A federal jury Monday found former Chicago Water Commissioner John Bolden guilty of two counts of filing false tax returns, but rejected claims by the government that he had extorted bribes from an undercover mole.
Although Bolden, 58, still faces prison for not reporting and paying taxes on the $2,000 in bribes he conceded that he had accepted from the undercover agent, the split verdict acquitted him on the more serious charges of conspiracy to extort, attempted extortion and mail fraud.
In delivering the verdict, the jury apparently accepted the argument of the defense that Bolden was an unwitting dupe of a government sting operation, enticed into corruption by the government and a dishonest politician already on the take.
The federal district court jury began deliberations in the case last Wednesday, but because of a juror’s prior commitment, jury members were given a long weekend beginning Friday before returning to deliberations on Monday morning. By 11 a.m., the jury informed the judge it had reached a verdict.
The former Chicago water commissioner had been a fairly low-profile member of Mayor Richard Daley’s cabinet before his name hit the front pages when he resigned shortly after news of the Operation Silver Shovel federal probe broke.
Five days after the news came out that the Justice Department had used an undercover “mole” to investigate corruption in government, Bolden resigned his $102,792-a-year post and reportedly admitted to Daley that he had taken several thousand dollars.
During the trial, Bolden’s attorneys again conceded that the soft-spoken former city government official had taken money from an undercover FBI agent who posed as an associate of John Christopher, a crooked waste hauler who had turned government informant.
But, those attorneys said, Bolden was entrapped by an elaborate government sting operation involving hidden recordings of the actual bribe transactions.
