Countersuit is filed in robocalls battle
Mayor of Orland Park denies the allegation, claims email fraudulent
An Orland Park man accused in a lawsuit by the village of being behind “vile, defamatory” robocalls to residents is claiming the village’s mayor is responsible for many of them.
Michael Henry, the target of a lawsuit Orland Park filed a year ago in Cook County Circuit Court, alleges Mayor Keith Pekau was responsible for half the 36 calls, which began in April 2018. Pekau vigorously denies the allegation and accused Henry of fabricating information.
Henry has a history of filing lawsuits on his own, without the aid of an attorney, and has been essentially barred from filing federal cases in Illinois’ Northern District, according to court documents.
In July 2008, he was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges he sent threatening emails to government officials, including U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan in Chicago.
In the Dec. 12, 2007, email to the judge, Henry, stymied in his efforts in court to reduce a multimillion-dollar income tax assessment against him, cited the 2005 shooting deaths of the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow by a man whose malpractice lawsuit was dismissed by Lefkow, according to court records.
In his response to the Orland Park lawsuit this month, titled “draft complaint for settlement only discussions,” Henry asserts that leading up to Pekau’s successful campaign for mayor in 2017 and after he was elected, Pekau sought his help in arranging robocalls.
One, in May 2017, just after being sworn in, was for a fundraiser Pekau was holding at Silver Lake Country Club, while another robocall that summer pertained to Joe La Margo, at the time interim village manager, Henry says. La Margo was approved as village manager by a 6-1 Village Board vote in September 2017, with Pekau casting the lone no vote.
Henry says that in an August 2017 email, Pekau wrote the “old board” was moving to appoint La Margo as manager.
“I need to send out a call
slowing this down,” Pekau said in an email, according to Henry’s complaint. “He will be a disaster and I can’t work with him.”
Pekau said that while Henry did “do legit robocalls” for his 2017 campaign, he distanced himself from Henry after being elected and being told by then police Chief Tim McCarthy about Henry’s background.
The mayor said the La Margo email “is clearly fabricated,” pointing out that it was purportedly sent by him on Saturday, Aug. 11, 2017, but Aug. 11 of that year was a Friday.
“I sure as hell didn’t send it,” Pekau said Thursday, saying no computer program would show an email sent on a Saturday when the date corresponds to a Friday. “This is a fake email, an absolute fake.”
The mayor said in recent years he and his family and some village trustees and their families “have been through hell” due to obscene and slanderous robocalls, and Pekau’s wife, a teacher, had a particularly vile letter sent to her superintendent.
“I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough of this,” Pekau said. “I’ve been called a pedophile, a child abuser.”
Pekau said the last robocall that went out was last October, but transcripts of calls made throughout 2019, included in the village’s lawsuit, show targets included the mayor as well as trustee candidates he supported who were elected that spring.
Some accused the mayor of being corrupt and lambasted him as being a “disgrace to Christian people in Orland Park” after a wellpublicized issue in which a village church wanted to open a portion of its building to house the homeless. Other calls accuse certain trustees of being alcoholics.
The village’s complaint seeks an injunction against Henry along with fines, and Pekau said the village has filed a motion to dismiss Henry’s counterclaim.
Henry did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Pekau is also subject of a defamation lawsuit filed by La Margo, in which the former village manager claims that two days after the April 2019 election, which saw a slate of trustees backed by the mayor win giving him a 4-3 majority on the board, he was called to Pekau’s office and was “forced to resign.”
The Village Board in May 2019 approved La Margo’s resignation and, at the time, Pekau said he and La Margo had “mutually agreed” that La Margo step down. La Margo described Pekau as having been “a gentleman through the whole process.”
That lawsuit is pending in circuit court with the next hearing scheduled for March 11.
Federal court filings show Henry’s problems in court began with a federal tax return in 1999, which he amended several times partly to lower his reported gain from a multimilliondollar stock transaction.
At the time of his arrest in December 2007 by U.S. marshals in New Orleans on charges of threatening the federal judge, Henry’s lawyer said the tax issue came about after his client had sold a computer company he owned.
Henry sued the Internal Revenue Service in April 2002 for a refund, and while defending that complaint the IRS determined he owed another $3.1 million to the government stemming from the transaction, according to court documents.
There were several more pro se lawsuits, or complaints made on his own without the help of a lawyer, filed by Henry in federal court between December 2006 and October 2007, accusing government officials and agencies of misconduct and altering and destroying documents. All of the lawsuits Henry filed were dismissed in U.S. District Court in Chicago and the last one was dismissed in December 2007, according to filings.
At a Dec. 20, 2007 detention hearing in federal court in New Orleans, where he was living at the time, Henry was deemed a flight risk and “he poses a serious danger to the community and to others,” a judge determined.
While being held, Henry asked the court to transfer him to a federal facility that had a law library so he could continue work on cases he had pending in the U.S. Northern District in Chicago.
Noting Henry’s “welldocumented history of abusing the litigation process as a plaintiff,” the Northern District’s executive committee in December 2007 barred him from filing any new civil cases in the Northern Illinois federal district, with that order most recently extended in November 2019 for another year after Henry filed paperwork seeking to have it rescinded.