More than six years after the FBI knocked on his door as part of a sprawling corruption investigation, former Summit police Chief John Kosmowski was convicted by a federal jury Wednesday of taking a bribe from a local bar owner in exchange for assisting with a liquor license transfer.
The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about six hours beginning Tuesday before finding Kosmowski guilty on counts of conspiracy, bribery and obstruction of justice.
Dressed in a gray suit and striped tie, Kosmowski, 57, kept his eyes downcast at the defense table and showed no outward reaction as the verdict was read in U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger’s courtroom.
According to the U.S. attorney’s office, he faces up to 20 years in prison for the most serious charge of obstruction of justice. Bribery carries a 10-year maximum, while the conspiracy count calls for up to five years behind bars.
Seeger set a tentative sentencing date of March 27.
After the verdict, Kosmowski huddled in a conference room with relatives and his attorney for about half an hour before walking out of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse alone. After spotting two news photographers, he sped up his pace and zigzagged several times north and south on Dearborn Street in an apparent attempt to elude them.
While the charges against Kosmowski were relatively low-level, the case was an offshoot of a larger corruption probe that netted indictments against then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval and a slew of other suburban elected officials, police chiefs and political operatives on the take.
Jurors heard a number of names from that investigation during the testimony of key cooperator Bill Mundy, the former Summit public works director and “unofficial mayor” who admitted taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from developers and others seeking to do business in the town.
Among them: Omar Maani, the red-light camera company executive who also wore a wire for the FBI and allegedly paid off Mundy to buy properties in Summit, and Boris Nitchoff, the now-deceased developer who was implicated in parallel bribery investigations into former Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin and employees of the Cook County assessor’s office.
Mundy and Kosmowski were charged in an indictment in 2022 with conspiring to accept $10,000 from the owner of the Fire Station Pub in Summit in exchange for helping secure the transfer of a liquor license to a relative.
According to prosecutors, Kosmowski received the bribe payment from the owner, Kris Hodurek, in March 2017 and then gave Mundy his $5,000 cut later that day. In the meantime, Mundy called Summit Mayor Sergio Rodriguez and, with Kosmowski listening in, urged the mayor to approve the transfer, the charges alleged. Rodriguez was not charged with any wrongdoing.
Mundy secretly cooperated with the investigation and was the prosecution’s star witness against Kosmowski, testifying last week about a series of FBI wiretaps capturing them talking about the scheme.
Kosmowski’s attorneys, meanwhile, argued the money from Hodurek was a loan and that the money was paid back in full. They also told jurors they could not trust Mundy, an admitted alcoholic and drug abuser who they said was lying to get a deal from prosecutors.
In his closing argument to jurors Tuesday, defense attorney Thomas Leinenweber said it was “not normal testimony” for Mundy to get up on the witness stand and have so many problems with his memory.
“To convict John Kosmowski you have to believe Bill Mundy,” Leinenweber said. “Alcohol and cocaine has so muddled his brain that he can’t remember anything.”
Leinenweber also questioned the credibility of Hodurek, who cut a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to a separate scheme involving pandemic-related unemployment insurance fraud. Hodurek testified that he cooperated only after the FBI promised not to go after his wife and grown children.
In their testimony, Leinenweber said, Hodurek and Mundy gave widely divergent stories on how the bribe was allegedly paid, including who collected the money and where the transaction took place.
“If this was a real crime, you would think they would agree on something,” Leinenweber said. “They have shown you a messy human story, friendships, bars, cash, politics, egos, regrets. … But they have not shown you that John tried to obstruct justice.”
But Assistant State’s Attorney Jared Hasten told the jury in his closing remarks the fact the testimony by Mundy and Hodurek didn’t quite match up was actually evidence they were telling the truth.
“If they wanted to come in here and lie, their stories would be in lockstep,” Hasten said. “It means they are trying to do their best to remember and to tell the truth. … The only one lying was the defendant who was running around trying to get them to say this was a loan.”
