A former high-ranking employee of Dorothy Brown was sentenced to two years in prison Thursday after prosecutors said the worker helped derail a federal investigation into a job-buying scheme at the Cook County court clerk’s office by lying to a grand jury.
A federal jury in April found Beena Patel guilty of three counts of perjury, and prosecutors have essentially blamed her for their inability to file criminal charges against Brown.
Before handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told Patel that “combating public corruption is very important . . . to me, lying in front of the grand jury, that’s even more important.”
She added that “none of this works” if people think they can get away with lying to the grand jury.
The judge also noted that “there is one person who is not here. And that would be the clerk of the court.”
“She’s not here to help you when you need help,” the judge told Patel.
Patel’s case opened the widest window so far into the investigation that led to the seizure of Brown’s cell phone in October 2015, a move that nearly derailed Brown’s political career. She overcame it and won re-election in 2016 anyway.
Brown has not been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
Still, an FBI supervisory special agent testified during Patel’s trial that an investigation of an alleged “pay-to-play operation” in Brown’s office began in spring 2014. That same year, a former clerk’s office employee, Sivasubramani Rajaram, paid $15,000 to a business owned by Brown and her husband known as Goat Masters Corp.
A short time later, Rajaram had a new job in the clerk’s office. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly called the $15,000 payment a “bribe” for a job.
Patel appeared before the secretive federal grand jury investigating Brown on Oct. 15, 2015, and again on July 14, 2016. She lied during her first appearance about her knowledge of Rajaram’s contacts with law enforcement and about the sale of fundraising tickets for Brown within the clerk’s office. During the second visit, Patel lied about efforts to help another clerk’s office worker get a promotion.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather McShain wrote in a court memo that Patel accepted the cash “bribe” from Rajaram, who at one point purportedly handed an envelope full of $5,000 cash to Patel at the Corner Bakery across from the Daley Center. But McShain said Patel gave such confusing answers to the grand jury about the episode that “it was difficult for the grand jury to credit or follow anything that she said.”
McShain wrote that Patel’s lies “directly impacted the government’s ability to charge those most culpable in the illegal activity.” A report from court personnel, quoted in a memo by Patel’s defense attorney, was more direct. It claimed her lies “affected the government’s ability to file charges against Dorothy Brown.”
Donald Angelini Jr., Patel’s defense attorney, questioned that conclusion in his memo, though. He also argued Patel has already been punished with the loss of her pension, which he expected to be suspended Nov. 7 following her last monthly payment of $7,287. Angelini asked the judge to give Patel three years of probation.
That’s the same sentence U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman handed in 2017 to Rajaram, who was also accused of lying to the grand jury and pleaded guilty. But McShain argued the judge gave Rajaram that sentence, in part, out of concern for his health.
In her memo, McShain argued that even if Patel did not see a sentence of probation as a “slap on the wrist,” the public surely would.
“A sentence of probation will send a message to future witnesses in public corruption cases that it is okay to lie under oath because, even if you get successfully prosecuted, you will still walk free,” McShain said.
