Ex-city worker gets 90 days in trucking scandal

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July 18, 2006

BY MIKE ROBINSON ASSOCIATED PRESS

A former Chicago water department worker fired for playing hooky from his job was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days for lying to FBI agents investigating the corruption-plagued Hired Truck Program.

Frank Cannatello, 31, was also fined $5,000 by federal Judge Matthew F. Kennelly and will be on probation for two years after his release.

"It's a serious crime even though its not real high up on the whole panoply of federal crimes that judges have to deal with," Kennelly said.

Cannatello had pleaded guilty to the charge.

The city outsources hauling jobs to private trucking companies under the Hired Truck Program. A federal investigation has found widespread payoffs to city officials from trucking companies in exchange for work.

Cannatello admitted lying to agents when he said he had nothing to do with FRC Trucking Co. and knew little about the program.

Prosecutors say he organized the now dissolved company and helped to run it, even though his mother was listed as the owner.

A former Cannatello co-worker, Randy Aderman, who has been cooperating with federal investigators, told prosecutors that he once served as a middleman for a bribe that Cannatello paid in exchange for hauling work.

Aderman has been sentenced to 16 months for his role in the scandal.

Cannatello says he lied to protect his mother, not to hide a payoff.

His attorney, Richard Jalovec, noted that Aderman mentioned nothing about his client the first three times he gave statements to investigators. Later, Aderman gave two different figures for the amount of the supposed bribe and was uncertain about other details, Jalovec said.

Kennelly said Cannatello's explanation of the lying could be considered reasonable although, "I suspect there's something more to it."

Cannatello was among nine water department employees who got the ax in June 2005 on orders from Mayor Richard M. Daley after it was found that they were electronically logged in as at work when they were elsewhere.

Most if not all of them were political patronage employees--including a man whose sister is married to the mayor's brother. But Jalovec said that Cannatello is "now divorced from city politics" and starting over.

He is also a distant cousin of John Cannatello, 60, of suburban Palos Park and Marco Island, Fla., who was sentenced to 27 months, fined $14,000 and ordered to forfeit $100,000 after pleading guilty to paying off city officials in exchange for hauling jobs for another trucking company.