The Long and Winding Mission of Connie Fielding, Pt. 6
Operation Greylord and the Rotting of the Illinois Judicial System.
Illinois has long had reputation for corruption, and in the Eighties that reputation came to the surface for the world to see. A joint sting operation code named Operation Greylord revealed a complex bribery scheme within Illinois courts where any case, including murder, could be fixed for a price.
At the lower levels of the legal system, the bribery was subtle. If attorneys wanted their cases called out of turn, they would pay the clerk $2; but if they wanted the case held over while they handled other cases in other courtrooms, the payment increased to $5. In Illinois, committeemen sponsored court clerks, which gave the attorneys with business before the court an incentive to buy raffle tickets for the committeeman’s election fundraiser. The raffle ticket could cost up to $100.
Those who paid the price could get their cases called at their convenience; those who did not buy the tickets ran the risk of having their case called early before they had even arrived to court. If they were present that morning, their case would be called, but it would be set in the late afternoon.
For the attorneys who bustled about in traffic and criminal courts, the knowledge that they could obtain a result for payment made their jobs easier and their clients’ lives more expensive. If you wanted an acquittal for a DUI, you paid $500 for a first offense or $1000 for a second offense. If you wanted an acquittal on murder charges, you paid $10,000. You could fix every case with a simple flat fee payment, from speeding tickets to DUIs to drug cases and murders. It was an efficient system for the corrupt judges and lawyers who went about their daily routines in Illinois courtrooms.
For Terrence Hake, an assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, Operation Greylord was a four year project. Hake became the chief undercover operative used by the FBI and other federal agencies to investigate the rampant bribery and case fixing in Illinois. Hake parlayed his agreement to work undercover in April 1980 into a career with the FBI, where he would serve for 23 years before returning to Cook County as an Assistant State’s Attorney.
Hake had only practiced law for a mere three years when agreed to be the FBI’s mole within the Illinois judicial system. Over the next four years, Hake’s work secured 93 indictments against judges, lawyers, policemen, bailiffs, and even one state legislator. The official version of events is that Operation Greylord cleaned up the corrupt justice system in Cook County by taking down judges who sold acquittals:
Judge Wayne Olson, a narcotics court judge who took bribes and was caught on tape after his chambers were bugged.
Judge Thomas J. Maloney, who fixed at least three murder cases in exchange for $100,000 in bribes.
Circuit Court Judge Reginald Holzer, who received over $200,000 in bribes.
Circuit Judge Allen Rosin, who took bribes in family court in order to grant desired outcomes in child custody and spousal property cases.
Operation Greylord exposed an ugly truth: verdicts and outcomes were for sale in Illinois, and had been for sale for decades. The system of bribery and fraud that enabled the judges, bailiffs, attorneys, and police officers to operate with impunity was not a recent innovation. It was the product of years of effort and ingenuity on the part of corrupt judges and criminals.
It was not the sole example of judicial corruption within Illinois. On February 25, 1983, ten year old Jeanine Nicario was abducted from her home in Naperville, Illinois while her parents were out. Two days later, her body was found on a path just off of Eola Road. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped and sodomized before being murdered. By the following March, the state of Illinois had their men: Rolando Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez, and Stephen Buckley were indicted for the rape and murder of little Jeanine Nicario. In February 1985, Cruz and Hernandez were convicted, while the jury deadlocked on Buckley.
There was only one problem: Brian Dugan, who had previously been arrested and was under trial for the rape and murder of a seven year old girl and a 27 year old woman, confessed to the rape and murder of Jeanine Nicario through his attorney in November 1985. By 1987, the charges against Buckley were dismissed, but Cruz and Hernandez’s plight would continue. DuPage County prosecutors retried them after the Illinois Supreme Court vacated their convictions, even though Brian Dugan’s confession was a matter of public record. Prosecutors secured a conviction against Cruz at a second trial; Hernandez’s second trial resulted in a hung jury, and his third trial would finally end in a conviction and an 80 year sentence.
Cruz’s second conviction was initially upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court, and then struck down in 1994 at a rehearing. Hernandez’s second conviction was also overturned in 1995. At Cruz’s third trial, DNA evidence was admitted that excluded Cruz and Hernandez as perpetrators. The two men had faced the death penalty at their initial trials, and would have been executed if not for the persistence of their defense attorneys. The State of Illinois proceeded to charge and prosecute seven DuPage County officials who allegedly had exculpatory evidence proving the innocence of Cruz and Hernandez, but who lied to the court and fabricated evidence in order to convict both men.
