Ex-city worker gets 5 months in prison

Richard Coveliers, a former city sewer inspector, had secretly owned Cayla Trucking Inc., a firm that did work with the city's Hired Truck program, and passed bribes on to First Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak to secure the business.

"I'll think about the decision I made the rest of my life," Coveliers told a judge Tuesday, choking back tears.

As a city worker, Coveliers was banned from doing business with the city, so he put the firm in his sister's name. In 2002, Cayla Trucking had six trucks in the Hired Truck Program and made $463,000, the fourth largest vendor for the water department at the time.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins said Coveliers initially lied to investigators about his role with the firm. But Coveliers then cooperated and told investigators about patronage abuses in the water department, where a house drain inspector position went to an unqualified trucker, Collins said. Prosecutors brought that charge against former Daley patronage chief Robert Sorich and a jury convicted him of that count last month.

Coveliers' wife, Debra, also was charged in the Hired Truck scandal and convicted last year of witness tampering. She was sentenced to six months home confinement after pleading guilty to the charge.

'This was a crime of greed'

U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan sentenced Coveliers to five months in prison and five months home confinement, plus two years supervised release.

"This was a crime of greed," Der-Yeghiayan said. "You used the corrupt system from the inside and out for your financial gain."

nkorecki@suntimes.com