Attorney General Announces Indictment of Castle Construction
The Illinois Attorney General’s office announced yesterday that a Cook County grand jury returned an indictment for Castle Construction Co., in Markham, Il. The announcement from the AG’s office is here.
The indictment centers on an alleged scheme to defraud the City of Chicago and the CTA in two publics works contracts by concealing or misrepresenting the actual amounts of the public funds that went to minority owned businesses.
From the AG’s release:
“In January 2006, Castle Construction allegedly obtained a $9.8 million construction contract from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to upgrade bus and train washing facilities at three CTA locations. As a condition of the contract, Castle Construction agreed to employ a minority business as a subcontractor. To fulfill this condition, Castle Construction represented to the CTA that it had entered into a $2.96 million subcontract with a minority business, Mid-City. According to the indictment, the Mid-City contract was actually $550,000. Also according to the indictment, from May 2006 to May 2007, Castle Construction and Blum presented the CTA with sworn statements in which they misrepresented the amount of work that Mid-City had performed on the project. On reliance on those sworn statements and other documentation, the CTA issued checks to Castle Construction, which included payment for work supposedly done by Mid-City.”
“In March 2007, Castle Construction signed a $9 million contract with the City of Chicago Public Building Commission to construct a fire station on North Clark Street and allegedly represented that minority-owned businesses would perform 26 percent of the work on the project. According to the indictment, Castle Construction falsely stated that it had signed a $1.5 million subcontract with GAG Masonry, Inc., a minority-owned firm. In fact, Castle Construction had entered into a contract with a different, non-minority-owned business to do masonry work on the North Clark Street project. According to the indictment, during the fall of 2007, Castle Construction and Blum presented the Public Building Commission with sworn statements in which they misrepresented the amount of work that GAG Masonry had performed on the project. In reliance on those sworn statements and other documentation, the Public Building Commission issued checks to Castle Construction, which included payment for work supposedly done by GAG Masonry.”
Several other news outlets have picked up this story and are reporting on it.
