At Jones trial, jury hears lawmaker bringing colleague into fold of
‘personal benefits’
[April 11, 2025]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — On a warm Tuesday evening in late June 2019, state Sen. Emil
Jones III walked out onto the patio at a suburban steakhouse and into an
hourslong dinner that would set the table for alleged bribes — and
subsequent federal corruption charges.
Jones, D-Chicago, dressed in a polo shirt that matched the orange rind
in one of his dinner companion’s condensation-glazed cocktails, had been
asked to the meal by his colleague, state Sen. Martin Sandoval,
D-Chicago, in order to broker an understanding with Omar Maani, the
co-founder of a Chicago-based red-light camera company.
In three of the General Assembly’s previous four legislative sessions,
Jones had proposed measures that Maani and his company, SafeSpeed,
viewed as an existential threat to the red-light camera industry. But
only one had ever gotten even partially through the legislative process,
thanks to Sandoval’s tight control over the Senate Transportation
Committee, which he chaired.
“He won’t let my bill even see the light of day,” Jones joked as all
three of them laughed. “S—, Marty. I thought you loved me, Marty.”
Maani had just finished explaining that he and Sandoval had been friends
for about a decade and were “about as close as people can get.” A few
minutes later, Sandoval extended Jones an invitation into that
relationship.
But Maani, who had been bribing Sandoval for years, was motivated by
something other than friendship — or even protecting his business. The
red-light camera entrepreneur was acting under instructions from the
FBI, with whom he’d been cooperating since agents knocked on his door
one early morning in January 2018.
Jones and Sandoval were two of “dozens and dozens and dozens” of others
Maani secretly recorded for the feds’ investigation, he told a federal
jury Wednesday as Jones’ corruption trial kicked off at the federal
courthouse in Chicago.
A few weeks after that June 2019 dinner, Maani and Jones met up alone
for a meal at one of the senator’s favorite spots: Steak 48 in Chicago’s
swanky River North neighborhood. Jones mentioned that he’d previously
held a campaign fundraiser at the restaurant, and Maani picked up the
conversational thread from the previous meeting, asking about Jones’
next fundraiser. It happened to be scheduled for the following month.
“I don’t give folks numbers,” Jones said after a beat. “Just whatever
you can raise for me, that’d be nice. I’m not greedy.”
But Maani pressed him, and after a complimentary detour in which the
senator told Maani he was “a good guy” and that he enjoyed his company,
Jones gave him a goal.
“If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good,” the senator said.
“Done,” Maani replied.
Earlier Wednesday, the jury of five men and seven women were told that
Jones never actually received the $5,000 from Maani.
“That’s because FBI agents went to interview the defendant instead,”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Prashant Kolluri said during his brief opening
statements. “But the crime here is the agreement.”
Immediately after Maani agreed to raise $5,000 for Jones, the senator
raised another request.
Maani quickly agreed to find something for the engineering major, asking
Jones to have a resume sent over and musing that maybe the intern could
be made a “reviewer” at SafeSpeed, a job Maani explained to the jury
Wednesday as the person who reviews red-light camera footage to
determine whether a driver committed a traffic violation. Reviewers
don’t have final say in municipalities outside of Chicago; a local
police department does.
But Jones’ former intern, who is expected to testify Thursday, was never
made a reviewer. Instead, Maani began paying him the suggested $15 an
hour for 20 hours per week even though he didn’t have any work for the
intern to do. After six weeks, the payments stopped when the FBI made
Maani’s cooperation known when agents interviewed Jones the same day
Sandoval and others were publicly raided in September 2019.
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State Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, exits the Dirksen Federal
Courthouse on Monday, April 7, after the first day of jury selection
in his corruption trial. Jones is accused of agreeing to bribes from
a red-light camera company and then lying to the FBI about it.
(Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Kolluri accused Jones of engaging in “politics for profit” and promised
the jury they’d “get to hear the defendant’s lies straight from his
mouth,” as one of the three charges Jones faces is for allegedly lying
to the FBI about his agreements with Maani.
But Jones’ defense team spent their short openings previewing how they
planned to go after Maani, with attorney Joshua Adams telling the jury
that the FBI mole was a “serial briber” who got an extraordinary deal
from the feds.
“You’re gonna hear him testify about all the bribes he made, all the
lies he told and the lengths he went to conceal those bribes,” Adams
said.
Maani’s bribery charge was dismissed in 2023 — the year after Jones
himself was charged, but four years after Sandoval and other local
elected officials caught up in the red-light camera probe were indicted.
Sandoval died in late 2020 after pleading guilty to his charges. Jones
is the only figure to take his case to trial, as the others also pleaded
guilty.
On Wednesday, Maani told the jury how he developed a friendship with
Sandoval “because we needed his support in the legislature,” adding that
Sandoval “held a lot of sway” not only in the legislature but also
within the Illinois Department of Transportation, which regulates
red-light cameras.
Maani said he began giving Sandoval “personal benefits” not long after
they’d first met, including cigars and cigar labels.
In the June 25, 2019, recording, Sandoval told Jones that Maani had
thrown a bachelor party for the senator’s son at a suburban cigar club,
but Jones said he’d recently quit smoking when offered a cigar. Sandoval
also joked to Maani that he and Jones were “both brought up by the same
daddy,” referring to Jones’ father, former Illinois Senate President
Emil Jones Jr.
Jones Jr., who was sitting in the courtroom Wednesday, listened as Maani
claimed that when Sandoval said on the recording that the former Senate
president taught him “the craft” of politics, it meant “accepting
personal benefits.”
Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Ardam who Maani was referring
to as “we,” Maani said it was SafeSpeed, though in his secret
recordings, Maani emphasized that he was acting alone.
SafeSpeed, which in 2023 changed its name to AllTech Tracking and sued
Maani for reputational harm, said in a statement Wednesday that it was
“deeply offended to see that Omar Maani, despite admitting to criminal
acts, is now refusing to accept responsibility for his own criminal
conduct” and accused Maani of making “false claims about SafeSpeed” on
the witness stand.
“We want to be absolutely clear Omar Maani has not been affiliated with
the company since February 2020 and we stand by our original statement:
Our company was unaware of any illegal activities Omar Maani may have
engaged in,” AllTech said, adding that Maani “was a rogue employee.”
Maani explained to the jury that he and SafeSpeed viewed that Jones’
2019 bill, which called for a statewide study on red-light cameras, was
viewed as a “prelude to a ban” on such technology. Maani hoped he could
at least persuade Jones to amend his bill to call for a study only in
the city of Chicago, where SafeSpeed didn’t operate.
In recordings the jury will hear Thursday, Jones allegedly agreed to
limit his legislation in exchange for the $5,000 and the job for his
intern, according to the feds.
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