By HANNAH MEISEL
Capitol News Illinois
hmeisel@capitolnewsillinois.com
CHICAGO — Christopher Katz didn’t question why he began receiving $300 weekly payments from an executive at Chicago-based red-light camera company SafeSpeed in the summer of 2019 — despite not yet having sat for a formal interview or done any work.
He didn’t question why his first check was made out from an entirely different company, Presidio Capital LLC. Nor did he raise concerns when SafeSpeed’s co-founder, Omar Maani, agreed to send the subsequent payments via CashApp, and not the company where Katz believed he’d just gotten a job, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what the job was.
Katz was 23 and about to start school at the Illinois Institute of Technology, pursuing a degree in architecture. He needed “some money coming in,” as he put it to a federal jury on Friday, and took Maani at his word that “work would come eventually,” though he’d never met the man and only ever had two phone conversations with him.
When Maani told Katz he’d hired him to “help out” State Sen. Emil Jones III, with whom Katz had interned twice in the past, Katz was “unsure” what he meant, according to his testimony Friday. But according to prosecutors, Katz’s no-work gig with Maani was a bribe Jones had accepted in exchange for agreeing to limit legislation he’d proposed that Maani viewed as harmful to his business.
“The main thing: Take care of my intern,” Jones, D-Chicago, told Maani as the pair dined at a Chicago steakhouse in July 2019. “That’s it.”
Read more: FBI mole told Sen. Emil Jones III to suggest ‘creative’ way to accept $5K lest it ‘look goofy’
Maani, who was secretly recording the dinner for the FBI, followed his handler’s instructions when he asked Jones how much he could contribute for the senator’s upcoming campaign fundraiser.
“If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good,” Jones said after Maani pushed him to come up with a number. “But most importantly, I have an intern working in my office and I’m trying to find him another job, another part-time job while he’s in school. … Do you all have any positions available?”
Two days before that dinner, Jones had received an inquiry from Katz.
“Yo Senator,” he wrote. “What’s the word for job opportunity at Roseland Hospital?”
Katz testified Friday that at the time, he hadn’t worked for the senator’s office for roughly a year but had asked Jones for help in his search for a part-time job that summer. He’d known Jones since 2014 when he first interned in his district office after meeting the senator through his mother.
Fresh from earning his associate’s degree, Katz said he knew “tuition would be a handful” at IIT and needed to find a job. He was so “low on funds” that just the weekend before, he asked Jones for some money right after the senator asked about his plans for that Saturday night.
“U think u can slide me a lil sum thru cash app?” Katz asked Jones, referring to the same app CashApp that Maani would eventually end up paying him through later that summer.
“Thanks Senator!” Katz wrote back after Jones agreed, to which the senator said, “U welcome. I want to hang out with u.”
Reading the text messages back on a witness stand nearly six years later, Katz said “no” when Assistant U.S. Attorney Prashant Kolluri asked him whether he found it “surprising or curious” that his “significantly older” former boss “was looking to hang out with you at 10 p.m. at night.”
Katz told Jones he was going to a now-shuttered strip club in south suburban Harvey, but Jones didn’t go. Instead, he continued texting Katz throughout the night, sending him another $20 at Katz’s request and telling him, “I want to see u after” he left the club, but ignoring Katz’s invitation to the venue.
Instead, Katz left Jones’ 3:30 a.m. texts unanswered until finally answering “Sleep” a little after 5 a.m. The senator replied 20 minutes later with, “Naw, u up?”
“Have you ever invited an employer to a strip club with you?” Kolluri asked Katz.
“No,” he replied.
“After this, did you ever hang out with Sen. Jones at a strip club or any other social club?” Kolluri asked.
“No,” Katz said again.
But Jones had floated another hangout later in July after Maani agreed to hire Katz, though it would take another 2 ½ weeks before Maani would reach out.
“So does this mean I got the job lol,” Katz texted Jones on July 25, 2019, a week after sending an updated resume to Jones at the senator’s request.
“Lol let me know when you get a call,” Jones replied. “And when you do get the job, I wanna go to steak 48!!!”
Read more: At Jones trial, jury hears lawmaker bringing colleague into fold of ‘personal benefits’ | State Sen. Emil Jones III bribery trial set to begin 2 ½ years after indictment
The jury in Jones’ trial has heard about Steak 48 several times throughout the first three days of testimony. The upscale restaurant in Chicago’s posh River North neighborhood was Jones’ favorite steakhouse; he’d hosted a fundraiser there and met with Maani for dinner there twice in the summer of 2019.
The senator texted Katz again a while later.
“LMAO Omar trying to make sure I don’t file my red light camera bill anymore,” Jones wrote in his message. “He thinks steak 48 will do it.”
On Friday, Katz told Kolluri he didn’t know what legislation Jones had been referring to, or even Jones’ position on red-light cameras.
When pushed by Kolluri, Katz also acknowledged that he’d been to Steak 48 with Jones once before, to discuss job opportunities. Though Katz hadn’t remembered until the prosecutor’s prompting that he’d hung out with Jones in a social context before, he did remember that he’d ordered a ribeye.
As the jury heard on Maani’s secretly recorded videos of their dinners and from his testimony this week, Jones favored the pricey wagyu beef filet.
Both Jones and Maani ordered the imported steak at their August 12, 2019, dinner where they agreed that Katz could be paid $15 an hour for 15 to 20 hours a week.
A few days later, Maani called Jones to tell him that he planned to put Katz “on my payroll” even though “I don’t have any work for him right now.”
“I just wanted to make sure that he’s the type of kid that, you know, when he gets a check and he’s not doing anything right away, that he’s, you know, he’s not gonna be spooked by that,” Maani said on the wiretapped call. “He’s not gonna be weird and stuff. … Is he — would he be cool with that for a while? I mean, does he get it? Does he understand this?”
“Yeah, but um, make sure we find him some work,” Jones replied.
Maani promised to “work on getting him some” but noted that Katz “obviously needs the job” and that he “just wanted to make sure that he’s cool,” in essence asking whether Jones trusted Katz to be discreet.
“Oh yeah,” the senator said. “Definite, definite.”
Kolluri pushed Katz on whether it struck him as “irregular” that he got paid for a job he never interviewed for, despite doing no work. Katz answered “no” each time.
But Jones’ attorney, Robert Earles, focused in on Katz’s perception of the gig before he took it, pointing out that it had all the trappings of a normal job search process like providing a resume and getting paid an amount that wasn’t overly generous.
“Did $15 an hour sound like an unusual or weird amount of money to make?” Earles asked.
“No,” Katz replied.
“You thought this was gonna be a legitimate job,” Earles said, more of a statement than a question.
“Yes,” Katz answered.
After Katz left the witness stand, jurors heard from the first of three FBI agents who are expected to give testimony in the trial. The government will likely rest its case early next week, while defense attorneys told U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood they only have two witnesses — though they left the door open for Jones to take the stand himself.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
