To understand the fall of Jerry Cosentino is to know Jimmy Wells. Now in federal custody while he awaits trial on fraud and income tax charges, Wells, according to those who knew him well, was the free-wheeling fat man, a schemer the likes of which Chicago had not seen since the salad days of ”Yellow Kid” Weil.
A native of Oak Park, Wells, 51, flopped around Chicago politics and assorted business ventures until the early 1970s, when he took over his family`s sleepy West Side trucking business, Wells Forwarding Co., and made a fortune with it. He was a genius with numbers and as savvy a fleet operator as there was anywhere.
”Jimmy always understood the basics of the trucking business,” a former associate says. ”He was an expert at it. He could come in your office, look over the books for a few hours and come up with a complete strategy on what to do, how to get out of any problems you had.”
He was known to fellow truckers and acquaintances as ”The Wizard.”
But it was Wells` leap off of the loading docks and into the Chicago banking and real estate scene that put him in the headlines and in the sights of federal investigators. It started in 1986 when he took control of Cosmopolitan Bank. Five reckless, roller-coaster years later, Cosmopolitan was all but bankrupt, Wells was in federal custody and the careers of several associates were badly damaged. Among them was that of Jerry Cosentino.
At 5 foot 8 and 300 pounds, Wells was, according to one close observer,
”charming, beguiling, venal and gluttonous.” He was a combination of Babe Ruth and Ivan Boesky, and the stories of his schemes and appetites are endless. In 1982 he bought a Near West Side warehouse that had so many costly environmental citations that the seller actually ended up paying Wells to assume ownership. A short time later the warehouse went up in flames, and Wells collected an insurance claim of nearly $1 million.
After business hours, Wells consumed enormous quantities of food and drink for hours at a sitting and entertained his table with a hilarious, ribald stream of non-stop patter. At banquets, where he usually underwrote his entourage, his table found him funnier by far than anything coming from the podium. When he was not chauffeured around town in a limousine, he drove a Rolls-Royce. His wife, the former Mary Jane Finkl, matched him in girth and mirth. The doorways of their Wellington Avenue condominium were widened to accommodate them.
No detail about Jimmy Wells seems too far-fetched, even those concerning his taste in renovation. According to a former acquaintance, Wells` second-story office above his wife`s family-owned delicatessen at Milwaukee and Ogden was elaborately rehabbed so that Wells, as he sat behind is desk, loomed above his visitors.
”It was designed to make you feel small,” the acquaintance says.
Yet the office design paled in comparison to Wells` private lounge and bath in the rear. Besides a personal shower stall with multiple showerheads, Wells designed a linen closet that served as an escape hatch to a secret, soundproof room one story up. Any dallying visitor Wells did not want to have discovered could simply flee to the closet, scale the staggered shelves, and slip into the attic refuge until the coast was clear.
Wells met Cosentino on a Florida beach when Wells walked up and introduced himself. Cosentino had heard of him, knew he had run for alderman once and that he was in the trucking business. The two of them and their wives got together for dinner that night, and a friendship was formed.
One of the things Jimmy Wells always said about the trucking business was, ”Don`t fall in love with your iron.” Trucks are ”iron,” and they are liabilities, Wells maintained. Leasing and other non-ownership operating methods were the only way to stay alive in the business after deregulation. You had to be totally unemotional about the business. In trucking, he insisted, it is always ”you” and ”them,” never ”us.” When things go bad, you cut your losses and get out. Investing millions in iron, in a spanking new fleet as Cosentino did in 1983, was something Jimmy Wells would never have done. And a few years later, Wells, having become a high-flying banker and financier, was there with a way out for Cosentino.
After four years out of politics, Cosentino went after the treasurer`s post in 1986. Again he was an outsider, running against Jim Donnewald, a protege of Alan Dixon`s. Again he stumped the state, this time handled by Joe Novak, a behind-the-scenes organizer out of Eddie Vrdolyak`s 10th Ward organization. Novak, his wife and Cosentino traveled all over Illinois putting Cosentino`s candidacy in front of the voters.
”Jerry always came across as a real populist,” Novak says. ”He was a regular guy. He looks like one and talks like one. He was brutally honest. When he likes somebody, he says it. If he doesn`t like somebody, he says that too.”
Novak`s strategy was for Cosentino to campaign vigorously on Chicago`s black radio and never keep his candidate out of live situations.
”He was a kind of guy you put on live shows and just let go,” Novak says. ”He was great.”
Again Cosentino won, bucking statewide Republican victories, and reseated himself in the treasurer`s office. His term went smoothly, and in 1990, though he was not in the best of health, he decided to run for secretary of state, an office he had always coveted.
His opponent was George Ryan, and in a campaign that many felt was one of the messiest in Illinois history, Cosentino was bloodied like never before. Ryan zeroed in on two areas: Cosentino`s ties to Cosmopolitan Bank, into which as state treasurer he had deposited millions in state funds and from which he had received campaign donations and business loans, and the revelation that in 1985 Cosentino had moved his trucking firm into a motel room in Indiana allegedly to avoid paying higher Illinois worker`s compensation fees, a charge Cosentino steadfastly denies.
As for his loans from Cosmopolitan-for which he paid three interest points over the prime rate-Cosentino argued that there was no correlation between them and state deposits in the bank. He also maintained that Cosmopolitan had offered to lower rates on consumer credit cards, something Cosentino felt strongly about.
As for his trucking firm`s office in Indiana, he said that was done because Fast Motor did a lot of business in northeast Indiana and hired several drivers there.
