Ex-Ald. Edward Vrdolyak sentenced to 18 months in prison — but it’s unclear when he’ll report

For the second time in 10 years, Chicago’s “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak has been sentenced by a federal judge to time behind bars.

But thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, it could still take months to sort out one final detail about the 82-year-old former alderman’s new 18-month prison sentence for tax evasion — when it starts.

“I am not going to send Mr. Vrdolyak to prison during COVID,” U.S. District Judge Robert Dow said.

Rather, Dow said he would decide in the coming months when Vrdolyak should begin his sentence, a move judges have begun to consider as vaccines promise to quell the pandemic.

Dow handed Vrdolyak his second federal prison term at the end of an unusual, three-hour hearing conducted through a video conference the judge referred to as “Hollywood Squares.” Vrdolyak appeared on screen in a gray suit, white shirt and blue face mask. Flanked by his sons, he seemed to be sitting in an office and appeared to struggle at times to hear the audio.

The hearing resolved, in a way, a long-running tax case at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, stemming from Illinois’ big-time settlement with tobacco companies in the 1990s. Prosecutors say Vrdolyak struck a secret deal and made $12 million off the litigation without doing any work. Vrdolyak’s lawyers say he helped a law firm land a contract, and it was no secret.

However, that was all a backdrop to the actual crime to which Vrdolyak pleaded guilty in March 2019: Helping fellow lawyer Daniel Soso dodge taxes. So early in Friday’s hearing, Dow told lawyers he did “not find it to be a justifiable use of the court’s resources to try to resolve” whether Vrdolyak had struck a legitimate deal from the tobacco litigation.

Rather, the fading health of the onetime powerhouse politician became the central theme of the hearing. Vrdolyak’s lawyers say he has a brain tumor, among myriad other health problems. Defense attorney Catharine O’Daniel said Vrdolyak had fallen four times in the last two years, holding up a photo taken after one such tumble. It depicted Vrdolyak with a swollen eye and a bandaged head.

“He looks like he was in a fistfight,” O’Daniel said.

Vrdolyak’s lawyers asked the judge to sentence Vrdolyak to probation or home confinement, especially given the pandemic. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Donovan told the judge that amounted to “virtually no punishment at all.” Rather, the feds asked the judge to give Vrdolyak a sentence of more than two years in prison.

Before the judge announced the sentence, Vrdolyak removed his mask and apologized for his crime in a brief statement.

“What happened was my own fault and I take full responsibility,” Vrdolyak said.

Despite the concerns about Vrdolyak’s health, Dow told Vrdolyak’s lawyers that, “in a sense, the fact that we’re doing this with a defendant who is 82 years old is in many ways his own doing.” The judge suggested Vrdolyak should have come clean about his arrangement with Soso following Vrdolyak’s earlier fraud case that led to a 10-month sentence in 2010.

The judge also called Vrdolyak’s latest case “a particularly sorry story, because this is two experienced lawyers who were involved in this crime.” Soso is already serving a two-year prison sentence Dow handed him earlier this year.

Illinois’ $9.3 billion court settlement with tobacco companies also led to $188.5 million in payments to outside law firms that helped with the litigation. The feds say Soso and Vrdolyak struck a secret deal with a Washington state attorney from one of those firms, Steve Berman, to collect some of that money. Though prosecutors say Soso and Vrdolyak “did not perform any work,” Vrdolyak’s attorneys say he was “an integral part” of the reason Berman’s firm wound up working with the Illinois attorney general on the case.

Berman has not been charged with wrongdoing.

The deal evolved over time, and Vrdolyak agreed to deliver some of the money to Soso, records show. Vrdolyak paid Soso $1.9 million between 2000 and 2005, according to Soso’s plea agreement. Prosecutors have said Soso wound up collecting more than $3 million since 2000 from the tobacco litigation.

But Soso was dodging taxes. So the IRS served Vrdolyak’s law firm with a levy in 2005, demanding he pay the agency any money he owed to Soso. Instead, Vrdolyak stopped paying Soso and told the IRS he owed Soso nothing.

Vrdolyak continued to accept money that Soso was due, though. Then, in 2010 and 2011, Vrdolyak directed $170,242 to Soso instead of sending it to the IRS.