The former public works director in southwest suburban Summit pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring with the town’s police chief to take bribes to grease a liquor license transfer in the village and admitted that he’d “also engaged in corrupt activities with other public officials.”

William Mundy, 60, entered his plea to one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery and filing a false tax return in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger.

A sentencing date has not been set due to Mundy’s ongoing cooperation in the case, according to his 24-page plea agreement with prosecutors.

Preliminary sentencing guidelines call for up to about five years in prison, but if Mundy offers full and truthful cooperation going forward, prosecutors will make it known to the judge and ask for a sentence below the low end of the guideline range, which is 46 months, according to the plea.

While the case against Mundy centers around an alleged scheme with his co-defendant, former Summit police Chief John Kosmowski, Mundy admitted in the plea agreement he also “engaged in corrupt activities with other public officials and accepted money from other people” in return for using his official position to benefit them and their business interests.

Over an undisclosed period of years ending in 2019, Mundy accepted “multiple bribe payments” totaling over $40,000, the plea stated.

Mundy’s attorney, Patrick Blegen, declined to elaborate on those alleged payments when reached by phone Friday.

Mundy and Kosmowski each were charged in an indictment last year with conspiring to accept $10,000 from the relative of a business owner in 2017 in exchange for helping secure the transfer of a liquor license to another person.

According to the charges, Kosmowski received a $5,000 cash payment from the business owner on March 23, 2017, and then gave Mundy a portion of it. In the meantime, Mundy called a Summit elected official, identified in the charges only as Individual B, and told the elected official to approve the transfer.

Mundy admitted in his plea agreement that he failed to claim the bribe money on his 2018 tax return.

In early 2022, after being made aware of a grand jury investigation into the payment, Kosmowski met with Mundy in nearby Justice to tell him the government would be “indicting soon” and that it “was going to be their version against ours,” according to the indictment.

During the meeting, Kosmowski tried to persuade Mundy to lie about the payment by saying it was a loan, the indictment stated.

Kosmowski has pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The case is set for trial in May, records show.

The charges are an offshoot of a larger corruption probe that netted indictments of ex-Chicago Ald. Edward Burke and then-state Sen. Martin Sandoval.

Agents conducted “investigative activity” at Summit Village Hall in September 2019, the same day that federal law enforcement raided the government offices in nearby McCook and Lyons as part of a sprawling public corruption investigation.

In addition, Summit Mayor Sergio Rodriguez and Mundy were both named in the FBI search warrant served on Sandoval’s Springfield office two days earlier, records show.

Sandoval pleaded guilty in 2020 to taking bribes from a red-light camera company executive and was cooperating with federal prosecutors until his death in December 2020 from COVID-19 complications.

Rodriguez has not been charged with wrongdoing.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

Originally Published: Sep 08, 2023 at 1:21 pm