Tim Novak
Watchdogs reporter
Tim Novak is an investigative reporter exposing government corruption in the state of Illinois, Cook County and the city of Chicago. His stories include a four-year investigation into a homicide that led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, resulting in Mayor Daley’s nephew pleading guilty to manslaughter in 2014. A six-month investigation in 2004 brought down Daley’s Hired Truck program, in which city agencies spent $40 million on private trucking companies owned by mobsters and politically connected insiders that were often paid to do nothing. The ensuing federal investigation ended with the indictments of 49 people, including 29 city employees.
Illinois Gaming Board officials won’t say whether they knew of the illegal operation when they gave Heidner a video gambling license.
William M. Mahon was a high-ranking City Hall official under three former mayors and had close ties to the Daley family’s political organization.
Over seven years, Janice Weston, who was senior vice president of the clout-heavy bank, ordered employees to fool federal regulators by backdating loan documents.
The agency OK’d Jeffrey Bertucci’s Steak N Egger in 2019 to operate video gaming devices, but officials say they hadn’t realized he testified in 2010 in a mob gambling case.
Investigators recently approached or interviewed current and former village officials, asking how Alsip chose SafeSpeed as its red-light camera contractor.
“I didn’t believe we should be giving a contract to a firm with a history of fraud,” says the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s Cameron Davis, whose agency hired Joel Kennedy Constructing Corp.
The Heidners didn’t contest that they owe $5,083,274 in personal federal income taxes from 2021. They say it will all be paid off “by the end of August.”
Jan Kowalski pleaded guilty last year to concealing assets from a bankruptcy trustee. She helped her brother, Robert Kowalski, hide more than $357,000 while representing him as an attorney in bankruptcy court.
A Cook County judge sided largely with Weiss and his partner in a parking company in ruling Friday that they owe far less money than CPS was seeking in a suit over paid parking on Chicago school lots.