Longtime Chicago union boss John Coli Sr. doesn’t necessarily seem like the type to cooperate with authorities.
A politically connected and nationally known fixture in the Teamsters, Coli once told a lawyer in sworn testimony to “go f— yourself.” He dodged controversy for years — from suspicious appointments to state boards to allegations of organized crime ties — often accusing his accusers of using overzealous investigative tactics.
And in 2016, Coli was caught on an undercover FBI recording urging the firing of an executive at a West Side film studio who was purportedly balking at paying him extortion money.
“You can’t have a f—– rat in the woodpile,” Coli allegedly said to the head of the studio who was wearing a hidden wire. “You can’t have a whistleblower here.”
On Tuesday, however, Coli became an unlikely cooperator in his own right.
In pleading guilty to corruption charges stemming from the extortion scheme, Coli agreed to cooperate with federal authorities in any ongoing investigations, including “complete and truthful testimony” in any criminal or civil proceeding.
The news of Coli’s cooperation is sure to cause waves amid Illinois political circles, since Coli for years used his national position with the Teamsters to hold sway with some of the city and state’s most powerful elected officials — including longtime House Speaker Michael Madigan, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, ex-Gov. Pat Quinn and his successor, Bruce Rauner.
In April, it was revealed that the same federal grand jury that indicted Coli had subpoenaed the Illinois Senate for documents on state Sen. Tom Cullerton’s reimbursements for “travel, lodging, meals, cellular phone and vehicle allowances” from Feb. 1, 2013, through March 3, 2016.
Cullerton, a former Villa Park village president and Teamsters organizer who has served in the Senate since 2013, has not been charged with wrongdoing. He declined to comment when contacted by the Tribune earlier this year.
In a hearing Tuesday before U.S. District Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, Coli pleaded guilty to one count each of receiving illegal payments and filing a false income tax return, admitting he extorted a total of $325,000 from Individual 1 — previously identified by the Tribune as Cinespace Studio President Alex Pissios.
According to Coli’s 26-page plea agreement, between 2014 and 2017, Pissios paid the bribes through a series of $25,000 quarterly payments that Coli failed to report on his tax returns, cheating the Internal Revenue Service and state of Illinois out of about a combined $117,000 in tax revenue.
The agreement calls for a sentence of up to about three years in prison, but if Coli cooperates fully, prosecutors will recommend he be given about half that time.
The Tribune reported in 2017 that federal authorities made secret recordings at Cinespace’s facilities as part of the investigation, capturing numerous conversations between Coli and Pissios.
In October 2016, the FBI directed Pissios to tell Coli that other executives were questioning the payments and threatening to fire him if he didn’t stop, according to the agreement.
Coli responded by threatening to have his workers strike, according to the document.
“We’ll shut it down tomorrow,” prosecutors quoted Coli as saying. “I will f—— have a picket line up here and everything will stop.”
Later in the conversation, Coli suggested that Pissios should “get rid” of the studio’s chief financial officer because of the flap, explaining that there were “things that are gonna come up that you’re gonna have to deal with,” according to the plea.
Records show the CFO of Cinespace is Mark Degnen, whose wife, Bridget, is a Cook County commissioner.
Several weeks later, Pissios informed Coli as part of the undercover ruse that he’d told another executive at the studio about the threat of a strike and the executive had agreed the extortion payments should continue.
“Perfect,” Coli responded, according to the plea agreement.
In addition to the extortion plot, Coli received more than half a million dollars in perks over the years related to his position with the union that he never reported to regulators as required by law, according to the plea deal.
Among the benefits were meals at “fine dining establishments” in Las Vegas and other cities, free tickets to professional baseball and football games, and the use of a yacht with a two-person crew by Coli and his guests, including “an excursion in and around Italy,” according to the plea agreement.
In addition to Coli’s ongoing cooperation, the plea agreement calls for him to forfeit $325,000 and also pay his back taxes.
Pallmeyer set a hearing for Oct. 31 to assess the status of Coli’s case. No sentencing date was set.
Dressed in a dark suit and bright red tie, Coli spoke only a few times in court. When the judge asked him what he did for a living, he said in a deep voice, “The only work I’ve done is for the Teamsters Union, which I retired from a couple years ago.”
He later walked out of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse without comment.
The Coli family has been active in politics for years and is well-known for spreading around union cash to candidates. Coli and his relatives have also been accused in civil lawsuits in both state and federal court of running the union like a racket — accusations they have vehemently denied.
In a 2011 deposition stemming from one suit, Coli was asked under oath why so many of his relatives were allowed to control the union’s lucrative pension funds.
“For the record, go f— yourself,” Coli answered, according to a transcript in court records.
“So I take it you’re refusing to answer that question?” the plaintiff’s attorney asked.
“I think the answer speaks for itself,” Coli replied.
A judge later dismissed that lawsuit.
Coli was an early backer of Emanuel in his first run for mayor at a time when Emanuel, viewed as a centrist Democrat, had very little union backing.
The Teamsters contributed $35,000 to Emanuel’s 2011 campaign, including $15,000 for polling. The union stepped up even more to back the mayor’s bid for a second term, contributing $134,700, state campaign finance records show.
Once Emanuel was elected, a representative from the union was appointed to the mayoral transition team, and Coli was named to the exclusive group of campaign donors and community leaders in charge of planning the mayor’s first inaugural.
Two months after Emanuel first took office, the Tribune detailed how the mayor had demanded greater accountability and financial sacrifice from Chicago’s labor unions — except for the Teamsters. The story detailed how Coli’s union spoke out in favor of the mayor’s economic plans — even those that stood to send public jobs to private contractors.
The controversies dogging Coli go back years. In 2003, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed Coli to the Illinois Tollway board, only to have Coli quickly withdraw his name amid questions about $100,000 in Teamsters campaign contributions to Blagojevich and potential conflicts of interest.
Within a few months, Blagojevich quietly named Coli to two other state boards with less direct impact on Teamsters affairs, the Tribune reported.
In 2005, the Tribune reported the FBI was investigating whether the Coli-led Teamsters siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from a union benefit plan that provided dental care to Chicago-area undertakers and valets.
That probe had been sparked by an internal union report raising concerns about payments from the plan going to organized crime figures.
No charges were ever filed.
In 2015, then-Gov. Rauner appointed Coli to an unpaid seat on the Illinois Labor Advisory Board. The appointment came months after the Teamsters agreed to a new contract with the Rauner administration.
