The owner of a Chicago-area construction company with ties to the investigation of former Ald. Carrie Austin has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for bribing an employee of the Cook County assessor’s office to reduce taxes on his properties by about a million dollars.
Alex Nitchoff, 57, of Lemont, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count each of conspiracy to bribe a public official and using a facility in interstate commerce to facilitate the acts of bribery. The 60-month sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge John Kness on Wednesday.
Prosecutors had asked for more than seven years behind bars, saying Nitchoff’s “brazen and egregious” conduct was “an affront to the Cook County residents who deal honestly with the burden of property taxes.”
“They pay up or fight through appeals,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Peabody wrote in a recent court filing. “(Nitchoff) bought an insider. In the process, defendant kept at least $1 million in his family coffers and
away from the public treasury.”
Nitchoff’s lawyers, however, asked for probation with a period of home confinement, painting their client as an honest, hardworking businessman, the son of immigrant parents who, despite his admitted crime, has lived a selfless life focused on faith, family, and assistance to others.
“Mr. Nitchoff did not just grow a successful business for himself; he used it as a springboard to launch many people upward,” attorney Ted Poulos, Terence Campbell, and Dylan Smith wrote in their lengthy sentencing filing, which included dozens of letters extolling Nitchoff’s good deeds. “He used it as an outlet for people seeking a better chance at life.”
Nitchoff was caught up in a wide-ranging federal corruption probe that netted charges against several former of Cook County assessor’s office employees, developers and contractors, as well as then-Ald. Austin and her chief of staff.
According to his plea agreement with prosecutors, Nitchoff conspired with others to bribe Lavdim Memisovski, a commercial group leader at the assessor’s office, to reduce property tax assessments and extend appeals for properties connected to Nitchoff and his company, Summit-based Oakk Construction.
Nitchoff admitted that he and others gave Memisovski home improvement materials and services, as well as contracts for electrical work, jewelry, meals, tickets to sporting events and other items, with the purpose of influencing Memisovski in his work as commercial group leader.
Among the home improvements performed by Oakk for free at Memisovski’s residence were installation of a concrete pad, decking materials, Dumpster services, heads for a new sprinkler system, tiles and windows, according to the plea.
In return, Memisovski made sure that appeals of property assessments related to Nitchoff and his business associates were routed to him so he could extend deadlines for the filing of appeals and reduce their assessed property values, according to his plea.
Memisovski pleaded guilty in 2022 and is cooperating with investigators while awaiting sentencing, court records show.
Nitchoff’s co-worker at Oakk, John Bodendorfer, was indicted last year on charges of bribery conspiracy and wire fraud that mirror the allegations in Nitchoff’s case. Bodendorfer has pleaded not guilty.
Also charged as part of the probe was Joseph Garcia, a rehab specialist for the city of Chicago responsible for inspecting porches constructed under the city-subsidized Emergency Housing Assistance Program.
Garcia falsely claimed to have inspected homes supposedly worked on by Oakk and found the work completed as required, according to his plea agreement with prosecutors. The city then paid the company for replaced porches when the work wasn’t actually done, according to the plea.
Garcia was sentenced to probation in 2021.
Earlier this month, another contractor charged as part of the probe, Robert Mitziga, was acquitted by a federal jury on all charges alleging he’d arranged golf outings at a private Michigan country club for Memisovski and other assessor’s office employees in exchange for reductions on his taxes.
Meanwhile, Austin and her chief of staff, Chester Wilson, are facing bribery charges alleging they shepherded a new real estate development through the City Hall approval process beginning in 2016 and were given home improvement perks from a now-deceased developer seeking to influence them.
Austin, who served as the 34th Ward alderman for nearly 30 years before stepping down in early 2023, is currently awaiting a ruling on her motion to declare her medically unfit for trial.
Nitchoff is not accused of any illegal activities related to Austin’s case.
In their filing, Nitchoff’s attorneys said their client’s judgement when dealing with property tax issue was clouded by his father, Boris, who started the family business after immigrating to Chicago from North Macedonia.
Boris Nitchoff died in November 2020 at age 78, just as the federal investigation was ramping up.
In a letter to the court, Nitchoff wrote that his father “constantly complained about how much money he had to pay lawyers just to get a proper assessment on (their) properties.”
“He claimed that the whole property tax appeal system was a racket for lawyers to make money,” Nitchoff wrote. “I vividly remember the exasperation in his voice when he, more than once said, that the county jacks up the assessments and then the lawyers take a third of the jacked-up assessment just to get to the correct assessment.”
It was his father who introduced Nitchoff to someone in the assessor’s office, who in turn connected Nitchoff with Memisovski, according to the letter.
In 2017, the FBI secretly recorded calls where Nitchoff complained bitterly to his brother and others that Memisovski had become a big “pain in the ass” who was taking advantage of them, court records show.
“No more for him, no more for him right now. I gotta postpone it,” Nitchoff told his brother in one call. “I mean, he helped us big time but it’s a lot…I gotta put a stop to it. Too much.”
In another call, Nitchoff told his brother Memisovski never stopped playing games.
“(Expletive) never ends with this (expletive),” he said, according to court records. “The guy really never ends.”
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
