Illinois Mayor Pleads Guilty to Taking $5,000 Bribe—Son-In-Law Becomes Mayor

In the Village of Crestwood, Illinois, Lou Presta resigned as mayor one day before pleading guilty to taking a $5,000 bribe from someone who was cooperating with the FBI.

The village trustees in turn chose Presta’s son-in-law, Kenneth Klein, to succeed him as mayor, The Chicago Tribune reported.

“He is a very good person, a very outgoing person,” Klein said of his father-in-law. “Lou didn’t do anything to the village to put a mark on the village."

Presta, 71, a Democrat, was first elected in 2013 and won re-election to a third term in April,with Klein running alongside him.

Presta was charged last year with accepting $5,000 cash in March 2019 from Omar Maani, “an executive at clout-heavy red-light camera company SafeSpeed LLC,” The Tribune reported.

Maani was cooperating with the FBI and the exchange was caught on camera.

At the time, Presta was running for Cook County commissioner, and took the money while promising to help SafeSpeed get more red-light cameras in the village, boosting revenues from cameras by approving more violations, according to his plea agreement.

Presta resigned on Nov. 16, the day before pleading guilty to the charges.

Besides the cash bribe, Presta admitted that he solicited $4,100 in campaign donations from Maani in January 2018, during his unsuccessful run for commissioner. The two agreed to disguise the payment by having Maani pay cash to cover an invoice from an advertising firm, according to the plea. Both men knew it was in exchange for Presta’s help to ensure SafeSpeed’s red-light camera revenue would continue to “creep up higher,” the plea stated.

That doesn’t sound like a “very good person” as his son-in-law described him. Let’s hope new Mayor Klein doesn’t sell out his village and its residents the same way.

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