A former high-ranking director in then-Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios’ office pleaded guilty Wednesday to accepting sports tickets, restaurant meals and other bribes in return for lowering certain property tax assessments.
Francisco Perez, 50, of Chicago, was charged with bribery conspiracy earlier this month. Details in a plea agreement released Wednesday estimate that Perez received at least $550,000 and up to $1.5 million worth of benefits, including tickets to Blackhawks, Cubs, White Sox and Bears games and food and drink from unspecified restaurants and bars.
According to the plea deal, Perez could face a steep fine and up to five years in prison. Prosecutors plan to ask for probation based on his cooperation.
Perez worked as a chief hearing officer in the Cook County assessor’s office under Berrios, the county Democratic Party boss who lost to current Assessor Fritz Kaegi in the 2018 primary. Kaegi’s administration terminated Perez on Dec. 6, 2018.
In his job, described in the plea deal as a high-level decision-making position, Perez “directly reviewed, assessed and approved property values on commercial appeals and reviewed applications for certificates of error.”
The plea deal lists three people, known only as Individuals A, B and C, who worked for three law firms and sought to influence Perez’s decisions. Individual A was a tax consultant; Individual B was a tax analyst and Individual C was an attorney, according to the plea deal.
In the deal, Perez admitted to often supporting their requests for certificates of error and recommending that their assessments be lower. He also admitted to shepherding the three lawyers’ appeals to specific workers in the assessor’s office and giving them nonpublic information about the assessment process. Investigators secretly recorded a phone call between Perez and one of the lawyers, during which Perez gave the lawyer an update on his firm’s property appeals.
“What we need to do is in the next two weeks, all the ones that you’re like shaky on, you’re like, ‘Man, this (expletive) didn’t come out right,’ boom. Pull them, and we’ll look,” Perez said on the call.
Perez is the latest of several former assessor’s office employees to be hit with federal bribery charges in recent years, all of whom worked under Berrios, whose administration was often criticized as a den of clout and patronage.
Berrios has not been charged with wrongdoing.
