From the Associated Press

Trucker who got $3 million in city work admits making payoffs
By MIKE ROBINSON
Associated Press Writer
Published June 9, 2005, 12:43 PM CDT
The head of a trucking company that made more than $3 million in seven years by doing hauling jobs for Chicago's scandal-plagued water department and other city agencies pleaded guilty Thursday to making payoffs to the officials who hired him.
Joseph Ignoffo, 42, of suburban Niles also said in pleading guilty to one count of mail fraud that he made campaign contributions to political committees with close ties to top officials as a way of maintaining good relations with those who hired his Ignoffo Trucking Co.
The political groups that received money included the 11th Ward Democratic Organization, the Committee to Elect John Daley and Citizens for Jeff Tomczak, he said.
Mayor Richard M. Daley's brother, Cook County Commissioner John Daley, heads the 11th Ward Democratic Organization.
Jeff Tomczak is the former state's attorney of suburban Will County and the son of Donald Tomczak, a retired first deputy water commissioner and former 11th Ward precinct captain. The elder Tomczak is also among those accused of taking payoffs in exchange for doling out hauling jobs under the city's Hired Truck Program. He has pleaded innocent.
Ignoffo's company was one of the biggest in the Hired Truck Program, which at its peak cost taxpayers $38 million a year and is now the focus of a major federal corruption investigation. Under the program, the city outsources its hauling work to private trucking companies.
According to Ignoffo's signed, 14-page agreement to plead guilty, his company averaged $430,000 in Hired Truck Program payments -- accounting for most of its income -- over seven years.
In his plea agreement, Ignoffo said that between 1998 and 2003, he would provide cash payments to Donald Tomczak twice a year, typically $500 in the summer and $1,000 at Christmas.
He said that in 1998 he was called by Tomczak aide Roger McMahon and told words to the effect of: ``It's Christmas time -- you should give Tomczak something if you're happy with the business.'' He said he then began supplying envelopes of cash marked ``Don'' to McMahon.
McMahon later retired, and his role as a ``bag man'' for payoffs was taken over by another longtime water department worker, Gerald Wesolowski, according to the plea agreement. Wesolowski, 46, pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge last month, and McMahon, 77, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud.
In exchange for a break at sentencing, Ignoffo pledged to cooperate with the federal investigation. Prosecutors agreed to ask U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan to sentence him to 14 months in prison. The sentencing has been postponed pending the outcome of the probe.
The trucking investigation has dominated political news in Chicago for months.
A new dimension was added to the scandal on Wednesday when federal officials charged that three city employees, two of them working at the water department, had been operating the Chicago end of a ring that was trafficking in heroin imported from Colombia. Last week, the mayor fired the city's water commissioner and nine others in the department after it was discovered that some employees were having co-workers record them as at work when they were absent.