Feds say ex-state Sen. Terry Link deserves probation after helping uncover bribery scheme
Brian O’Mahoney/For Sun-Times Me
Federal prosecutors say former state Sen. Terry Link should get probation — and no prison time — for dodging $82,000 in taxes after he cooperated for years with the FBI and helped prosecutors convict others for a bribery scheme under the Capitol dome in Springfield.
Sentencing guideline estimates call for as much as a year behind bars for Link, who is set to learn his fate March 6 in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine O’Neill wrote Tuesday that is “greater than necessary,” given Link’s acceptance of responsibility and “substantial assistance to the government.”
“He wore a recording device to meetings with former Illinois State Rep. Luis Arroyo and corrupt businessman James Weiss, leading to a federal indictment against the two,” O’Neill wrote in a memo to Rowland. “[Link] allowed the FBI to record his phone conversations, monitor his emails, and receive would-be bribes to [Link’s] P.O. Box to further the investigation.”
O’Neill sought three years of probation for Link and an order that he pay $82,660 in restitution.
Link initially lied to the public about his cooperation with the feds after it was exposed by the Chicago Sun-Times and other media. But he then resigned in 2020, pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return and took the stand last year in Weiss’ trial for bribing Arroyo and Link.
Asked on the stand why he had denied working with the feds, Link explained that “I’m cooperating with the FBI … not the Tribune or the Sun-Times or anybody else.”
Arroyo pleaded guilty as a result of Link’s cooperation. Arroyo is now serving a 57-month prison sentence, and Weiss is serving 5½ years. Weiss paid $32,500 in bribes to Arroyo to promote legislation that would explicitly legalize unregulated gambling devices known as sweepstakes machines. The pair eventually tried to recruit Link into the scheme, but he was already cooperating with the FBI.
Link hoped that his work for the feds would earn him a break at his sentencing hearing, which is now just a week away.
O’Neill’s 10-page memo Tuesday offered few new details about Link’s cooperation or crime, but it shows the value of Link’s undercover work to the feds. By comparison, ex-state Rep. Eddie Acevedo was sentenced in 2022 to six months in prison for dodging $37,000 in taxes — less than half the amount that Link avoided.
Meanwhile, former Ald. Danny Solis is expected to avoid a criminal conviction altogether after wearing a wire, despite being accused of arguably more serious crimes and being charged with bribery.
Solis also helped the feds indict some of Illinois’ most powerful politicians — former Ald. Edward M. Burke and former House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
During his testimony in Weiss’ trial, Link explained that he’d withdrawn money from his campaign account and “used some for gambling.” He also told jurors that “I was helping a friend who was in dire need.” He said it was someone who “I knew most of my life and he was a businessman.”
Link attorney Catharine O’Daniel, in her own memo last week seeking probation, explained that Link’s friend had a business that had gone insolvent, that his wife was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and that his son struggled with drug addiction. She wrote that Link agreed to help “without hesitation” and tapped into his campaign fund.
“At all times, Mr. Link intended to repay the campaign funds once [the friend] reimbursed him,” O’Daniel wrote. But Link’s friend died in 2018, she said. The use of the campaign money rendered it taxable income, she acknowledged, and Link didn’t report it.
O’Daniel wrote that Link “looks forward to making full restitution for this offense and to finally putting this matter behind him.”