Operation Greylord - The Operation

The Operation

The 3 1/2-year undercover operation took place in the 1980s. The first listening device ever placed in a judge's chambers occurred in the undercover phase, when the narcotics court chambers of Judge Wayne Olson were bugged. In order to acquire evidence of corruption, agents obtained U.S. Department of Justice authorization to present false court cases for the undercover agents/lawyers to fix in front of the corrupt judges. The first defendant to be found guilty was Harold Conn, the Deputy Traffic Court Clerk in the Cook County judicial system. Conn was convicted in March 1984 and was one of the many bagmen in the ring of corruption. The last conviction was that of Judge Thomas J. Maloney, who was indicted in 1991 on bribery charges and convicted in April 1993 of fixing three murder cases for more than $100,000 in bribes. Maloney was released from federal prison in 2008, and died the same year. A total of 92 people were indicted, including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, ten deputy sheriffs, eight policemen, eight court officials, and state legislator James DeLeo. Out of the 17 judges indicted in the trials, 15 were convicted. One judge, Richard LeFevour, was convicted on 59 counts of mail fraud, racketeering and income-tax violations, getting 12 years in prison. Ten years after the undercover case concluded, the historical investigations, prosecutions and trials concluded in 1994.