Better Government Association

Peraica donors include felons

STATE'S ATTORNEY RACE | Cash was received in earlier races, aide says

BY ERIC HERMAN

July 30, 2008

Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica wants to be Cook County's top prosecutor. But the Republican nominee for state's attorney hasn't always steered clear of people on the edge of the law, records show.

Campaign records from previous years show Peraica took donations from four men with criminal convictions -- three for felony fraud. In three instances, the donations came after the men were convicted. Though Peraica accepted the money when he was running for other offices, the donations could create an appearance problem for the man vying to be a top law enforcement official, some say.

"Once you're moving up into felonies, I think that's a legitimate issue to raise," said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association.

Noting the donors' fraud convictions, Stewart added, "much has been made locally about fraud in government."

"All of these contributions occurred before he was running for state's attorney," said Peraica spokesman Dan Patlak. "[Peraica] is a person who ran for public office in the past and received contributions from hundreds, maybe thousands of people."

Some controversial donors are:

• • In 2004, Peraica accepted a $400 donation from Thomas Fazy, an Oak Forest mortgage broker with a criminal record who was also Peraica's law client. Fazy was convicted in 1999 of theft by deception and conspiracy to commit mortgage fraud. In December 2004, he was murdered in his Midlothian office. The murder remains unsolved.

• • From 2002 to 2004, Joseph Zugalj donated $1,000 to Peraica. In 2002, Peraica became the registered agent for Zugalj's real estate company, Hyde Park Realty. Nearly a decade earlier, in 1993, Zugalj was convicted of mail fraud in an insurance scam.

• • Peraica practiced law from 1987 to 1993 with partner Steven Della Rose. The men were also partners in a company called South Shore Real Estate Corp.

Della Rose served as chairman of Citizens for Peraica in the early 1990s, records show. In 2001 and 2002, Della Rose donated a total of $925 to Peraica's political operation.

In 2003, a jury convicted Della Rose on federal fraud charges, finding that in 1998 he bilked a mentally ill client out of $64,000. Della Rose was sentenced to 3½ years in prison. Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court disbarred him.

• • As first reported by the Sun-Times last year, onetime Peraica campaign staffer Fred Ichniowski had been accused of tire-slashing and of making harassing calls to Commissioner Liz Gorman. He was convicted of telephone harassment in 1990 and of battery and criminal damage to property in 2002 -- all misdemeanors. Ichniowski donated $400 to Peraica in 2005 and 2006.

Peraica has leveled his own charges against Democratic state's attorney nominee Anita Alvarez, chiding her for accepting donations from 75 to 80 employees of the state's attorney's office, where she has been a supervisor for several years. An Alvarez spokeswoman said the donors were friends and that Peraica also has accepted money from people in the office.