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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the follow-the-money dept.

The Chicago man who served as a go-between for a local transportation official and a major red light camera company, Redflex, was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison.

In 2014, Martin O'Malley was the first to plead guilty in the trio of criminal cases involving Redflex. (This Martin O'Malley should not be confused with the former governor of Maryland and Democratic presidential candidate.)

O'Malley was paid $2 million for his services, which was more than anyone on Redflex's official payroll. But according to prosecutors, much of that money was funneled to John Bills, a former managing deputy commissioner at the Department of Transportation and a longtime friend of O'Malley's.

Bills helped steer the City of Chicago to do business with Redflex. Chicago was at one time the company's largest deal worldwide. Since losing the Chicago contract as a result of this corruption scandal, Redflex's 2013 pre-tax profits in its North American division (its corporate parent is an Australian company) plummeted more than 33 percent—from $3.4 million in the first half of 2013 to $2.28 million in the second half.

Pity for O'Malley that the "extremely careless" defense had not yet been invented.


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by jmorris on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:01PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:01PM (#401990)

    Good grief, they are jailing Chicago public officials for only stealing $2M now? If that became a trend Chicago would be leaderless. The anarchists would finally get their real world field trial of their philosophy I guess, doubt anyone would like the outcome though.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @08:57PM (#402006)

    That wasn't enough to bribe the State AG to drop the investigation?

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:53AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday September 15 2016, @05:53AM (#402145) Homepage Journal

    No need to worry for the poor government officials just yet. He's just a private citizen who worked for the company. No one who worked for the city government has yet been found guilty; only one person (a "former" official) has even been charged.

    It wouldn't surprise me if no one currently working for the government is ever found guilty. This *is* Chicago, after all...

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.