Convicted Former Chicago Alderman Hired To Run Festivals In Cicero

By Chuck Sudo in News on Sep 15, 2013 4:00PM

Eddie Vrdolyak showed that disgraced former Chicago aldermen can find a soft place to fall in Cicero when he served as a key adviser to Betty Loren-Maltese. The Sun-Times has a nice story on how current Cicero Town President Larry Dominick hand-picked former 25th Ward Ald. Ambrosio Medrano to organize festivals in the suburb, a deal where Medrano had little oversight.

According to the Sun-Times investigation, Dominick in 2009 picked Del Sol Entertainment Group, a company owned by Medrano, to operate festivals in the suburb. Apparently, Medrano had carte blanche to do whatever he pleased. The terms of the deal called for Del Sol to share 25 percent of all liquor sales from the festivals with Cicero, yet officials couldn’t provide proof Medrano actually did so.

The most interesting part of the deal is a clause where Del Sol had to notify Cicero authorities if the company received any subpoenas “and not turn over any information before allowing the town to decide whether to fight the subpoena in court.” If we weren’t familiar with Cicero politics that sounds as though Medrano was already planning on enriching himself under the table with this deal.

Cicero broke the contract only after Medrano was arrested in 2012 in a scam where he and two business partners attempted to offer $10,000 in bribe money in exchange for a contract for a mail-order prescription drug business in California. Federal authorities began investigating Medrano’s business dealings with Cicero last summer.

Medrano was convicted in June of corruption and is the only former alderman in Chicago's rich history of political corruption to be convicted twice of bribery. The Sun-Times reports he plans on pleading guilty to a third charge.