Former Chicago Public Schools chief to plead guilty to bribery scheme
Jason Meisner and Juan Perez Jr.Contact ReportersChicago Tribune
Barbara Byrd-Bennett had been the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools less than two months when the man who helped persuade the Emanuel administration to give her the job sent an email allegedly laying out the heart of a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme.
In the December 2012 email, Gary Solomon, the owner of SUPES Academy and a consultant with long ties to the Emanuel administration, assured Byrd-Bennett that trust accounts had been set up in the names of two of her young relatives, each funded with tens of thousands of dollars, federal prosecutors alleged. The cash would be hers once she stepped down from her public post and rejoined his firm.
"It is our assumption that the distribution will serve as a signing bonus upon your return to SUPES," Solomon wrote, according to prosecutors. "If you only join for the day, you will be the highest paid person on the planet for that day."
The secret bonus was just one part of a massive scheme outlined in a criminal indictment Thursday charging Byrd-Bennett, 66, with steering no-bid contracts worth more than $23 million to SUPES in return for promises of up to $2.3 million in kickbacks, other perks and a job.
Solomon, 47, and co-owner Thomas Vranas, 34, also were criminally charged in the 23-count indictment, as was SUPES, their Wilmette-based business, and Synesi Associates, another education consulting company the two ran.
At a news conference outlining the indictment Thursday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon revealed that Byrd-Bennett is cooperating with investigators and plans to plead guilty to the charges and testify if necessary.
Fardon referred to the motive in the case as flat-out "greed," calling Byrd-Bennett "a public official who compromised her integrity … by looking to line her own pockets."
Solomon's attorney, Shelly Kulwin, also said his client did not anticipate going to trial, a signal that he likely will plead guilty as well. Kulwin said Solomon had cooperated fully with federal authorities since the beginning of the investigation, including turning over emails and other documents before they were subpoenaed.
The long-awaited indictment comes six months after CPS revealed the federal probe by divulging it had received grand jury subpoenas seeking an array of documents on the SUPES contract. Soon after, Byrd-Bennett took a paid leave of absence and then resigned in May.
While Byrd-Bennett became the public face of the scandal, the Tribune has reported previously that Solomon's ties to the Emanuel administration go back to the beginning of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's tenure in office, predating the arrival of Byrd-Bennett. In fact, Solomon helped recruit Emanuel's first schools CEO, Jean-Claude Brizard, at the request of the mayor-elect's transition team in February 2011.
Solomon went on to recommend Byrd-Bennett, who was the lead trainer at SUPES when CPS hired her as chief education officer in April 2012. Emanuel appointed her to succeed Brizard as CEO in October 2012.
The mayor's office issued a short statement after the charges were announced that did not address his administration's ties to the indicted consultant.
Following a Thursday appearance at an entrepreneurship awards banquet, Emanuel said he was "both disappointed (and) saddened by the details around the charges."
"I think when people serve the public, they should uphold the trust the public puts in them," the mayor said. "At least based on the details around the charges, that wasn't the case here."
Emanuel communications director Kelley Quinn, who was a spokeswoman at the public schools when the SUPES contract was awarded, said no one in the mayor's office has been subpoenaed in the investigation. But she declined to answer questions about if federal investigators had contacted anyone in the mayor's office or if the office had turned over any documents to them.
The contract at the heart of the indictment involved a training program for principals and other midlevel administrators that greatly expanded a pilot program from 2011. A CPS committee set up to evaluate no-bid contracts initially balked at awarding SUPES a noncompetitive deal but less than a month later approved the plan. A short time later, in October 2012, the board awarded the first $2 million contract to SUPES, records show.
Fardon said the investigation was "ongoing" but would not comment on whether anyone else would face charges.
All three individual defendants and both corporations face multiple charges of mail and wire fraud. Solomon and Vranas also face counts of bribery of a government official and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. They will be arraigned at a later date before U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang and released on their own recognizance, records show.
