The $10,000 Liquor License: How a Small-Town Bribe Reveals Illinois’ Big Corruption Problem
Another week, another conviction. Inside the federal case that’s part of a 40-year pattern.
In the suburb of Summit, Illinois (population 11,000), a federal jury on December 10, 2025, added another name to the state’s notorious corruption roll call. Former Police Chief John Kosmowski, 59, was convicted on charges of bribery conspiracy, bribery, and obstruction of justice. His crime? Taking a $10,000 cash bribe to grease the wheels for a bar owner’s liquor license transfer.
It’s the kind of story that barely raises eyebrows in Illinois anymore. And that’s exactly the problem.
The Scheme That Unraveled
The plot was almost mundane in its simplicity. In 2017, Kosmowski and Summit building inspector William Mundy allegedly accepted cash from Kris Hodurek, owner of the Fire Station Pub. The goal: facilitate transferring the pub’s liquor license to a relative, which would unlock the real prize: video gambling machines, a lucrative addition in Illinois’ booming gaming landscape since legalization in 2009.
Here’s where it gets interesting: neither Kosmowski nor Mundy actually had authority over liquor licenses. But prosecutors argued they had something more valuable, influence. They pressured the mayor to approve the transfer, collected the bribe, and split it between them.
The scheme might have stayed buried in the gray area where “helping constituents” meets corruption. But federal investigators don’t do gray areas.
The Sting
William Mundy cracked first, pleading guilty and turning state’s witness. During the seven-day trial in Chicago, he detailed how Kosmowski tried to cover their tracks. When undercover recordings captured their conversations in 2022, the former chief coached Mundy to reframe the bribe as a “loan.”
It didn’t work.
Kosmowski now faces sentencing on March 27, 2026, with significant prison time looming. One more conviction in a state that’s made them routine.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Let’s zoom out for a moment. Since the 1970s, Illinois has convicted roughly 1,500 public officials on corruption charges. That’s an average of one per week for four decades. Not one per year. One per week.
The hall of shame reads like a greatest hits album nobody wants to hear:
Rod Blagojevich: Former governor, imprisoned for trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat. His infamous wiretapped quote became shorthand for Illinois corruption.
Michael Madigan: The state’s longest-serving House Speaker, convicted in February 2025 on bribery, conspiracy, and wire fraud charges involving a racketeering scheme with utility companies. Madigan wielded power in Illinois politics for decades. His fall was seismic.
Operation Greylord: The 1980s FBI sting that exposed wholesale judicial bribery in Cook County, resulting in over 90 convictions of judges, lawyers, and court personnel.
Chicago’s Aldermanic “Dishonor Roll”: Dozens of city council members convicted over the years for everything from zoning kickbacks to ghost payroll schemes.
When Police Chiefs Break Bad
Perhaps most troubling is when the corruption comes from those sworn to protect us. Police chiefs are the people we call when we need help. They’re supposed to be the ethical backbone of their communities, the ones who enforce the law rather than break it. Yet Illinois has a particularly grim record of police chiefs betraying that trust:
Michael Newsome (North Chicago): The former police chief was accused of stealing more than $200,000 from the city’s drug asset forfeiture fund between 2007 and 2012. Prosecutors alleged he used the seized money for personal expenses including car payments, his children’s education, and home remodeling. The case dragged through the courts for years with multiple indictments, dismissals, and reinstatements.
Emil Schullo (Cicero): The former police chief was convicted in 2002 in two separate corruption schemes involving reputed mob boss Michael Spano Sr. and then-town president Betty Loren-Maltese. Schullo helped loot the town coffers of millions through a mobbed-up insurance firm that siphoned money through overbilling and outright theft. He also took kickbacks for steering a $75,000 town contract to a mob-connected private investigator. Schullo was sentenced to more than nine years in federal prison.
