From the Chicago Sun-Times

State worker charged in bribe scam

March 30, 2005
BY NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter
While at the Chicago Auto Show last month, an FBI informant met up with a state worker for some pizza and a bribe, prosecutors say.
The unnamed informant slid $100 in a napkin under pizza he bought for Secretary of State manager Brenda Strong, who was working a state booth at the show, prosecutors say.
"Hook me up with the BMW," the informant said, according to prosecutors.
And that's what Strong did, agreeing to get a fraudulent car title for the BMW from the Secretary of State's office, the feds charged Tuesday.
As first reported in the Sun-Times Sunday, it was one of many times Strong took bribes to help pass through fraudulent titles for auto dealers Amir Hosseini and Hossein Obaei so they could hide their lucrative cash business with gang members, federal prosecutors charged.
Informant got it on tape
Strong -- a floor supervisor at the Secretary of State's facility at 99th and Martin Luther King Drive -- was charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud. She is accused of getting license plates to Obaei when there is no record of a title application, helping him skirt taxes and using her position to run license plates through a computer database for the informant.
The informant in the case was a former sales manager under Obaei. The informant recorded Strong on video and audio tapes providing official help for money, the feds allege.
Strong was placed on an unpaid leave of absence Tuesday, Secretary of State spokesman Dave Druker said. She was hired in 1997 and promoted to a managerial position in December.
The FBI and Secretary of State police arrested Strong on Tuesday morning just after she dropped off a child at school. After appearing in federal court Tuesday, she was released on a signature bond.
Tells FBI: 'I shouldn't have'
Hosseini and Obaei were charged last week with laundering more than $9 million by taking drug money from gang members for luxury cars and helping the sellers conceal their large cash transactions. The feds seized more than 100 luxury vehicles last week.
Strong, 35, of 427 E. 46th Place, allegedly took bribes for "reviewing, completing, altering and stamping paperwork provided to her by Obaei and his associates" since 2001, according to the complaint. Strong helped at least six other auto dealerships get fraudulent titles, the complaint alleges.
A cooperating witness told investigators Obaei paid Strong $300 to $400 each time she came to the dealership to review paperwork.
In an FBI interview, Strong said she took $1,500 to $2,000 from Obaei in the last several years. "I was doing it and I shouldn't have been," she told FBI agents, according to a criminal complaint in the case, which is being prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorneys Daniel Rubinstein and Lisa Noller.
Her help meant Obaei and associates were issued suspect car titles without paying taxes and without raising the suspicion of the Department of Revenue or the Secretary of State's office.
Strong went to the auto dealers herself -- about once every two weeks, according to one government witness -- and stamped title applications to allegedly help him skirt taxes when they came into the Secretary of State office to obtain titles.
The stamp is supposed to mean that vehicles had been audited to ensure taxes had been paid, according to the complaint. The auto dealer workers took the stamped copies into the Secretary of State facility to get titles and license plates.
Also on Tuesday, a California judge agreed to release Roy Bambouyani, charged in the auto dealership conspiracy with Hosseini and Obaei last week, on $500,000 secured bond and GPS monitoring.
Prosecutors revealed Bambouyani ran Amer Leasing Sales in Costa Mesa, Calif., which has ties to Hosseini's Chicago businesses.