Cicero school board chief doesn’t recall chat with biker gang pal
By STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter May 10, 2011 5:38PM
Jeff Pesek, president of the Morton District 201 High School Board, at a board meeting last month at Morton West High School. | Keith Hale~Sun-Times
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Updated: August 25, 2011 12:31AM
A Cicero school board president says he has no recollection of a conversation with a childhood friend, who’s an Outlaw motorcycle gang member, in which the gang member worries that he’s going to be arrested for a mob-ordered bombing that gutted a Berwyn business.
The conversation became public this year after the FBI secretly recorded it as part of a criminal investigation into the Outlaw gang member, Mark Polchan, and put excerpts of it into an affidavit.
In his first detailed public statement since the Sun-Times reported on the conversation last month, school board President Jeff Pesek, 38, said he has no memory of the July 12, 2007, conversation between him and Polchan in Polchan’s pawnshop in Cicero.
After the Sun-Times report, Cicero and Berwyn parents called for Pesek’s resignation last month, but the Morton High School District 201 board re-elected him board president. Pesek has been praised for his leadership and points to the district’s first balanced budget in decades, its fiscal transparency and its long-term financial planning as among his achievements.
In the secretly recorded conversation, Polchan is concerned that one of his partners in the bombing had been arrested, but Polchan hadn’t.
“Why didn’t they indict everybody at once,” Polchan asked, according to the transcript. “They know me absolutely. . . . I cannot believe they indicted the guy and not f------ drag me into it.”
Pesek asked about the charges lodged against the man, according to the transcript.
“Just selling material?” he asked. “Bomb-making material?”
This week, Pesek said: “I got to tell you I do not recall that conversation at all happening.”
Court records and testimony tie Pesek and his brother, Craig, to Polchan and a major convicted drug dealer, Enrique “Henry” Rendon.
Polchan was convicted last year for taking part in the bombing.
Pesek has been charged with no wrongdoing. He said he had no idea until his childhood friend was arrested a few years ago that Polchan, who grew up on the same block as him in Cicero, belonged to the Outlaw motorcycle group.
“I knew that he rode motorcycles,” Pesek said. “To be honest with you, I didn’t know anything about the Outlaws.”
The Mark Polchan he knew was a family man, Pesek said.
Pesek also said he has had no financial dealings with Rendon, the drug dealer, despite Rendon’s court testimony that he was a silent investor in two businesses with Pesek, a downtown bar called Ontourage, and a Cicero bar.
Pesek said he grew up with Rendon and was close friends with Rendon’s brother. Pesek said he did not initially know Rendon was a drug dealer but at some point heard rumors he was. Rendon denied it. When the rumors persisted, Pesek said he dropped Rendon as an acquaintance, but Pesek could not recall when that occurred.
Two separate, unrelated civil lawsuits from 2005 depict Rendon and Pesek as financial partners in potential ventures, but Pesek denied it. saying he was never involved in any deals with Rendon.
“If I had to make a guess, people were misrepresenting the truth,” Pesek said.
Polchan routinely sold hot merchandise out of his pawn shop, and Pesek, who testified at Polchan’s trial, acknowledged buying numerous items from Polchan, including flat screen televisions.
Pesek said in the interview this week he had no idea Polchan sold stolen goods.
At Polchan’s trial, Pesek testified he always paid cash for the items and that Polchan had prices better than Wal-Mart.
At one point, Pesek went to buy a television, but Polchan told him he couldn’t help him.
Polchan “just said the guy that was bringing them got busted,” Pesek testified at trial.
Pesek said in the interview this week he did not assume the man was busted for having stolen merchandise but for some other offense.
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