Hired Truck probers: Cop, felon traded favors

Friends of ours: Sam "Blackie" Pesoli, Nick LoCoco

A high-ranking Chicago cop and a criminal traded favors all the time, federal prosecutors say.
The cop would ask for a break on construction work on his home.
The criminal would ask for a break on someone's DUI.
The cop would ask for help raising money for a policemen's fund.
The criminal would ask for a background check on a friend's employee.

Such was the routine, prosecutors say, between O'Hare Police Cmdr. Michael Acosta and John Boyle, a convicted felon and city worker, as the FBI secretly listened in on Boyle's cell phone in 2004 as part of the Hired Truck investigation. Boyle has since gone to prison for demanding bribes from trucking and construction companies in the city's Hired Truck Program.

Acosta, 59, is going on trial later this month for allegedly stealing $4,000 from a police fund set up to recognize excellent officers. He is also charged with lying to FBI agents about his relationship to Boyle and the favors he had done for him. Acosta, who retired from the Police Department in January last year, faced losing his job if top police brass knew he was violating a key police rule by associating with a known felon. Boyle had been convicted of stealing millions of dollars in money from the Illinois tollway.

Despite their close relationship, Boyle would gripe when Acosta got pushy, according to a new prosecution filing in the Acosta case. In one secretly recorded conversation, Boyle is talking to Vito Pesoli, at the time an assistant commissioner in the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation and a political operative. It's the first time prosecutors have mentioned Pesoli's name in the Hired Truck case.

Pesoli, 51, retired six months ago and went to work for his friend, trucking magnate Michael Tadin, whose business, Marina Cartage, has received work from Streets and Sanitation. Pesoli is not charged with any wrongdoing. He did not return phone messages Wednesday, including one left with his wife, Terri, who works for Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd).

In the discussion between Boyle and Pesoli, both men complain that Acosta wants an unspecified favor taken care of at the last minute.

"Commander Acosta called me this morning," Boyle says.
"Yeah, well, he's a little late, and I told him," Pesoli replies.
Later in the call, Pesoli says, "I told him, I said, 'This is the day before.' "
Then Boyle says: "I told him the same thing. Vito, we're on the same page."
Boyle continues: "And [Acosta] tells me, 'When guys get locked up for DUI, you call me the same time it happens and get him out.'"

Prosecutors want to play this conversation between Boyle and Pesoli to show at trial the close relationship between Boyle and Acosta. Pesoli also happens to be a nephew of a former Chicago cop with reputed mob ties, Sam "Blackie" Pesoli, who was sentenced in 1993 to nearly a year in prison for lying to a grand jury.

Acosta had a relationship with another city worker charged in the Hired Truck investigation. Nick LoCoco was a mob bookmaker who controlled what hired trucks got business in the city's Department of Transportation. He was charged in the scandal in 2004 but died in a horse-riding accident before going to trial.

When federal agents arrested LoCoco, he had two business cards on him from Acosta. On the back of one card was Acosta's cell phone number, court records show. On the back of the other was a handwritten message: "Please call me if I can help this individual, good friend," signed Commander M.J. Acosta, followed by a pager number.

Thanks to Steve Warmbir and Tim Novak