, according to an inspector general’s report, but later was rehired with back pay after challenging the decision.
According to federal prosecutors, Doherty, O’Sullivan and Maani were seeking in 2017 to renew SafeSpeed’s camera contract in Oak Lawn and increase the number of intersections the deal covered. They also hoped the trustee would support a measure to have the suburb “use more-lenient standards in approving proposed traffic violations” submitted by SafeSpeed, prosecutors have alleged.
In a recorded phone call May 23, 2017, Doherty told Maani that the Oak Lawn trustee was “looking for a job for his kid,” to which Maani asked whether he would want to be a violations reviewer for SafeSpeed, according to Maani’s deferred prosecution agreement, which offered the most detailed version of the alleged scheme.
“I don’t know,” Doherty allegedly replied. “I think he’s looking to make as much money as he can because he’s going to college. ... I pay him out of my LLC. Something like that. I don’t know. Something for him to do.”
In another call two days later, Doherty again brought up the idea of paying the trustee’s son, saying he was willing put in “a couple grand” of his own money if it guaranteed them getting the other red-light camera locations, according to Maani’s agreement.
“Honestly, let me think about it,” Maani replied. “I’ll come up with something. I’ll think of something.”
Eventually, it was decided that payments were going to be doled out to the relative in $500 installments over a period of eight weeks, according to the indictment filed against Doherty in February 2020. To hide the purpose of the bribes, the money would come from a company where Doherty was a manager, the indictment stated.
“I’ll just pay it,” Doherty allegedly said on one call with O’Sullivan. “Just make sure we get the, make sure we get the (expletive) thing, the contract.”
The FBI recorded Doherty telling the trustee’s son, “It’s not like I need ya,” but that he’d pay the money anyway, according to the Doherty indictment.
Doherty then cut the relative a $500 check for the first installment, the indictment alleged.
Maani’s cooperation also led to charges against former state Sen. Martin Sandoval, a Chicago Democrat who pleaded guilty last year to taking at least $70,000 in government-supplied cash from Maani in return for acting as SafeSpeed’s “protector” in the state Senate. Sandoval was cooperating with prosecutors when he died in December of a COVID-19-related illness.
SafeSpeed, meanwhile, has denied any wrongdoing. The company also has said Doherty and Maani were acting without its knowledge.
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