CHICAGO — Former Teamsters union boss John Coli Sr. once basked in a reputation as a tough-nosed, nationally known organized labor figure, rubbing elbows with the state’s political and business elite, running up $15,000 tabs at Chicago steakhouses, and cruising around the Mediterranean on other people’s yachts.
But Coli cut a different figure in a federal courtroom in Chicago on Wednesday, where he quietly apologized before being sentenced to 19 months in federal prison for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash payments from the head of a Chicago film studio.
In rejecting defense calls for probation, U.S. District Chief Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer said “there is a price we all pay for public corruption,” particularly in the context of a labor union where conflicts of interest can easily undermine efforts to advance otherwise worthy causes.
Too often, Pallmeyer said, when people learn that somebody in a position of trust is on the take, their response isn’t “Shame on them.”
“Instead, you get the response, ‘Where’s mine?’ ” Pallmeyer said, invoking the alternate motto of Chicago proposed by famed newspaper columnist Mike Royko. “That it’s the way of the world to take advantage and line one’s own pockets so long as nobody finds out about it. That is damaging to the fabric of society in a really significant way.”
Coli, 63, who pleaded guilty in July 2019 to one count each of receiving illegal payments and filing a false income tax return, sat at the defense table throughout the proceedings dressed in a dark suit and wearing a face mask. He was much thinner than the last time he appeared in court, and his attorneys said he’s in ill health.
Before the sentence was handed down, Coli apologized to the Teamsters and his family, saying in a measured voice, “I know that I have let them down.”
“It’s been difficult to come to terms with the wrong I have done, but pleading guilty and cooperating are the first steps,” Coli said.
Coli was charged in July 2017 with shaking down Cinespace Studio President Alex Pissios, who made secret recordings of Coli threatening a union strike on set if Pissios failed to pay him $25,000 per quarter. In all, he collected $325,000 between 2014 and 2016 as part of the illegal arrangement, according to court records.
When he pleaded guilty two years later, Coli struck a once-unthinkable cooperation agreement with federal investigators, helping them secure a ghost-payrolling conviction against state Sen. Thomas Cullerton in exchange for a break on his own sentence.
The news of Coli’s cooperation made waves in Illinois political circles since Coli had 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, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and former Gov. Pat Quinn.
It also marked an abrupt turnabout for Coli, who for years enjoyed an old-school image of an immovable force, thumbing his nose at investigators and rivals alike.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Coli’s attorney, Joseph Duffy, said that Coli’s work on behalf of prosecutors was “quite extensive and lengthy” and included testifying before a federal grand jury.
“He’s cooperated against anyone they’ve asked him to,” Duffy said.
But in the end, Cullerton was the only one publicly charged due to Coli’s assistance to the government. And Assistant U.S. Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu told the judge that prosecutors were already aware of Cullerton’s ghost-payrolling before Coli flipped.
“It wasn’t a case where Mr. Coli was bringing us information we didn’t have already,” Bhachu said.
Cullerton was sentenced in June to a year in federal prison for pocketing more than a quarter of a million dollars in salary and benefits from the Teamsters with Coli’s blessing, despite doing little or no work.
Prosecutors wrote in a recent filing that Coli deserved 19 months behind bars, saying his extortion was “prolonged, calculated and deliberate,” involving regular payments from Cinespace in “envelopes bursting with wads of cash.”
Coli also “milked his position as a union official” in other ways over the years, netting him more than a half a million dollars in benefits, including meals in Las Vegas, box seats at baseball and football games and the use of a yacht and two-person crew to cruise around Italy, according to prosecutors.
“This was not some technical violation of the statute; Coli did not receive small knickknacks, chocolates or promotional products,” Bhachu wrote in the filing. “The picture painted here is not of a moment’s indiscretion, or one bad decision, but rather a conscious, prolonged effort by defendant Coli to exploit his position of trust for private gain.”
His attitude was evident in the secret conversations recorded by Pissios, including one where he was asked if he’d told anyone about the arrangement they had.
“Are you crazy? There is nobody,” Coli responded, according to a transcript filed by prosecutors. “Never. My kids, my wife. Nobody. ... You can cut my fingers off, I wouldn’t talk.”
Later, when Pissios told Coli that others at the studio were balking at the payments, he threatened to call a strike, according to court records.
“We’ll shut it down tomorrow,” Coli said on one recording. “I will (expletive) have a picket line up here and everything will stop.”
Duffy said that while Coli regrets making the statement, it was simply “empty bluster and bravado,” since Pissios — who agreed to cooperate after being confronted by unrelated wrongdoing of his own — was well aware that Coli had no authority to call a strike without union approval.
In asking the judge for a sentence of probation with a period of home incarceration, Duffy and co-counsel Robin Waters said prosecutors hadn’t fully taken into account Coli’s passionate stewardship of his union or his advocacy for the growth of the film industry in the city.
Duffy also said Wednesday that the payments from Cinespace began not because Coli “had his hand out” in some extortion plot, but as “a show of gratitude” from the studio’s founder, Nick Mirkopoulos, for Coli’s role in lobbying Emanuel, Madigan, Quinn and others to get millions of dollars in state grants approved.
Since then, Cinespace, which has hosted a string of hit TV shows such as “Chicago Fire,” “The Chi” and “Empire,” has generated tens of millions in revenue, wages, and other economic benefits for the state, Duffy said.
Duffy also said Coli took measures to repair the Teamsters’ bad national reputation for bigoted and sexist practices, placing women in leadership positions for the first time and putting an end to the “horrible racist attitude” within the union toward minority parking attendants.
“This is a man who did good,” Duffy said of Coli and his efforts. “This is a man who was talented. This is a man who was trying to do good for people and society.”
Pallmeyer did not seem that impressed.
“Treating Black employees as though they’re human beings is not an extraordinary gesture,” she said. “It ought to be baseline.”
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