April 15--A federal judge offered a short civics lesson Tuesday as he sentenced a business owner for bribery, saying many politically connected players continue to have a "skewed" view of corruption as just part of doing business.
"It's not like the U.S. attorney's office isn't paying attention to this stuff," U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman said. "They have a whole section devoted to public corruption."
Feinerman then sentenced Ronald Garcia to three years in prison for paying a bribe of $100,000 to then-Cook County Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno as part of a scheme to obtain more county business.
Garcia, 55, who pleaded guilty in 2013 to one count of bribery, removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with a tissue as he told Feinerman he accepted responsibility for his misdeeds.
"I have let down my community, my family, especially my mother," he said. "This incident isn't who I am but who I was."
Prosecutors said Garcia and Moreno shook down an undisclosed company to use Garcia's medical equipment business as a minority subcontractor beginning in 2008.
Garcia lent $100,000 to Moreno and his wife and later forgave the mortgage loan as payment for helping him win the business, prosecutors said. He later tried to assert Moreno was repaying the loan with legal work. In 2009 Moreno paid Garcia $40,000 in an effort to conceal their scheme.
Garcia's business was ultimately paid $460,000 for work done for the unnamed company, prosecutors said.
"The defendant has a history of taking advantage of his relationship with public officials," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Stetler, who noted Garcia's company was formed the same year Moreno took office.
All of Garcia's annual income -- as much as more than a million dollars a year -- came from the county, Stetler said, and the Little Village native owned three homes, drove nice cars and had no wife or children to support.
"He didn't commit this crime because he needed to. He committed this crime because he could," Stetler said.
Garcia's attorney, Jack Rimland, said Garcia was working in corrupt times.
"For a period of time in our local government, in some instances not only was corrupt conduct permitted, but it was sometimes encouraged," he said.
In addition to the prison term, Feinerman ordered Garcia, of Homer Glen, to pay a combined $510,000 in fines, restitution and forfeiture.
"He got very wealthy from his work with Cook County over the years, a term that coincided, I don't think coincidentally, with Mr. Moreno's term in office," the judge said.
Feinerman sentenced Moreno last year to 11 years in prison while noting the brazenness of his multiple bribery schemes.
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
