Owner of suburban Chicago construction company sentenced to five years in prison on bribery charges

Date: Aug. 15, 2024

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CHICAGO - The owner of a suburban Chicago construction company has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for conspiring to bribe an employee of the Cook County Assessor's Office in return for favorable property assessments.

Alex Nitchoff, 57, of Lemont, Ill., pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of conspiring to corruptly give something of value to influence and reward a public official, and one count of using an interstate facility to facilitate bribery. U.S. District Judge John F. Kness imposed the sentence on Wednesday during a hearing in federal court in Chicago.

The sentence was announced by Morris Pasqual, Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Douglas S. DePodesta, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI. Valuable assistance was provided by IRS Criminal Investigation and the City of Chicago Inspector General's Office. The government was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Peabody.

Nitchoff admitted in a plea agreement that from 2016 to 2019 he conspired with others to corruptly provide home improvement services and materials to Cook County Assessor's Office employee Lavdim Memisovski, who assessed property values and reviewed property tax appeals for Cook County commercial properties. Nitchoff and others provided free home improvement services and materials at Memisovski's personal residence, including a concrete pad, decking materials, gas lines, sprinkler system heads, tiles, and other items, the plea agreement states. In return for the benefits, Memisovski took official action to reduce the property taxes owed for Nitchoff's properties by at least $550,000, Nitchoff's plea agreement states.

Memisovski, of Burbank, Ill., pleaded guilty last year to a conspiracy charge and is awaiting sentencing.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.