At the urging of Mayor Tiffany Henyard, the village of Dolton paid a Summit construction company that’s been linked to multiple corruption investigations more than $200,000 for no-bid, no-contract work replacing senior homeowners’ roofs and windows.
Now, federal investigators are seeking records from Dolton officials about the construction work by O.A.K.K. Construction Co., owned by Alex Nitchoff. His family was the longtime owner of a restaurant in Dolton, and the Chicago Sun-Times has reported that his late father Boris Nitchoff engaged in a scheme to clear hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes from properties the family owned in the suburb.
Alex Nitchoff, who is O.A.K.K.’s president, awaits sentencing after pleading guilty in January to bribing a Cook County assessor’s office employee for property tax breaks. His late father Boris Nitchoff was implicated in a home-renovation bribery scheme involving former Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin (34th). O.A.K.K. construction was subpoenaed as part of the federal investigation of Austin, the Sun-Times reported in 2019.
An attorney for Alex Nitchoff declined to comment. Austin has denied any wrongdoing.
Federal subpoenas were issued this spring to the village of Dolton and to Thornton Township, where Henyard is the township supervisor, according to records that show O.A.K.K. was named in the Dolton subpoena. They are part of an ongoing federal investigation into Henyard, Dolton’s self-styled “supermayor.”
Dozens of businesses, government employees, political figures and members of Henyard’s inner circle are named in the subpoenas, which also seek spending records from multiple trips, including one in October 2022 that Henyard and supporters of her not-for-profit cancer foundation took to Springfield to promote a breast cancer bill. The bill hadn’t been filed, though, and the Illinois Legislature wasn’t in session, the Illinois Answers Project and Fox 32 Chicago have reported.
Among others named in the subpoenas:
- Henyard’s not-for-profit, The Tiffany Henyard Cares Foundation, which she financed using township money and says helps people with cancer. The Illinois attorney general’s office is investigating the foundation, which has been barred from fundraising after failing to submit required documentation.
- Jose Aldaco, a Bensenville businessman who billed the township $17,000 for 1,000 T-shirts and sweatshirts ahead of the trip to Springfield. The federal subpoena asked for records regarding the T-shirt invoice submitted by Aldaco’s company. The invoice came one day after the paperwork creating Henyard’s foundation was submitted to the state. Messages left for Aldaco weren’t returned.
- Kamal Woods, who is identified in divorce records as Henyard’s boyfriend, works for Henyard in the township government and is a director of her foundation. Woods is paid a “highly lucrative salary — in excess of $100,000 per year” by the township in addition to his side gig providing government security, according to his divorce case. Reached by a reporter, Woods hung up.
- Keith Freeman, who was the first registered agent for Henyard’s foundation and is the village manager and Henyard’s paid senior adviser for the township. Freeman has pleaded “not guilty” after being charged with bankruptcy fraud, accused of shielding income he made from the village of Robbins, the village of Dolton, Thornton Township and a Northfield company that leases vehicles to low-income municipalities at high rates. Freeman didn’t return messages seeking comment.
- Michael Kasper, the election attorney for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who helped Henyard defeat a recall effort in 2022. Messages left for Kasper weren’t returned.
- Former Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova, who was sentenced in 2002 to five years in prison on corruption charges and worked on a campaign for Henyard’s slate of candidates in 2023. Genova said he has worked as a marketing and economic development consultant for 30 years and now “works for a private firm that provides consulting services to Thornton Township and other governmental and corporate clients throughout the Southland and Chicago area.”
The Nitchoffs were the longtime owners and operators of Olivia’s Restaurant in Dolton, now under new ownership.
In 2019, a Sun-Times investigation found that the Nitchoffs avoided paying several hundred thousand dollars in property taxes on Dolton properties by not paying for years, then buying the tax-delinquent properties back through shell companies for a fraction of the tax debt through Cook County scavenger or tax sales.
Nitchoff’s businesses gave Henyard’s campaign $2,000 in February 2022 and $5,000 four months later.
The latter contribution came days after O.A.K.K. first billed the village for no-bid, no-contract residential construction at several dozen homes that totaled $205,000, a tab the village paid using federal COVID-19 grant money.
Dolton’s village board didn’t authorize the work and at first refused to pay. O.A.K.K. then sent letters to the senior homeowners, threatening to place liens against their homes.
“I am really confused right now,” Rose Rice, one of the residents, said in an email to village officials. “First of all, I didn’t sign any papers or agreement with this company, so why is this lien against my property and why is my name on this document … This is asinine.”
At a December 2022 village board meeting, John Bodendorfer, O.A.K.K.'s construction manager, apologized, saying the letters should have gone to the mayor and village board, “seeking payment for the work that we completed for the homeowners.”
At the same meeting, village trustees, a majority who oppose Henyard, asked how she picked the contractor.
“If you don’t get a [bid], you get contractors who donate to her campaign fund,” said then-village Trustee Edward Steave. “That’s reality. Because the mayor should not have all the power to pick the contractors, pick who she wants, and then she goes to them for campaign donations.”
Henyard said she announced at an earlier board meeting that contractors were needed for the work and that O.A.K.K. signed up.
“I don’t go pick people,” Henyard said. “People come to the village, they apply, and they want to do it, and they do the work. I could care less who does it as long as the resident gets the service.”
Because the cost of each job didn’t exceed $5,000, Henyard said the village wasn’t required to seek other proposals.
“I’m asking again for the board to make them whole, pay them what’s owed to them so they can complete the process,” Henyard said.
After Trustee Jason House asked for a copy of O.A.K.K.’s contract and its customers, Henyard said: “For the record, there is no contract. No one has a contract.”
Bodendorfer, who declined to comment, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he gave jewelry, meals, sports tickets and home-improvement materials to Lavdim Memisovski, a commercial group leader who worked for the Cook County assessor’s office, for tax breaks on the Nitchoff family properties that exceeded $500,000. His boss, Alex Nitchoff, pleaded guilty to bribery charges in January.
Boris Nitchoff was implicated in the corruption case against Austin, accused of providing sump pumps and kitchen cabinets for her home as he sought business from the city of Chicago.
Records show the village of Dolton paid O.A.K.K. Construction $14,500 to build a fence around property that became a publicly owned ice rink that Henyard’s campaign used for a campaign event without paying for it.
Freeman was indicted in April for bankruptcy fraud, accused of underreporting years of income in a bankruptcy filing earlier this year, including falsely reporting that his 2023 income was $99,647 when it actually was about $195,000. He also allegedly failed to report that the village of Robbins, where he formerly was village manager, had a claim against him because he been paid about $90,396 “in excess of his authorized salary.”
According to the indictment, a Northfield company that uses high-interest loans to sell firefighting vehicles and other municipal equipment paid him $24,500 in consulting fees from December 2021 through January 2022 — income he didn’t list in his bankruptcy filing.
The subpoenas issued to Dolton and Thornton Township sought records related to First Government Lease, of Northfield, and its president Paul Graver. Records show that, in 1992, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission fined Graver $50,000 over “three schemes to fraudulently induce the purchase or sale of securities.”
Records show the village of Dolton leased a 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe from the company for five years for a total of $149,000 — nearly $56,000 of that for loan and interest costs.
Graver didn’t return messages seeking comment.
Casey Toner reports for the Illinois Answers Project.
