When the FBI confronted businessman James Weiss in October 2019 about $2,500 that had been passed along to then-state Sen. Terry Link, an agent told him bluntly, “This looks like a bribe.”
Weiss insisted that wasn’t his intention. He claimed he’d hired a consultant on behalf of his sweepstakes gaming business, Collage LLC, to help get legislation passed in Springfield. He said he had to hire her “to get Terry Link neutralized with the gaming guys.”
Trouble was, that consultant had been concocted by the FBI amid a bribery investigation that eventually led to charges against Weiss and then-state Rep. Luis Arroyo.
Now Weiss is on trial, and his attorneys increasingly found themselves grappling Monday with evidence that implicated him in the scheme, including his alleged lies to the FBI in 2019 about the consultant named Katherine Hunter.
“I talked to Katherine over the phone about engaging in the relationship and helping me,” Weiss told the FBI about the fictional consultant. “That’s all.”
FBI Special Agent Curtis Heide on Monday shared details from the witness stand about Weiss’ surprise Oct. 25, 2019 interview in Maywood near Veterans Memorial Park with Heide and FBI Special Agent Elliot Rothrock.
Before Heide took the stand, Link completed his own testimony and told jurors that Weiss had been a “party to the situation” that led him to strike an illegal deal with Arroyo.
Link, who has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns in a separate prosecution, also acknowledged Monday that he’d lied to the public about his cooperation with the FBI, which was revealed in news reports in October 2019.
Link said Monday that, “I’m cooperating with the FBI … not the Tribune or the Sun-Times or anybody else.”
It all came as the latest public corruption trial at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse appears to be nearing its end. Former Chicago Ald. Patrick O’Connor is expected to testify Tuesday. And U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger acknowledged that attorneys could make their closing arguments as soon as Wednesday.
Weiss is accused of paying $32,500 in bribes to Arroyo, a Democrat, in a bid to have legislation passed that would explicitly legalize unregulated gambling devices known as sweepstakes machines. When the legislation didn’t pass, the men allegedly turned to Link, another Democrat who had helped pass landmark gaming legislation in June 2019.
Link was also cooperating with the FBI.
Arroyo is serving a nearly five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty and admitting he’d taken bribes from Weiss. But Arroyo is not expected to testify in the trial, so federal prosecutors must meet their burden of proving Weiss’ role in the scheme without him.
Weiss’ attorneys insist that Weiss paid legitimate consulting fees to Arroyo to help block an ordinance at Chicago City Hall that would ban sweepstakes machines. They also claim Weiss was unaware of an August 2019 offer by Arroyo to bribe Link.
Federal prosecutors played for the first time Monday an audio recording of Link and Arroyo talking outside a Wendy’s restaurant in Highland Park on Aug. 2, 2019. They also played a separate surveillance video of the pair’s conversation. Link could be seen wearing a white-and-green Hawaiian shirt with his back to the camera, in front of Arroyo.
Though Weiss had been meeting with the two men inside the restaurant, he was not present for the conversation outside. That’s where Link asked Arroyo, “What’s in it for me?” Arroyo then explained that he was a “paid consultant for him” making $2,500 a month, that the same could be arranged for Link, and that payments could be made to a third party.
Link testified Monday that he understood Arroyo’s reference to “him” to mean Weiss.
Arroyo and Link met a second time at Sander’s restaurant in Skokie on Aug. 22, 2019. Shortly before they did, FBI agents gave Link the name of a fictional third party to be paid — “Katherine Hunter.” Jurors heard a recording of the meeting that then followed, in which Arroyo gave Link a $2,500 check from Weiss’ business and said “this is the jackpot.”
Link told Arroyo the check should be made out to the name the FBI agents had just given him. The monthly payments were supposed to continue for a year.
Two months later, FBI agents found another $2,500 check from Collage made out to Hunter in Link’s post-office box in Lincolnshire, along with a signed services agreement for Hunter.
The jury also saw a text exchange between Link and Weiss, in which Link asked Weiss, “Did you send me the check?” Weiss allegedly texted Link a picture of a Post-It note featuring Link’s name, phone number and post-office box.
Weiss allegedly wrote, “This is where Lou [Arroyo] told me to send it.”
Heide and Rothrock pulled Weiss’ car over in Maywood on Oct. 25, 2019. During an interview that followed, Weiss told agents that Hunter was a consultant from Winnetka that he’d spoken to briefly on the phone. He told agents he “knew that Katherine was going to get” the Aug. 22, 2019 check, even though agents had given that name to Link right before the meeting.
“Did you know that ahead of time?” Heide asked.
“Yes, I did,” Weiss said.
“How’d, how’d you, how’d you know that?” Rothrock asked.
“Louie [Arroyo] told me,” Weiss said.