The misconduct of DuPage County sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors cost the taxpayers $3.5 million in a civil settlement, even though all seven officials were acquitted. That misconduct nearly cost two men their lives, and prolonged the agony of Jeanine Nicario’s family for over a decade of lawsuits and appeals. Brian Dugan was not convicted of the rape and murder of Jeanine Nicario until 2009.
And so it was that when Michael Lynch, the owner of McCook Metals and Alcoa’s nemesis, raised the charge of corruption in Illinois’s legal system, he was greeted with skepticism despite documented evidence of decades worth of bribery, case fixing, mail fraud, wire fraud, tax fraud, and outright malfeasance resulting in the conviction of innocent men for the rape and murder of a ten year old girl. Michael Lynch had been raked over the coals, accused of fabricating documents and perjury during his bankruptcy proceedings and civil suits. One had only to consider who his accusers were to entertain skepticism about the allegations against Lynch.
The legal system in Illinois had no credibility, given the documented history of Illinois judges selling verdicts and acquittals in criminal and family courts, as well as civil courts. While the courts and the media scoffed at Michael Lynch for his allegations that a bankruptcy judge was presiding over a $40 million bribery fund with connections to an Arizona mob family, the reality was that Michael Lynch had struck a nerve with decades of history.
Harry Aleman and Judge Frank Wilson
Harry Aleman was a local mob figure who murdered William Logan on a cold morning in September 1972. Three years later, Aleman murdered Anthony Reitinger for refusing to pay a tax on his bookmaking operation to local mobsters. Aleman was indicted for the Logan murder in December 1976, but he wasn’t worried. He requested a bench trial before Judge Frank Wilson, who had requested that Aleman’s counsel Thomas J. Maloney withdraw from the case before Wilson acquitted Aleman. Thomas J. Maloney went on to become Judge Thomas J. Maloney, star defendant of Operation Greylord. For $10,000, Aleman obtained his acquittal, even though two eyewitnesses named him as Logan’s murderer.
Aleman was a free man for twenty years, until government informants in the Federal Witness Protection Program came forward to testify about the murders and the bribery of Judge Frank Wilson. One of those witnesses was former attorney Robert Cooley, who told the FBI that his friends in organized crime had solicited him to pitch the acquittal to Judge Wilson. When a prosecutor alleged that a star witness had received a $10,00 bribe, Judge Wilson angrily demanded more money for the acquittal, owing to the scrutiny the case might generate.
When Cooley stuck to his guns and only paid $10,000 for the acquittal, Judge Wilson angrily stormed out of a restaurant where Cooley paid him the remaining $7,500 that was owed.
For twenty years, Judge Wilson continued on with his life, until one day in November 1989 when Cooley showed up at his home in Arizona, the same state that Michael Lynch, Connie Fielding, and Nancy Sucato allege corrupt judges and government officials from across the country receive property and payouts for fixing cases. After their discussion about the bribe, Judge Wilson was subpoenaed for a December 1989 grand jury, but he didn’t show up to testify.
On February 5, 1990, Judge Frank Wilson was found dead in his Sun City, Arizona backyard. The Maricopa County Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide.
Harry Aleman would claim that the government’s attempt to retry him for the murder of William Logan amounted to double jeopardy, a claim that was rejected by the Seventh Circuit US Court of Appeals. Judge Wilson had evaded culpability during Operation Greylord even though Robert Cooley had been a government witness during Operation Greylord. After taking a bribe to enable a mobster to escape culpability for murdering a man, Judge Wilson lived out his years in Arizona.
The simple reality was that Michael Lynch’s allegations of corruption in both state and federal courts in Illinois would have been too incredible to believe, were it not for the history of those courts and the men and women who worked within them. The facts were simple: judges, lawyers, policemen, and court clerks had taken bribes from the mob in Illinois for decades. They had fixed drug and murder cases for those mobsters, and they had done so with impunity before Operation Greylord and afterwards.
The law was for sale in Illinois, and Michael Lynch didn’t have enough money to compete with the other bidders.
Michael Lynch v. Illinois
In the aftermath of his disastrous battle with REP and Seyfarth Shaw over a $30 million loan, Michael Lynch was a ruined man. He was personally liable for the $30 million loan to one of his companies as a result of a personal guaranty Lynch swore he never signed or agreed to, and Lynch further claimed his law firm had represented his creditors, his competitors, and his former partners while simultaneously representing him, all without disclosing any conflict of interest. In the eyes of the court system, he was a document forger and a perjurer who lied to the court in order to evade a $30 million personal guaranty to REP. Not only was the judgment in the REP case financially disastrous, the finding that Lynch had fabricated documents to refute REP’s claims demolished his credibility.