Hired Truck consultant sentenced
"This is a very clear case of the defendant doing what he could to get others to lie to the grand jury," U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle said in sentencing Sam Gammicchia. "He is not a truth teller."
Gammicchia, 62, had pleaded guilty to efforts to thwart an investigation of City Clerk James Laski, who has admitted taking payoffs in return for business in the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program.
Gammicchia told agents he once promised Laski that he would threaten to break Laski aide Michael Jones's leg and actually did warn Jones that if he talked he would have to go into the witness protection program.
Laski and Jones have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced to prison.
Gammicchia--besides being a $1,400-a-month consultant whose job included collecting campaign cash from Laski's office staffers--was also an employee at the Cook County Jail and a member of the ironworkers union.
At the sentencing, federal prosecutor Manish Shah played a tape of Gammicchia coaching Jones's wife, Tracy, on how to lie to investigators about the money she paid to get a truck into the Hired Truck Program.
Tracy Jones has been charged with no wrongdoing.
The city outsources hauling work under the program. The investigation already has shown widespread payoffs to officials by trucking operators.
"You can't say you gave cash," Gammicchia is heard saying on tape.
"Even though I did?" Mrs. Jones says.
"Right," Gammicchia says.
Gammicchia, clad in a gray business suit and black T-shirt, probably didn't help his cause much when after pleading guilty to obstruction and listening to the tape he told Norgle he counseled Mrs. Jones not to lie.
Norgle stared at him, apparently dumbfounded for a moment.
"Under oath you're saying you told these people not to lie--that's what you're telling me?" Norgle said.
"Yes, Sir," Gammicchia said. "I wasn't sure what was going on. I was just trying to keep friendship together."
He said that in a portion of the conversation that Mrs. Jones taped while wearing a hidden wire he urged her to lie, but he advised her to tell the truth in a portion of the conversation that she did not record.
"I don't believe that as far as I could throw the Dirksen Building," said the judge, referring to the 28-story, block-long federal courthouse.
Defense attorney Alexander Salerno told Norgle that his client wouldn't break anyone's leg and didn't mean it when he warned Jones that talking might mean he'd have to go into the witness protection program.
Salerno also scoffed at one federal witness's claim that Gammicchia once told him: "I would kill for Laski."
"He wouldn't kill for Laski," Salerno said. "He wouldn't hurt anybody, Judge. He is a gruff guy." But the attorney said Gammicchia is also "a sweet, kind, generous older man" whose bark was worse than his bite.
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