Former high-ranking employee of Dorothy Brown sentenced to 2 years in prison for derailing investigation

Before handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis told Beena Patel that “combating public corruption is very important . . . to me, lying in front of the grand jury, that’s even more important.”

SHARE Former high-ranking employee of Dorothy Brown sentenced to 2 years in prison for derailing investigation
Dorothy Brown

Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court Dorothy Brown

Sun-Times file photo

First, the judge listened to a plea for mercy Thursday from a woman who lied to a federal grand jury that had been investigating Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown, purportedly derailing its work altogether.

Then, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis looked around her courtroom — one sparsely populated by lawyers, reporters and the woman’s husband and friends. And then Ellis said, “There is one person who is not here.” 

“And that would be the clerk of the court,” Ellis told the woman, Beena Patel. “For some reason, you made a decision to lie and protect her. And she’s not here to help you when you need help.” 

Then, declaring it “important for the public to know that you cannot lie in connection with these investigations,” the judge sent Patel, a former high-ranking clerk’s office employee, to prison for two years for perjury. In doing so, she made Patel the only person so far to face prison time as a result of a federal investigation of the Office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County dating back to 2014.

Another former clerk’s office employee, Sivasubramani Rajaram, was sentenced in 2017 to three years probation for also lying to the grand jury. 

Prosecutors have essentially accused Patel of derailing the case, insisting that her lies “directly impacted the government’s ability to charge those most culpable in the illegal activity.” In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather McShain described Patel’s testimony as “deliberate rambling to mislead,” and she quoted an exchange between Patel and an exasperated grand juror who at one point told Patel to “just admit what you did.”

“The defendant lied about basically everything,” McShain said. 

Patel sobbed and spoke softly to the judge before learning her sentence. She said, “I’m a liar, I can’t take that back” and added, “I have challenged myself to be a better person.” She described the toll her conviction has taken on her family, and she told Ellis she keeps the judge’s picture on her dresser.

“I am dying,” she said. “Every day.”

A jury found Patel guilty of three counts of perjury in April following a trial that opened the widest window so far into the investigation of Brown’s office — one that led to the seizure of her cellphone in October 2015. That development nearly derailed Brown’s political career, but she overcame it and won re-election in 2016. 

Brown has not been charged with a crime, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and is not running for re-election. A spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Thursday. 

An FBI supervisory special agent testified during Patel’s trial that an investigation of an alleged “pay-to-play operation” in Brown’s office began in spring 2014. That same year, Rajaram paid $15,000 to a business owned by Brown and her husband known as Goat Masters Corp.

A short time later, Rajaram had a new job in the clerk’s office. Federal prosecutors have repeatedly called the $15,000 payment a “bribe” for a job. 

Patel appeared before the secretive federal grand jury investigating Brown Oct. 15, 2015, and again on July 14, 2016. She lied during her first appearance about her knowledge of Rajaram’s contacts with law enforcement and about the sale of fundraising tickets for Brown within the clerk’s office. During the second visit, Patel lied about efforts to help another clerk’s office worker get a promotion.

McShain wrote in a court memo that Patel accepted the “bribe” from Rajaram, taking $10,000 cash he’d brought to the Sabre Room and an envelope full of $5,000 cash at the Corner Bakery across from the Daley Center.

Donald Angelini Jr., Patel’s defense attorney, pleaded with Ellis for a shorter sentence after it became clear the judge would send Patel to prison for two years. Earlier, he also told the judge Patel “won’t walk out of here, no matter what, unscathed.” He wrote in a court memo last month that her pension was suspended Nov. 7 following her last monthly payment of $7,287 on Nov. 1.

But Ellis made clear early in Thursday’s hearing that, while combating public corruption is important, “to me, lying in front of the grand jury, that’s even more important.” And as to the significance of Patel’s lies, the judge said, “I think that it’s telling that, to date, there has been no indictment returned against either the clerk of court herself or anyone high up in the clerk’s office.”

The judge, who sat through Patel’s trial last spring, added, “It’s fairly clear … that there’s something funny happening in the clerk’s office.”

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