Former ComEd exec-turned-FBI mole in Madigan probe sentenced to
probation
[February 20, 2026]
By Hannah Meisel
CHICAGO — Former Commonwealth Edison executive Fidel Marquez, whose role
as an FBI mole furthered the feds’ investigation into then-Illinois
House Speaker Michael Madigan, was sentenced to two years of probation
Thursday for his role in a bribery scheme meant to influence the
powerful speaker.
Marquez’s sentence, which also includes a $50,000 fine, is punishment
for his involvement in the scheme before January 2019, when the FBI
confronted him with wiretapped recordings of him discussing do-nothing
contracts for Madigan allies.
Marquez immediately agreed to cooperate, and over the following weeks he
secretly recorded meetings with his colleagues, several of which were
played during his testimony in the trials of those same colleagues and
Madigan himself.
In handing down her sentence, U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland told
Marquez it was “a credit to your parents” that he immediately agreed to
cooperate “when the FBI came calling.” But referencing the current
political climate, the judge implored would-be cooperators or
whistleblowers: “We need people like you to stand up sooner.”
“In a time when we’re seeing people exhibiting courage when they’re
being asked to do something that’s wrong, stand up and say, ‘I’m not
going to do this … that’s immoral, that’s illegal,’ … You didn’t do
that,” Rowland said.
In his statement to the court moments before, Marquez acknowledged the
same.
“I sincerely regret my actions and participation in the bribery of
Michael Madigan,” he said, reading from a prepared script. “I am
ashamed. I did not like what was taking place, but I could have tried to
do more. And I didn’t.”
Bribery scheme
As the utility’s chief governmental affairs executive, Marquez oversaw a
roster of lobbyists including ComEd’s longtime top contractor, Mike
McClain. Owing to their longtime friendship dating back to the 1970s
when they were both young Democratic lawmakers, McClain was tasked with
maintaining ComEd’s relationship with Madigan. Plenty of witnesses at
both trials testified Madigan had never trusted utilities, but his
relationship with ComEd had been particularly rocky.
ComEd’s finances were also rocky; the utility had been contemplating
bankruptcy in the mid-2000s, and by 2010 the company was struggling to
keep up with demands to its power grid, which serves the northern half
of Illinois. But after a multi-year legislative push, ComEd’s fortunes
began to change after 2011 when the General Assembly passed a law
changing how the utility could recoup the costs of major infrastructure
upgrades.
Prosecutors theorized that the utility’s success in Springfield could be
traced back to the months before that legislation passed, when ComEd
arranged for a do-nothing lobbying subcontract for a close Madigan ally
and retained a law firm owned by another.
Along with a successful pressure campaign to appoint a Madigan-backed
candidate to ComEd’s board and set-aside slots reserved for interns from
the speaker’s power base in Chicago’s 13th Ward, the roster of
do-nothing subcontractors paid indirectly by ComEd eventually totaled
five Madigan allies. Over the course of eight years, they were paid more
than $1.3 million.
All the while, ComEd and its parent company negotiated and the
legislature ultimately passed two more laws favorable to the utility,
which the feds say was made possible by the company’s accommodations of
Madigan’s requests. Defense lawyers and even some trial witnesses
maintained ComEd’s success in Springfield was due to the company’s
effective lobbying strategy.
The passage of the 2011 “Formula Rate” law was worth hundreds of
millions of dollars to ComEd. Witnesses at both trials testified that
the infusion of capital was critical to the utility’s ability to
modernize its aging electric grid, which also helped ComEd significantly
reduce the number and length of power outages, especially after heavy
storms.
Still, Judge Rowland on Thursday described the cost born by ComEd’s
customers as “sickening.”
“I mean, what about the ratepayers?” she asked.
[to top of second column]
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Fidel Marquez, a former Commonwealth Edison
executive-turned-cooperating witness, leaves the Dirksen Federal
Courthouse with his attorney on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024, after his
fifth day of testimony in the bribery and racketeering trial of
former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. (Capitol News
Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
Plea deal
Rowland acknowledged Marquez wasn’t the “architect” of the bribery
scheme; in secret recordings played at trial, McClain and Marquez’s
predecessor, John Hooker, took responsibility for the subcontracting
arrangements.
But he and ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore continued them beginning in 2012
when they both stepped into new leadership roles. Assistant U.S.
Attorney Timothy Chapman grew emotional Thursday when describing
Marquez’s career trajectory at ComEd, saying that even when promoted
into leadership, he was still at his core “an engineer that wants to
make things work well.”
Chapman said Marquez “sensed that there was some danger going into this
world of politics and lobbying, especially the way Hooker set it up with
McClain.”
“If there’s one checkmark on his character, it’s that when he came to
this moral fork in the road, he made the wrong choice,” Chapman said.
Prosecutors were recommending probation along with a $250,000 fine and
320 hours of community service. But Marquez’s lawyer, Christopher
Niewoehner, said his client’s “extraordinary cooperation” should be
taken into consideration and wipe away a fine or mandated community
service, as Marquez has already put in more than the government’s
recommendation volunteering at Pima Community College in Tucson Arizona,
close to where he lives.
Niewoehner pointed back to the FBI’s pre-sunrise meeting with Marquez
more than seven years ago, when he immediately agreed to cooperate with
the feds.
“He doesn’t say, ‘Let me think about it, let me talk to a lawyer.’ He
doesn’t say, ‘Gosh, what’s in it for me?’” Niewoehner said of his
client. “Because he truly didn’t think at that point in time that there
was something in it for him. He saw it as a chance to stop something he
thought was wrong.”
Niewoehner said he knew Marquez wasn’t thinking about a plea deal in
January 2019 because when Marquez retained him as a lawyer, “I’m the one
who laid it out for him.”
“And when his eyes were opened and he does indeed now understand why it
was legally wrong, not just morally wrong, it doesn’t change him,”
Niewoehner said. “He continues to sit with the FBI session after session
and do his best to explain.”
During Marquez’s cross-examination during the 2023 “ComEd Four” trial of
his former close colleagues, including McClain and Hooker, he
acknowledged that he told the FBI early on that “I did nothing illegal”
and did not believe that he’d bribed Madigan during his years as the
utility’s chief internal lobbyist.
Eventually, Marquez agreed to a plea deal, which he accepted in
September 2020. Earlier that summer, ComEd agreed to a $200 million
deferred prosecution agreement acknowledging the bribery scheme, which
was laid out in charging documents that referred to Madigan as “Public
Official A.” Marquez’s former colleagues were charged later that year,
while the speaker himself wasn’t charged until 2022, more than a year
after leaving office as the longest-serving legislative leader in the
country.
The ComEd Four — McClain, Pramaggiore, Hooker and ComEd lobbyist Jay
Doherty, who paid some of the ComEd subcontractors — are all currently
serving one to two-year prison sentences. Madigan, who reported to a
West Virginia facility in October to begin his 7 ½-year term, is
continuing his legal fight with appellate arguments set in his case for
April.
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