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The onetime elected head of the Bloomingdale Township highway commission was sentenced to 3½ years in federal prison Tuesday for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks.
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In an extremely rare development, a federal judge dismissed a case Friday against a contractor standing trial on charges of paying kickbacks to the Bloomingdale Township highway boss in exchange for work that in some cases was never performed.
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The former elected highway commissioner for Bloomingdale Township testified in a federal courtroom Wednesday that he conspired for years to take kickbacks from an excavation company for public contracts that, in many cases, were never fulfilled.
Debra Fazio and Mario Giannini were charged along with Robert Czernek back in August 2020 and accused of an eight-year scheme in which Bloomingdale Township improperly paid more than $700,000 to Bulldog Earth Movers, an excavation company owned by Fazio.
Robert Czernek told a judge he has not worked since December 2020 but was previously the highway commissioner of the Bloomingdale Township Road District.