By Nick Gale, WLS-AM News
(CHICAGO) A Willowbrook woman has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for scheming to help a contractor falsely satisfy its female hiring requirement for city of Chicago construction projects.
As the owner of a certified Women’s Business Enterprise, Elizabeth Perino allowed her company to be claimed as a subcontractor on city projects so that the general contractor could satisfy its requirement to assign a portion of the work to female-owned businesses. Perino falsified paperwork to conceal the fact that her business, Perdel Contracting Co., would perform no actual work on the projects. As a result of Perino’s fraud, Perdel expected to receive payment equivalent to a percentage of the work that Perdel fraudulently claimed to have performed.
A jury last year convicted Perino, 62, of Willowbrook, on three counts of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud. U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman imposed the sentence Thursday in federal court in Chicago.
A city of Chicago ordinance establishes an overall goal of awarding at least 5% of total annual funding of all city contracts to WBEs. For contracts with values exceeding $10,000, each contractor has to commit a certain percentage of labor to WBEs, either as a joint venture or subcontractor, or by purchasing goods or services from a WBE. In addition to being a WBE, Lockport-based Perdel, which specialized in concrete and carpentry work, also qualified to participate in city projects as a certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise.
Evidence at Perino’s trial revealed that Perino and a co-worker agreed to act as a “pass-through” WBE/DBE on two city projects, meaning that Perdel’s employees would perform no work and Perdel’s equipment would not be used. For one of the projects – at O’Hare International Airport – Perino agreed to place the general contractor’s employees on Perdel’s payroll to perform the work that would be credited to Perdel. Perino also entered into a sham contract to “purchase” street sweepers from the general contractor and title them in Perdel’s name while the general contractor’s workers performed the street sweeping as purported employees of Perdel. Perino and the general contractor further agreed that, at the conclusion of the O’Hare project, the street sweepers would be returned to the general contractor for $1 per machine, and Perdel would receive 18% on top of the labor costs and $20 per hour for the street sweepers.
@ 2017 WLS-AM News
