United States v. Sorich
| Decision Date | 15 February 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 05 CR 644-2.,No. 05 CR 644-3.,No. 05 CR 644-4.,No. 05 CR 644-1.,05 CR 644-1.,05 CR 644-2.,05 CR 644-3.,05 CR 644-4. |
| Citation | 427 F.Supp.2d 820 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America Plaintiff, v. Robert SORICH, Timothy McCarthy, John Sullivan, Patrick Slattery. Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
Patrick F. McGovern, AUSA, United States Attorney's Office, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiff.
Before this Court are several pre-trial motions. Defendants Robert Sorich and Patrick Slattery have filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, as well as a motion for a bill of particulars.1 Defendant Timothy McCarthy has also filed a motion to dismiss the indictment and a motion for a bill of particulars. For the reasons stated in this opinion, the motions to dismiss the indictment and the motions for a bill of particulars are DENIED.
The Government alleges that the Defendants devised and intended to devise, and participated in, a scheme to defraud City of Chicago (the "City") and its residents of money, property, and the intangible right to the honest services of the Defendants and other City employees participating in the hiring and promotion process. The
Government also alleges that the Defendants obtained money and property by means of materially false pretenses, representations, promises and material omissions: they constantly tried to conceal their manipulation of the employment process. The Defendants and others are said to have rigged the City's hiring and promotion process so that certain applicants-individuals who were looked favorably upon because of political affiliation-were guaranteed certain jobs and promotions within the City government. Defendants, all full-time salaried employees of the City, ensured preferred candidates were awarded jobs and promotions by manipulating the scoring of hiring and promotion interviews. As part of the scheme, the Defendants are alleged to have engaged in mail fraud.
The conduct alleged in this indictment begins in the City's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (the "IGA"), the City office that functioned in part as a liaison between the Mayor's office and other units of City, state, and federal government. While the IGA had no official role in employment decisions, the Government alleges that IGA employees nevertheless played a very decisive, unofficial role in making sure that City jobs were used to reward political supporters. Three IGA employees in particular played a large role in the scheme, according to the indictment: Robert Sorich ("Sorich"), the assistant to the Director of IGA; Timothy McCarthy ("McCarthy"), who beginning in 2001 was assigned to IGA and assisted Sorich;3 and Individual A, an IGA employee who coordinated political activities and participated in the Hispanic Democratic Organization.
As part of the scheme, Sorich and Individual A worked with certain individuals known as "campaign coordinators." One such campaign coordinator was defendant Daniel Katalinic ("Katalinic"), Deputy Commissioner of Street Operations for Streets & Sanitation from 2000 until 2003. In or about 1999, at the suggestion of Sorich, Katalinic organized a group of mostly Streets & Sanitation employees to perform campaign work. Katalinic and other campaign coordinators organized groups of mostly City workers to perform campaign work. Sorich and others would direct the campaign coordinators to perform work on behalf of political campaigns, including campaigns for election to mayoral, aldermanic, U.S. Congressional, Illinois state-wide and state legislative offices.
In exchange for their work, the campaign coordinators met with Sorich, and beginning in 2001 with McCarthy, in order to submit the names of campaign workers for whom they sought favorable jobs or promotions. They knew that the interview process for non-policy positions was fraudulently administered by Sorich and McCarthy. Sorich and McCarthy instructed Katalinic and the campaign coordinators to conceal not only the submission of names to the IGA, but also the existence of meetings held for the purpose of submitting recommendations based on campaign work.
In order to reward the campaign coordinators and their political organizations for campaign work, Sorich and McCarthy would cause certain members of the campaign organizations to be hired and promoted.4 After weighing the competing requests, Sorich and McCarthy would select those candidates who were to receive jobs or promotions. The process was complicated.
