Judge: Developer apparently faked key document

A federal judge on Monday said the evidence suggests millionaire Chicago real estate developer Calvin Boender produced a fake invoice in an attempt to refute charges that he bribed an alderman to push through a big-money zoning change.

U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr. said evidence gathered in the case "supports the government's contention that the invoice was fake and that Boender knew it to be fake" when he gave it to his attorney to show to the prosecutors to prove that he didn't pay a bribe.

The record suggests that "Boender knew that the invoice was a fabrication" and that the developer used his lawyers as "front men," Dow said in a 14-page opinion that sent Boender's attorney scrambling to a federal appeals court.

Boender, 55, is charged with showering former Chicago Alderman Isaac Carothers with $40,000 worth of home improvements -- painting, doors, windows and air conditioning -- in exchange for the rezoning of Chicago's Galewood Yards neighborhood where he owns property.

He also is charged with providing Carothers, who has pleaded guilty and is expected to be a government witness, with free meals and sports tickets and funneling illegal campaign contributions to a Carothers relative. And Boender is charged with obstruction of justice involving the allegedly bogus invoice showing that Carothers was billed for the goods and services.

The trial was due to get under way with jury selection Monday. But it was delayed one day while defense attorney Robert Sanger went to the federal appeals court and urged it to bar prosecutors from calling Boender's former lawyer, Daniel Reidy, to the stand as a government witness to testify about the invoice.

Sanger maintained that whatever passed between Boender and Reidy was confidential and protected by attorney-client privilege and should not be presented to the jury.

Dow had already ruled that Reidy could be called under the so-called crime-fraud exception to the rule that attorney-client privilege bars divulging what clients tell their lawyers.

The so-called crime-fraud exception comes into play when the court determines the client may have used the lawyer "in order to further a crime or fraud," Dow said in his opinion.

Sanger said he planned to go to the U.S. Supreme Court with a last-ditch effort.

But Dow said the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court might delay the trial while it considered Boender's request "are remote enough that it makes sense to carry on tomorrow."

Dow said the record indicates that Reidy's conduct in the case was professional. In fact, he said that Reidy repeatedly warned Boender that if the invoice were fake and the government found out, Boender most likely would be charged with obstruction of justice.