Crime & Law
Feds Ask for 70 Month Prison Sentence for Former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore After Conspiracy Conviction
(WTTW News)
Former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore should spend nearly six years in prison, according to federal prosecutors, after she was convicted of helping orchestrate a nearly decadelong conspiracy to bribe ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Prosecutors this week asked a federal judge to hand Pramaggiore a 70-month prison sentence along with a fine of $1.75 million after she was convicted in the 2023 “ComEd Four” trial on charges including bribery conspiracy and willfully falsifying the company’s books.
“Over and over again, phony contracts, invoices, and false entries in ComEd’s books and records were employed to conceal the true recipients, the fact that the payments were being made in return for little to no work, and the nature of the payments to Madigan associates,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker wrote in the sentencing memo.
Pramaggiore was convicted alongside Madigan’s longtime confidant Michael McClain, ex-ComEd consultant Jay Doherty and former ComEd exec John Hooker. She is the second of those four set to be sentenced. Last week, the feds recommended Hooker be given a sentence of 56 months in prison.
Prosecutors alleged they plotted to give “a continuous stream of benefits” to “corruptly influence and reward Madigan” in order to get his support on Springfield legislation that would be massively beneficial to ComEd.
The four did so by arranging for ComEd to pay $1.3 million to Madigan allies who were hired as subcontractors, but who actually did little or no work for the utility company. Rather than paying them directly, prosecutors said Hooker and others arranged for them to be paid through an intermediary — Doherty — in an effort to conceal the payments.
Madigan himself was convicted at a separate trial earlier this year and was sentenced in June to more than seven years in prison.
Jurors at the ComEd Four trial heard from Fidel Marquez, ComEd’s vice president of government affairs turned government mole after he secretly recorded numerous conversations with the defendants and later pleaded guilty to a bribery charge.
According to prosecutors, Pramaggiore was “actively involved” in continuing the subcontractor arrangement to keep Madigan on ComEd’s side.
“In fact, Doherty’s contract was under the CEO’s budget,” Streicker wrote, “meaning that Pramaggiore had to authorize his contract and the false invoices that Doherty submitted to ComEd that made no mention of the no-work subcontractors.”
Prosecutors claimed Pramaggiore also perjured herself when she testified in her own defense at trial.
When asked on the witness stand if she’d been a part of any conspiracy to bribe Madigan or if she’d conspired to falsify documents, she told jurors she had not. She also claimed she didn’t know that the subcontractors paid through Doherty had been Madigan allies until after the feds’ investigation became public knowledge in 2019.
“Pramaggiore’s denial that she knew about any Doherty subcontractors was a lie,” Streicker wrote, pointing to a July 2014 text conversation with Doherty in which he referred to those individuals as “our sub-contractors.” “(F)ar from expressing confusion, Pramaggiore’s response that she and Fidel Marquez were ‘on it’ confirms Pramaggiore’s knowledge of the arrangement.”
Pramaggiore was eventually promoted from CEO of ComEd to becoming CEO of its parent company, Exelon Utilities in 2018, but prosecutors alleged she continued to “support the illicit subcontractor arrangement.”
In February 2019, when ComEd had considered changing up its lobbyist roster and potentially dropping some of the subcontractors, Pramaggiore said in a wiretapped call that she wanted to avoid any “disruptive battles where, you know, somebody gets their nose out of joint and we’re trying to move somebody off and then we’re forced to give ‘em a five-year contract because we’re in the middle of needing to get something done in Springfield.”
Marquez testified that “somebody” who Pramaggiore was concerned about was Madigan.
Pramaggiore’s defense team said in their own filing late Monday that she should be spared prison time and instead sentenced to probation.
“Any sentence of imprisonment is disproportionate to the offense conduct and far greater than necessary to satisfy the goals of sentencing,” defense attorney Scott Lassar wrote in his memo. “As the trial testimony shows and is evident from the many letters submitted on her behalf, Anne is a truly exceptional human being who has done much good in her life. She has so much more to give, and the world is best served by … permitting her to continue to better her community through a non-custodial sentence.”
Pramaggiore is scheduled to be sentenced July 21.