In order to coordinate and track competing requests for jobs and promotions, Sorich and McCarthy directed an IGA employee to maintain documents in electronic and hard copy format.5 The documents identified thousands of City employees in non-policymaking positions and the employees' corresponding sponsorship. Again, secrecy was emphasized: Sorich eventually instructed the designated IGA employee to conceal the existence of the documents and his or her role maintaining files related to political sponsorship, hiring, and promotion in non-policymaking positions. As further part of the scheme, Sorich directed the employee to destroy the hard copy files tracking that information.
Once Sorich and McCarthy decided which applicants they would support, they would pass these names to co-schemers. For example, in the Department of Streets & Sanitation, defendant managing deputy commission John Sullivan ("Sullivan") would take direction from Sorich and other political operatives. One of the employees Sullivan supervised was defendant Patrick Slattery ("Slattery"), the Director of Staff Services for the Department of Streets & Sanitation from on or about March 2000 through approximately July 2005. Slattery met with Sorich on a regular and frequent basis in order to receive the names of individuals that Sorich wanted to be granted jobs or promotions. After receiving his instructions, Slattery would work with Sullivan and personnel directors to manipulate and falsify the merit-based system that was used when reviewing candidates. The personnel directors would then instruct the individuals responsible for interviewing candidates on how to score the pre-selected candidates. The interviewers would score the candidates based on those directions.
When an applicant was selected by Sorich and others as worthy of a job or promotion, that applicant no longer depended on the announced channels of hiring and promotion: instead, she went through a sham process that included rigged interviews and a manipulation of interview scores. As a result of that process-a process with which every Defendant in this indictment was familiar-the preferred applicant was guaranteed a job or promotion.
Sorich and McCarthy knew and understood that the pre-selected candidates would be awarded positions on the basis of manipulated interviews and without regard to established written criteria that was in place for evaluating candidates for non-policymaking positions. They received reports about the fraudulent interview process from co-schemers in the various operating departments.
At the time that Defendants carried out their scheme, the City was subject to the Shakman Decrees, a set of consent decrees that were the result of civil litigation inspired by widespread patronage practices in City hiring. Those Decrees have been the subject of recent litigation, and have not been vacated or found void.
The scheme was, unsurprisingly, not revealed to the public. Instead, Sorich, McCarthy, Sullivan, and Slattery would cause City officials to falsely certify that political considerations played no role in the decision-making process.
Sullivan eventually made false and misleading statements to federal investigators regarding the hiring and promotion process in his department, Streets and Sanitation, in order to conceal the existence of the rigged interviews. Sullivan, Sorich, McCarthy, Slattery, and Katalinic misrepresented, concealed, hid, and caused to be misrepresented, concealed, and hidden, the purposes of the scheme as well as acts done in furtherance of it.
Count One of the indictment alleges that on or about July 15, 2004, Sorich, McCarthy, Sullivan, Slattery, and Katalinic violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1346, 2 for the purpose of executing their hiring scheme when they knowingly caused to be delivered by mail to a Chicago address an envelope containing a letter to Streets and Sanitation Employee A that advised him that he received a promotion. Count Two alleges that on or about April 1, 2002, Sorich and McCarthy violated 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1346, 2 for the purpose of executing their hiring scheme when they knowingly caused to be delivered by mail to a Chicago address an envelope containing a letter to a Sewers employee that advised him that he received a promotion. Count Three alleges that Sorich did the same when on or about June 13, 2001, he knowingly caused to be delivered by mail to a Chicago address an envelope containing a letter to a Water employee that advised him that he received a promotion. Count Four alleges that on or about August 5, 2004, Sullivan violated 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) when he knowingly and willfully made materially false, fictitious and fraudulent representations in a matter within the jurisdiction of the FBI when he states that he did not know much about the role of the Hispanic Democratic Organization in the Department of Streets and Sanitation and that the organization played no role that he knew of in getting people jobs. Count Five allege the same with respect to Sullivan's February 18, 2005 statements that he had never heard of members of Katalinic's getting preferential treatment and did not know the identity of members of Katalinic's organization.
The Government filed this indictment on September 22, 2005. On November 15, 2005, Katalinic entered into a plea agreement. Sorich, McCarthy, Slattery, and Sullivan now urge ...
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