Prosecutors Asked To Probe Niles Electoral Fraud Allegations

NILES, IL — The campaign for village trustee backed by Mayor Andrew Pryzbylo faces accusations of electoral fraud. Two sworn statements sent to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office claim signatures were forged on the Niles Neighbors Party's nominating petitions for the April 2 municipal elections. The mayor denies the allegations.

Chicago resident Daniel Mulkerin, listed as the circulator of three pages of nominating petitions for the Neighbors Party, denied in an affidavit filed in December that he circulated any such petitions, the Niles Journal reported. Then, last month, Niles resident Jason Trunco said a petition page he and and his wife signed had falsely listed Pryzbylo as circulator. He said he knew the village public works employee who showed up and collected the signatures.

Both affidavits were included in a complaint to the Cook County State's Attorney seeking further investigation sent Jan. 29, according to the Journal. The public works employee denied collecting petitions for any candidates, and Pryzbylo said he did not know if he collected the signatures on the petition in question.

"I know that I, nor any known volunteers to me had perpetrated a fraud. [Mulkerin] is a known friend of opposition party candidate Denise McCreary. Therefore, his allegations are suspect. It is deplorable that these Chicago political tactics are being brought to Niles," Pryzbylo told Patch.

"The fact that this is going on is disgraceful," Trunco told the Journal. He said he felt a duty to speak out after seeing that the mayor had been listed as the circulator of the petition he signed. Trunco told the Niles Herald-Spectator he believed the mayor used his power to get a village employee to collect signatures and falsely signed his own name.

The Neighbors Party slate, comprised of Melic Bookstein, Paul Drakontaidis and Izzy Pachecho, is running against the Voice of Niles Party trio of Craig Niedermaier and incumbent trustees Denise McCreery and Dean Strzelecki.

Przybylo recruited the Neighbors Party candidates and is consulting with their campaign. In 2015, he campaigned with trustees McCreery and Strzelecki as part of the Niles Forward Party slate and ousted opponents of the mayor on the village board.

“This is Chicago-style dirty politics, that’s what this is,” Przybylo told Pioneer Press. “I was born and raised in Chicago; my father was precinct captain. I saw what goes on there.”

Pryzbylo has served on the village board since 1989 and as mayor since 2013. He resigned his position as secretary of the Cook County Zoning Board of Appeals in 2015 upon request after an inspector general's investigation (IIG15-0218) determined he engaged in a "long standing practice of misappropriating and converting county compensated time in furtherance of his role as an elected official," Patch has learned. The report found Pryzbylo routinely conducted village work on county time and provided "false and misleading" information to the inspector general's office.