The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Smooth-talking felon John Thomas once said the thing he loved about Chicago was, it was “the most forgiving” place for a convicted crook.
He’d better hope so.
The 51-year-old real estate developer — who got a second chance at life and dodged a prison term by wearing a wire against disgraced political fundraiser Tony Rezko as well as former Ald. Ike Carothers — has been up to his old tricks, federal prosecutors say.
Arrested at dawn on Good Friday at his downtown condo, Thomas stole $370,000 from the south suburban village of Riverdale that was meant for the development of Riverdale Marina, a federal indictment alleges.
But that was just the beginning of Thomas’s latest scams, according to prosecutors who painted him as a compulsive con artist who recently even tried to rip off his former attorney by paying him with fake Babe Ruth baseballs.
There's more:
Thomas’s landlord Raghu Nayak — the convicted healthcare fraudster and political fundraiser who allegedly offered former Gov. Rod Blagojevich a $1.5 million bribe to appoint Jesse Jackson Jr. to the Senate — allegedly got $8,250 in rent he was owed, disguised as payment for “plumbing work” at the marina that he never did.
And Regina Evans — the former Country Club Hills Police Chief, convicted of state grant fraud and linked to several other scams — and her husband both got jobs at the marina, sources say.
Using fake invoices, Thomas stole more than a third of the TIF money he had access to, using it to pay legal fees, personal loans, and other personal expenses including his rent, the feds allege.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sunil Harjani on Friday urged U.S. District Judge James Zagel to keep Thomas locked up, calling him a “threat to the public” who perpetrated five more scams even after he was first confronted by the government about the marina. Those scams included filing false documents to obtain loans, and the Babe Ruth baseball swindle, Harjani alleged.
You'll want to read the entire article. As you can guess: David Axelrod has heard of John Thomas.
