The onetime chief of staff to Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI, three weeks after his tenure at the school system suddenly ended.
Pedro Soto, 45, also admitted in his plea agreement to providing inside information to an unnamed associate of a lobbyist regarding a cleaning contract with the school system that was worth $1 billion in 2016. That associate promised benefits to Soto, the feds say.
Federal prosecutors charged Soto late last month. He faces zero to six months in jail, according to federal sentencing guidelines.
When the feds asked Soto late last year about that unnamed person, they said Soto told them the person “would want to get information, but I don’t think I gave him anything” and that he never called the person to offer it.
The feds say that was a lie.
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The unnamed person the feds asked about worked with a lobbyist for one of the companies who bid for the lucrative contract. The feds did not name that company, either. But records show only one of them, GCA Educational Services Central States Inc., disclosed a registered lobbyist, Ted Brunsvold.
Brunsvold could not be reached for comment Friday.
The bidding process at issue began in April 2016 — just six months after former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty in a bribery scheme that landed her in federal prison and left the school system reeling.
Soto served as Jackson’s right-hand man until last month. In a letter to CPS staff after prosecutors charged Soto, Jackson said she had learned of the pending charge days earlier and accepted Soto’s resignation. She described it as “a deeply disappointing matter that I take incredibly seriously” and called it a “stunning betrayal of trust and an immense failure of judgment and character.”
Jackson said the case had been referred to the CPS inspector general’s office, and that a preliminary review showed Soto’s actions did not influence the awarding of any contracts or services.
In April 2016, CPS was soliciting bids to expand the private management of cleaning and facilities services to all of its schools. Soto was on the evaluation committee that examined the bids at the time. The custodial management work was awarded to Aramark and SodexoMAGIC, partly owned by former NBA star Magic Johnson, which divided most of the hundreds of school buildings by geographic zones.
In 2018, as CPS prepared for the last phase of privatization, school officials recommended awarding a $60.6 million three-year contract to GCA Educational Services Central States Inc. to manage 34 schools but yanked the measure during a Chicago Board of Education meeting hours before a vote to approve it.
CPS later said it killed the deal because GCA’s parent company had a poor track record of keeping janitors safe from sexual harassment and assault at work.
Federal prosecutors say the FBI later became interested in Soto’s contacts with the unnamed individual who worked with the lobbyist for a company that bid on the custodial work. They said that, on Dec. 17, 2019, Soto lied four times when asked about the bidding.
Asked whether he ever spoke on the phone with that person about “what was going on inside CPS” regarding the contract, they say Soto told them that person “would want to get information, but I don’t think I gave him anything.”
Asked whether that person dug for information, authorities say Soto told them he would “just listen” to that person but that he wasn’t persuaded to do anything.
Had he given the person inside information about the bidding? They say Soto responded, “I don’t think that I have, no. I would — I don’t think so.”
And asked whether he ever called the person to say he had information, they say Soto told them he didn’t think that happened.