Much of the indictment centers on emails sent between Solomon and Byrd-Bennett that seem to make no effort to conceal the alleged kickback scheme. In one message, which she finished with a smiley-face emoticon, Byrd-Bennett implied she needed cash because she had "tuition to pay and casinos to visit," according to the charges.
"To literally set forth how the payments are going to be made going forward is strikingly inept," said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the Chicago security firm Kroll.
According to the charges, Solomon wrote an email to Byrd-Bennett in April 2012 that promised her a lucrative job with SUPES once she left CPS. She was also given meals and tickets to sporting events, and expected to be reimbursed for a holiday party she hosted for CPS personnel, according to the charges.
"When this stint at CPS is done and you are ready to … retire, we have your spot waiting for you," Solomon wrote, according to the indictment. "Hopefully with even more work and more (opportunity)."
The indictment alleged that Solomon and Vranas planned to deposit a combined $254,000 in the financial accounts of two relatives of Byrd-Bennett's — identified by sources as grandsons — as the "signing bonus" for her help in obtaining the contracts.
"They need a college fund," the charges quoted Solomon as writing in one email.
In an email to Solomon in December 2012, Byrd-Bennett asked that the amount of money deposited in each account be equal.
"I would like the flexibility to use funds for whatever reason as needed for them," the indictment quoted her as writing.
Solomon and Vranas then deposited $127,000 in each account, which was 10 percent of the gross proceeds of the original contract awarded to SUPES, the indictment alleged.
To cover up the scheme, the two consultants created a letter addressed to Byrd-Bennett that falsely claimed to terminate her consulting agreement with SUPES effective April 30, 2012, according to the charges. In pushing for the contracts for SUPES, Byrd-Bennett lied to other CPS administrators, telling them she had no financial connection with the company, the indictment alleged.
In June, the Tribune reported on emails obtained from City Hall that showed how SUPES had played up its clout with the Emanuel administration and CPS as it was pitching the principal training program.
"Working with both the Mayor's Office and the (CPS) Department of Talent and Human Resources, we have been heavily involved in recruiting the current Chief Executive Officer, both the former and current Chief Education Officer, and the current Chief of Staff," SUPES officials declared in their pitch, which was emailed to Emanuel's top education adviser, then-deputy chief of staff Beth Swanson in September 2012.
Swanson's attorney, Nancy DePodesta, has told the Tribune that Swanson was interviewed by federal authorities as a witness in the case and was not accused of any wrongdoing.
The Tribune has previously reported that a "Non-Competitive Procurement Review Committee" chaired by a district procurement executive initially rejected the principal-training contract for SUPES, citing other organizations that did the same work.
Less than a month later, however, the committee met again and reached a different conclusion, writing that "it appears to be in the best interest of CPS due to the already existing relationship between CPS and Supes." CPS immediately stopped plans to seek competitive bids for the work.
The first no-bid contract — for $2 million — was approved by the school board at its Oct. 24, 2012, meeting, the same day Byrd-Bennett took over as CEO. The committee met again and approved the no-bid status of the SUPES contract without any changes before the board approved the $20.5 million contract at its June 2013 meeting.
According to the indictment, the inspector general for the Chicago Board of Education began an internal investigation into the questionable contract later that same summer of 2013. After Solomon was informed the inspector general wanted to review his emails, he told Byrd-Bennett that he and Vranas planned to use computer software to delete their messages and told her "she needed to delete her emails as well," the indictment alleged.
Shortly after the federal investigation became public in April, board of education member Jesse Ruiz and former board Chairman David Vitale justified the board's 6-0 vote on the $20.5 million contract by saying they were following the advice of the no-bid review committee.
Speaking to reporters at his downtown offices Thursday, Kulwin said the indictment painted an unfair picture of SUPES and what it contributed to the public schools system.
"There's no question that things were done that should not have been done." Kulwin said. "(But) it paints a picture of a company and a person who did nothing for the Chicago public schools, provided no value, added no good works, and that's simply inaccurate."
Chicago Tribune's Jeff Coen, John Chase, David Heinzmann and Bill Ruthhart contributed.
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