Joe Novak, who had not been hired on for the secretary-of-state campaign, saw both charges as devastating to Cosentino.
”Suddenly he crossed the line between being seen as a friend of labor and the working man and being a cool businessman,” Novak says.
Cosentino went on the defensive, denying that his firm`s move to Indiana was a tax dodge and insisting that as state treasurer he treated Cosmopolitan no differently than he did any other bank. The public wasn`t buying it, however, and his large lead in the polls shrank to almost nothing. Wherever he turned, he was dogged about his ties to Wells and Cosmopolitan. Tribune and Sun-Times reporters scrambled to uncover wrongdoing and finally revealed some $400,000 in questionable loans he had received for Fast Motor. When appearing in front of the newspapers` editorial boards, an embattled Cosentino responded with an impassioned and profane denial.
In the meantime, his health put him in the hospital for three months during the campaign. A bone spur in his neck had broken loose and was pressing against his spine, resulting in paralysis in his right hand and both legs. An operation and weeks of rehabilitation put him back in the campaign hunt, but his diabetes and heart ailments plagued him every hour of the day. There were many who felt he never should have run.
His family, however, was solidly behind him.
”Should he have run?” says his son Carrie. ”Yes. Because he wanted to.”
And, of course, he lost. In defeat, he returned to a failed business-Fast Motor Service was bankrupt, and a sale of its assets to a Missouri trucker fell through-and a barrage of federal investigators probing Wells and the impending Cosmopolitan Bank failure.
Few people know the trucking business from the inside, and hence, few know what Cosentino was up against with the collapse of Fast Motor Service. Listen to a fellow owner, a veteran Chicago hauler who knew both Wells and Cosentino and who insisted on anonymity, and you get the picture.
”Trucking`s a hard business. There is a slim profit margin. You do anything you can to make things work. Workman`s compensation rates skyrocketed with (Gov. Dan) Walker, and every trucking outfit was looking for ways to get around it. Setting up in Indiana like Cosentino did? We all did it. There`s a huge gray area in regulations, and you do things that might or might not be illegal just to save a buck. For example, truckers always put their personal cars on the fleet rolls to avoid sales tax. They all did it. Jimmy Wells saved $8,000 by putting his Rolls on the fleet.
”When Jerry hit hard times, he did two things wrong: He didn`t listen to Jimmy Wells, and then he did listen to him. When he got in trouble, he turned to `The Wizard.`
”Wells told him to declare bankruptcy or sell the firm for a dollar. But Jerry couldn`t do that. He was too big. He joined the associations, held political office. It was too much of an embarrassment to admit that his firm was washed up.
”You have to remember that Cosentino is a guy who didn`t belong to the Lucky Sperm Club. He didn`t inherit it. He wasn`t given a thing. He did it all himself. He made his company, and that made it hard to lose it.
”His second mistake was taking Wells up on the loans. He was vulnerable. Few people in this world are as smart as Jimmy Wells. Hey, would you have done it? Would I? Put yourself in Cosentino`s shoes. He was losing his business. He was trying anything to save it.”
In early spring of 1991, the Cosmopolitan/Wells/Cosentino fiasco came to a head. The bank was declared insolvent, and Wells was charged with bank fraud and federal income tax violations. He fled the city and was seized in Florida with several passports and several hundred thousand dollars in cash in his possession. Cosentino was charged with defrauding two banks, including Cosmopolitan, of $1.5 million in a check- kiting scheme. It was a Jimmy Wells` scheme through and through, aimed at floating checks between Cosentino`s different trucking businesses in an effort to keep Fast Motor Service in business.
On April 30 Cosentino pleaded guilty to a single charge of bank fraud and agreed to testify at Wells` trial in October. He was released on $4,500 bond. Although Cosentino could face up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, prosecutors and defense attorneys have said they will recommend a sentence of 12 to 15 months in federal prison. Citing Cosentino`s ill health, defense attorney Jeffrey Steinback has said he will urge the judge to reduce the sentence even further.
Along with the headlines the fall of yet another public official came the reactions of friends and former associates. To a man, they lamented Cosentino`s fate.
”News of it made us so sad,” a former campaign worker says. ”Sometimes you know a guy is an s.o.b., and you`re secretly glad, but not with Jerry. He was a really decent guy.”
Says John Walsh: ”Jerry had never been in trouble in his life. He was raised in a neighborhood where everybody was into jackpots, and he stayed away from them. His biggest dread was missing a payroll.”
His son Carrie speaks for the family when he says, ”No one expected any allegation like this against my father. We all hurt for him. My mother especially knows how proud he was of his political life, and she feels the drop in his self-esteem. He`s a very proud man, but I know that he wants to tell the people of Illinois he`s sorry. He`s sorry for poor judgment and his carelessness in choosing friends.”
”I plead guilty to a felony,” Cosentino said. ”There`s no way to eradicate the stain.”
And with that, he begins an impassioned statement:
”My company was guilty of what they charged me for, and as leader of the company, I had to pay the consequences. I don`t feel like the government is beating me up. I`m not blaming anybody. It was a bad business decision, that`s what it was. I`m not blaming Jim Wells or anybody else.
”That`s my only regret, that things didn`t work out. And, of course, what my wife has gone through. We lost our home, we lost everything we had because I didn`t try to shelter it. I didn`t shelter anything. If I borrowed something and had to put my home up, I put my home up. So we`ve been married 39 years, and one of the things that I`m sorry about is what I have to put her through. After having five kids and going through everything-we had a hellish life starting the trucking company-now she should be able to sit back and relax. But we still got pressure on us to make a living.