Hasten also blasted Kosmowski’s claim that he took the loan because he was worried about making a tuition payment for his daughter’s college. Hasten pointed to evidence that Kosmowski at the time owned four homes — including two that were mortgage-free — was part-owner of a trucking firm and had recently offered to buy Mundy out of a $23,000 investment they had with Nitchoff.
During the weeklong trial, prosecutors played more than a dozen undercover recordings beginning in 2017 that captured Kosmowski and Mundy talking about the money from Hodurek, who at the time was seeking to transfer his liquor license to a relative so he could install his own gambling machines at the Fire Station Pub.
Mundy, 62, whose lengthy career in Summit and knowledge of the village’s inner workings earned him status as “unofficial mayor,” testified Wednesday that after the bribe was paid, Kosmowski met him in a cul-de-sac on Chicago’s Southwest Side and handed him a cup stuffed with $5,000 in cash.
A large chunk of Mundy’s direct testimony centered on a secretly recorded conversation with Kosmowski, his longtime friend and drinking buddy, outside a funeral home in southwest suburban Justice in 2022, more than two years after he first began cooperating with the feds.
“We had attended a wake, and on the way out, John stopped me and asked if we could have a conversation in the parking lot,” Mundy testified.
Mundy said Kosmowski wanted to go over the details of the ongoing federal investigation, which had recently heated up with a flurry of grand jury subpoenas. During the conversation, Kosmowski repeatedly “tried to classify the transaction” with Hodurek as a loan, Mundy testified.
“Kris gave me the money as a loan. I gave you $3,000 because just, in general principle, you need the money,” Kosmowski said to Mundy, who was secretly wearing a wire for the FBI.
“You think anybody’s gonna buy that?” Mundy replied. “I love you like a brother, but this is (expletive) up.”
Kosmowski, though, warned that the feds were closing in and it was important for them to be on the same page.
“There’s a statute of limitations coming up — that means that they’re going to be indicting soon,” Kosmowski said. “Here’s the thing, no matter what we say, remember this: It’s gonna be their version against ours. It always is. It was a loan from me to you. That was that.”
Mundy told the jury it was “kind of a tough conversation.”
“I think he was trying to get me to look at it his way,” Mundy testified. “I just explained that the facts are the facts … and trying to make up some story about a loan was just not gonna fly.”
In the expletive-laden conversation, Kosmowski told Mundy there was no way they could’ve helped Hodurek with any licensing because it was not in their power to do so. Kosmowski also said he suspected Hodurek was wearing a wire for the feds when he came to Kosmowski’s house the previous Thanksgiving and told him “two FBI guys” had been asking him about the money.
“I says, ‘Well, tell them you loaned me money. I paid you back, and that’s it. End of story,’” Kosmowski told Mundy on the recording.
Later, Mundy asked, “What if the (expletive) on the tape doesn’t corroborate what you just said?”
“Well, I’d like to hear the tape, because I know I never talked about money for licensing with Kris,” Kosmowski said. “I specifically remember, I says, ‘Listen, you got a problem with your licensing, you have to contact the mayor, make an appointment, and you have to ask him what you can do,’ and that was it. I says, ‘Kris, that’s out of my league. I can’t help you there.’”
Mundy testified that while it was true he and Kosmowski could not “officially” get a liquor license approved, they could — and did — pull strings with the mayor to get things done.
To bolster that point, prosecutors played a wiretapped call from 2017 in which Kosmowski and Mundy talked about the status of several taverns in Summit, including one that they wanted to see remained closed.
“Now do they know in the office not to renew his license?” Mundy said on the call. “You might want to send a memo over there when he comes in to pay for it. He shouldn’t get it.”
Kosmowski replied that he would make sure officials in Summit were aware. “(Expletive) him. He needs to be closed as far as I’m concerned,” he said on the call.
In her direct examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Ardam asked Mundy whether it was true that the money they took from Hodurek was a loan. Mundy said it was not.
So why did they help out Hodurek?
“Uh, we did it for the cash,” Mundy said. “That’s what I recall.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