Mario DePasquale (McCook): The former police chief was sentenced in 2024 to 27 months in prison for conspiring with then-Mayor Jeff Tobolski to extort business owners. DePasquale, wearing his gun and badge in his police office, demanded monthly payments from struggling business owners, threatening that “it would not be good” for their companies if they didn’t pay. He collected approximately $85,000 in bribes over five years. The federal judge called the corruption scheme “breathtaking” and noted that “the idea of a police chief extorting money from local businesses” should not happen “in this country in the 21st century.”
Derrick Muhammad and Derrick Moore (Harvey): Two Harvey police officers were charged in 2019 with obstruction of justice and conspiracy after allegedly falsifying a police report to protect convicted felons from firearm charges. Muhammad was later indicted separately in 2022 for running a separate extortion scheme from 2011 to 2019, demanding cash, cars, and other benefits from towing companies in exchange for city contracts.
Antoine Larry and Jarrett Snowden (Phoenix, Illinois): The patrol officer and sergeant were indicted in 2023 for a criminal conspiracy from 2020 to 2022 in which they stole cash, drugs, and other items from vehicle occupants during traffic stops. They offered to reduce or withhold criminal charges in exchange for the stolen property, and in some instances agreed to sell stolen drugs to a dealer and split the proceeds.
When a police chief falls, it doesn’t just expose individual corruption. It corrodes the entire foundation of public trust. These are the people who are supposed to set the ethical tone for their departments, who residents call in emergencies, who speak at community meetings about safety and accountability. Their betrayal cuts deeper because the role itself demands integrity as its most basic qualification.
The pattern isn’t subtle.
Why Illinois?
Political scientists and historians point to a “culture of corruption” rooted in the state’s patronage-heavy political machine. Power concentrates in the hands of a few, creating fertile ground for abuse.
Take Chicago’s aldermanic prerogative system, where council members hold near-absolute control over local zoning and permits in their wards. It’s a system designed for “helping the neighborhood” that too often becomes a tollbooth for doing business.
Video gambling licenses (the hook in Kosmowski’s case) represent exactly the kind of regulatory gray area where corruption thrives. When approval processes involve multiple stakeholders and discretionary decisions, influence becomes currency. And currency can be bought.
But Here’s the Thing
Not every official succumbs. Many serve honorably amid these pressures, navigating a system that makes ethical choices harder than they should be. The existence of corruption doesn’t mean everyone’s corrupt, a distinction worth making in an era when cynicism comes easy.
Illinois has also made genuine attempts at reform: ethics training post-Blagojevich, increased transparency laws, and aggressive federal prosecution through the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois. These efforts matter. They catch bad actors like Kosmowski.
The question is whether they’re enough.
The Bigger Picture
Cases like Kosmowski’s aren’t really about one person’s greed. They’re diagnostic tools, revealing where systems are vulnerable. A $10,000 bribe in Summit might seem small compared to Madigan’s schemes, but the underlying dynamics are the same: discretionary authority + economic incentives + inadequate oversight = opportunity for corruption.
What could actually help?
Stronger ethics training that goes beyond checkbox compliance to create cultures of accountability.
Independent oversight that doesn’t rely on political appointees investigating their benefactors.
Campaign finance reforms that reduce the influence of money in local politics.
Structural changes to systems like aldermanic prerogative that concentrate too much power in too few hands.
Whistleblower protections that encourage people like Mundy to come forward earlier, before schemes metastasize.
None of these are silver bullets. But together, they could shift the calculus that makes bribery seem worth the risk.
Vigilance, Not Cynicism
The Kosmowski verdict is one more data point in a long spreadsheet. But data points are people: in this case, a police chief who thought he could get away with it, a building inspector who flipped when the heat came, and a bar owner who apparently believed $10,000 could buy what regulations wouldn’t allow.
Illinois’ history is checkered. That’s not in dispute. But history isn’t destiny. Every conviction is both an indictment of past failures and proof that accountability is possible. The work of good governance isn’t sexy, it’s the daily grind of oversight, transparency, and ethical choice-making when nobody’s watching.
Or at least, when you think nobody’s watching.
The feds in Illinois have proven they usually are.
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