Guilty Plea For Rigging Garbage Cans Contract

By Sean Stillmaker in News on Jun 6, 2010 8:00PM

Nothing much surprises us in a city where "rigging" and "contracts" are frequently tied together. On June 3, businessman Douglas Ritter, president of Urban Services of America of Schaumburg pleaded guilty to charges of wire and mail fraud in a conspiracy to defraud the city by obtaining a $2 million contract to fix the city's plastic trash bins. The Sun Times reports Ritter had ties to the Department of Streets and Sanitation and donated $35,000 to the Hispanic Democratic Organization (formerly run by Al Sanchez, who has had his own ongoing corruption case).

Ritter was accused of coercing other bidding companies to submit higher prices than his, an ongoing investigation by the city’s Inspector General and U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust division determined. After obtaining the contract, Ritter was supposed to subcontract work to women- and minority-owned business but he failed to do so and then lied about it. Ritter and his vice president, Steven Fenzl, were indicted in April 2009; Fenzl is stilling fighting the charges.