Ex-county commissioner faces new federal chargesFresh indictment accuses Moreno in minority hiring caseFriday, July 27, 2012
Chicago Tribune
by Cynthia Dizikes Former Cook County Commissioner Joseph Moreno, who was charged a month ago in a series of alleged corruption schemes, was hit with a new accusation Thursday that he extorted a company to hire a minority subcontractor with whom Moreno had financial ties.
Prosecutors allege that Moreno concealed that the subcontractor had lent him and his wife $100,000 for a home purchase in mid-2007. Fourteen months late, the subcontractor--Roland Garcia--is alleged to have forgiven Moreno from paying off the remainder of the mortgage loan. At about the same time, Moreno, then a county commissioner, was pressuring undisclosed company to take on Garcia's Chicago Medical Equipment & Supply Co. as its minority subcontractor to maintain its own contract with the county, the charges allege.
By 2009, Moreno paid $40,000 to Garcia in a bid to conceal their scheme, prosecutors allege. Garcia was also charged Thursday.
As part of the conspiracy, Chicago Medical was paid $460,000 for acting as the minority subcontractor, prosecutors said.
The allegations came Thursday in two separate indictments in which Moreno is accused of additional wrongdoing and former Chicago Ald. Ambrosio and five other businessmen also where charged. Medrano was accused of bribery in the new indictment.
In the most sensational charge against Moreno, he was accused of pocketing a $5,000 payoff for backing a waste transfer station while sitting on Cicero's economic development panel in 2010.
"I don't want to be a hog; I just want to be a pig," Moreno is alleged to have explained to a businessman who was working under-cover for federal authorities in the Cicero investigation. "Hogs get slaughtered; pigs get fat."
Moreno and Medrano also were charged with taking bribes for using their influence to cause Stroger Hospital to buy a certain brand of bandages.
Medrano who was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in 1996 for bribery as part of the undercover Operation Silver Shovel probe, was accused in a second bribery scheme as well.
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