Key CPS official charged with lying to FBI about billion-dollar custodial deal
District CEO’s chief of staff accused of making false statement about whether he had given out ‘nonpublic information’ to an unnamed individual
Before he became the right-hand man to the head of the Chicago Public Schools, Pedro Soto played a key role in helping CPS decide which companies should be hired to fully privatize the school system’s cleaning and engineering work worth $1 billion.
But by late last year, the FBI wanted to know more about the role he played — and whether he shared inside information with someone tied to one of the companies bidding for facilities work in 2016. When asked about that unnamed person, Soto allegedly said the person “would want to get information, but I don’t think I gave him anything.” And he allegedly said he never called the person to offer information.
Now the feds say he lied. Soto, 45, is charged with one count of lying to the FBI in a fourpage charging document that became public Thursday. The document is known as an information, and it is typically a sign a defendant plans to plead guilty.
Soto, who until late last week served as chief of staff to CPS CEO Janice Jackson, could not be reached for comment after the charges were filed.
The federal charges do not name the company involved.
In a letter to CPS staff Thursday, Jackson wrote she learned of the pending charges Friday and accepted Soto’s resignation. She called the charges “a deeply disappointing matter that I take incredibly seriously” and said it was a “stunning betrayal of trust and an immense failure of judgment and character.”
Jackson said Soto’s case was referred to the district’s Inspector General last week for an investigation into whether Soto had influenced any CPS actions.
“While our understanding of this issue is developing, our preliminary review indicates that Mr. Soto’s actions did not influence the award of any contract or services, and the lobbyist Mr. Soto provided nonpublic information to has not represented any current or former CPS vendors,” the schools chief wrote.
Federal prosecutors did not reveal Thursday exactly how Soto may have influenced the bidding process for the custodial contract, only that he lied about it on Dec. 17, 2019, after the FBI had begun to dig into it.
The charges against Soto are particularly stunning because they involved a bidding process that began in April 2016 — a scant six months after former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty in a brazen federal bribery scheme that landed her in prison and left the school district reeling.
In April 2016, CPS was soliciting bids to expand the private management of cleaning and facilities services to all of its schools. The program had started under Byrd-Bennett and vastly expanded under her successor, Forrest Claypool, despite public outcry about the poor quality of the cleaning that left schools filthy and students lacking basic sanitation supplies, as the Chicago Sun-Times has documented.
At that time, Soto was on the evaluation committee that examined the bids. He worked as CPS’ $150,000 director of school operations, reporting to Jackson who headed all of CPS’ academics. He later became her chief of staff when she was promoted to CEO in 2017, replacing Claypool who was forced out in an ethics scandal
The custodial management work was eventually awarded to Philadelphia-based Aramark and SodexoMAGIC, partly owned by former NBA star Magic Johnson, which divided up most of the hundreds of school buildings by geographic zones.
In 2018, as CPS prepared for the last phase of privatization, schools officials recommended awarding a $60.6 million three-year contract to GCA Educational Services Central States Inc. to manage 34 schools but yanked the measure during a public Board of Education meeting hours before board members would have voted to approve it.
CPS later acknowledged it killed the deal because GCA’s parent company had a poor track record of keeping its janitors safe from sexual harassment and assault at work.
The charges filed against Soto revolve around an unnamed registered lobbyist for a company that bid for the custodial work, as well as a second unnamed individual who worked with the lobbyist. The feds at some point became interested in that second person’s contacts with Soto over the contract.
They say that on Dec. 17, 2019, Soto told four lies about him when asked questions pertaining to the investigation. When asked if he ever spoke on the phone with that person about “what was going on inside CPS” regarding the contract, Soto allegedly said that person “would want to get information, but I don’t think I gave him anything.”
Asked if that person dug for information, Soto allegedly said he would “just listen” to that person, but he was never persuaded to do anything. When asked if he had given the person inside information about the bidding, Soto allegedly said, “I don’t think that I have, no. I would — I don’t think so.”
Finally, when asked if he ever called the person to say he had information, Soto allegedly said he did not think that happened.