CHICAGO (AP) - Former Cook County Commissioner Joseph Moreno was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $138,000 in restitution in a federal extortion and corruption case.
Moreno, 61, was charged in June 2012 along with former Chicago Alderman Ambrosio Medrano, who was sentenced last month to 10½ years in prison. Moreno agreed to a plea deal last July that had him confess to one count of conspiracy to commit extortion. Moreno served as county commissioner for 16 years until 2010.
“Mr. Moreno was not a reluctant participant in these schemes,” U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman said. “He was an eager participant.”
Feinerman said Moreno “embraced them with gusto and pursued them with vigor.”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported (https://bit.ly/NbsR20 ) that Moreno admitted taking a bribe from a company seeking to build a waste transfer station in Cicero. He also admitting getting a $100,000 mortgage on his house erased in exchange for influence in a county hospital contract.
Federal authorities also said Medrano wanted stock options in a company that was selling bandages to a Cook County hospital in addition to a payment for each bandage sold.
In the alleged Cicero scheme, Moreno is accused of using his influence to get the waste facility built, saying that it would not, in fact, be built without his help. According to court documents, Moreno suggested to a confidential informant that he wanted to be paid for his help, but he did not want to take too much.
“I don’t want to be a hog; I just want to be a pig,” he said in a secretly recorded conversation with the informant. “Hogs get slaughtered; pigs get fat.”
Moreno was ordered to begin serving his sentence April 21. He also was ordered to forfeit $100,000.
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