The scheme, which started around 2016 and continued until June 2019, kept about $1 million out of the public treasury, prosecutors said. 

Nitchoff and a company superintendent directed Oakk employees to provide Memisovski with home improvement services, installing a concrete pad, decking materials, dumpster use, fascias and soffits,a fence, a gas line, sprinkler system heads, tile and windows at Memisovski’s home. Nitchoff also provided Memisovski with jewelry, meals, sports tickets and other items, and hired an electrical contracting company owned by a relative of Memisovski. In exchange, prosecutors said the county employee would lower the assessed values of Nitchoff’s properties. 

“His conduct was an affront to the Cook County residents who deal honestly with the burden of property taxes,” prosecutors wrote. “They pay up or fight through appeals. [Nitchoff] bought an insider.”

The investigation into Nitchoff was part of a larger corruption probe that also led to charges against several employees and former Chicago Alderwoman Carrie Austin. Memisovski pleaded guilty last year to a conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with investigators. He has not yet been sentenced, and will not until after he is done with his cooperation, per the terms of the plea deal. 

Nitchoff had faced a sentence as severe as 10 years in prison and fines of $500,000 or more.

Attorneys representing Nitchoff, who did not immediately respond to inquiries, wrote in court documents that it “is impossible” to determine the extent to which Nitchoff was legally entitled to assessment reductions. They pointed to the Oakk superintendent alleged to be involved with the scheme and wrote that he acted independently without Nitchoff’s knowledge.

Prosecutors recommended a stiffer 87-month sentence than the 60 months U.S. District Judge John Kness handed Nitchoff. In court records, they said the investigation also revealed that Nitchoff in 2014 falsely certified to the city of Chicago that he had completed porches for low-income residents as part of a housing assistance program and received nearly $100,000 as a result, but had not yet done the work. And in 2017, they said Nitchoff paid $250 to an employee at a business administering tax-increment funding projects in exchange for having more projects assigned to his company, and also provided a suburban building inspector with use of a house in Florida plus free repair work on a deck and pergola to not enforce regulations on a property he owned.

Nitchoff even charged two others a fee to have their property assessments reduced by Memisovski, prosecutors said. In one case described in court records, the owner of a marina in Forest View, Ill., paid Nitchoff $10,000 for the service.