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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.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday September 15 2016, @03:37AM
Yes, refuse to pay can be the best way to fight these things. Far less effort to do that than go to the trouble of making time for a hearing. I realized any system they set up can't help but be biased in their favor. However, the car was not mine, it was my father's, and he didn't want to fight at all. They don't know or care who is actually driving, they only care about who owns the car. Just another unfair feature of this system. It was only when I came up with the data on the yellow light that he agreed to try a hearing. After losing, I urged him not to pay, but he didn't want trouble, and was afraid to fight that way.
Refusing to pay is how I finally ended up beating outrageous medical bills from an emergency room visit. I tried to go through their dispute system, tried to get them to explain their prices. And no one could. Spent way too much time arguing with them. Well, if I don't understand a bill, and they can't explain it, I'm certainly not going to pay it. Told the medical providers that I was NOT going to pay $300 for a $2 bag of saline solution, and $450 for one aspirin. They turned it over to a collection agency who harassed me with phone calls for a while. Tried to call in ways that wouldn't give me a chance to tell them not to call me, you know, ring once and hang up before I can answer, or play a recorded message. But they finally gave up.
What about your credit rating? Were they able to trash that? That's what they threatened to do to me, of course, but so far, the unpaid medical bill doesn't seem to have hurt my rating at all.