License scandal go-between caught at Illinois casino gets 14 months

Mike Robinson

Wednesday, April 26, 2000 | 1:15 a.m.

CHICAGO - A 76-year-old woman who delivered payoff money in the Illinois driver's license scandal was sent to prison Wednesday for violating her probation by sneaking off to a riverboat gambling casino.

"I'm 76 years old!" a seemingly stunned Carmen Fajdich blurted as U.S. District Judge Suzanne Conlon imposed the 14-month prison sentence.

Federal prosecutors said that Fajdich may have visited the Joliet casino 24 times or more to play the slots and was a consistent winner. They said that she even used her casino winnings to make the final installment of the $25,000 fine imposed for her role in license selling.

Fajdich was in the first batch of defendants to plead guilty in the federal government's two-year investigation of truck driver's license selling when Gov. George Ryan was Illinois secretary of state.

She admitted funneling payoff money - some of which ended up in Ryan's campaign fund - to officials of the Melrose Park license center.

While other Melrose Park defendants went to federal prison, Fajdich was placed on probation in Februrary 1999 and given a year of home confinement because of her age and frail health. She recently underwent surgery for stomach cancer and has lost 40 pounds over the last year, attorneys declared.

"I had a 16-pound tumor removed," Fajdich told the judge.

Defense attorney Richard Jalovec also said that she should get another break from the court because after she was sentenced and no longer had an obligation to help federal investigators she wore a hidden recording device to gather licensing evidence at the request of the FBI.

Prosecutors said she did that only briefly and that the episode took place before Fajdich was ordered to remain under home confinement.

Conlon told Fajdich she had flouted the law after getting a break.

"I must say I'm very disappointed, Mrs. Fajdich, because the course of conduct that you've followed is completely inconsistent with the terms that were imposed on you," Conlon said. She ordered Fajdich to report to the marshals to start serving her prison sentence immediately.

She said that Fajdich could serve the sentence in a prison where there is a medical facility.

Fajdich at one point told the court that she had believed that her probation term was over and that she was free to go out at will. At another point, though, she said that she believed she was going to die soon and might as well go to the riverboat while she could.