Feds Subpoena Records Of Bridgeport Home Belonging To Chicago Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson
By Tony Arnold, Dan Mihalopoulos
Federal investigators have sought mortgage records pertaining to the home of 11th Ward Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson — the same bungalow in Bridgeport where the alderman’s grandfather Richard J. Daley and his family lived when he
was Chicago’s most famous mayor.
In a grand-jury subpoena sent to Cook County officials on Sept. 4, 2019, prosecutors asked for property records dating back to 2011 for the brick house in the 3500 block of South Lowe Avenue.
The feds also asked in September for mortgage and sale documents for another property on the same block that Thompson and his wife, Kathleen, had owned and sold about three years ago, according to the subpoena obtained by WBEZ this month.
And in a separate subpoena, investigators are also seeking documents related to the alderman’s Grand Beach, Michigan home.
The couple had owned the former mayor’s house since shortly after Thompson’s grandmother Eleanor “Sis” Daley died in 2003, records show. The relatively modest bungalow long underscored the working-man image that Richard J. Daley developed during more than two decades as mayor, from 1955 until his death in 1976.
Thompson — a lawyer who has been alderman of the family’s South Side power base since 2015 — said he has no idea why federal agents would be interested in his home records.
“I don’t know anything you’re talking about in terms of the subpoena for my house — records — I have no idea,” Daley Thompson said. “I don’t know anything about it.”
A spokesman for the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, U.S. Attorney John Lausch, declined to comment on the subpoena for documents related to the Daley ancestral home or other subpoenas related to the investigation that WBEZ recently obtained through a FOIA request to the Recorder of Deeds.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported in April 2019 that authorities were looking at Thompson as part of their probe into a failed neighborhood bank that made a loan for a building owned by the 11th Ward Regular Democratic Organization. The ward organization is led by Thompson’s uncle John Daley, who’s also a Cook County commissioner.
Thompson’s mother, Patricia Martino, grew up in the bungalow on Lowe, together with her more politically involved siblings. In addition to Richard J. Daley, the city’s most influential clan includes son Richard M. Daley, who was mayor from 1989 until 2011, and another son, William Daley, who was a chief of staff in President Barack Obama’s White House.
Thompson and his wife bought his grandparents’ bungalow for $415,000 in 2003, county land records show.
But Patrick Daley Thompson and Kathleen Thompson then got a $454,000 loan from Morgan Stanley Private Bank N.A. in November 2018, one of the only transactions on the house that falls within the time frame listed on the subpoena.
County records show the loan, a refinance of their Bridgeport home, was to be repaid at an initial interest rate of 4.7%, which could be adjusted in seven years, depending on changes in the interest-rate market.
The same bank that gave the Thompsons the $454,000 mortgage in Bridgeport also loaned the couple $250,000 in late 2018 for their country home in Grand Beach, a resort town in southwest Michigan.
On the same day prosecutors issued their subpoena for documents related to the Bridgeport homes, they also sent a subpoena to the Berrien County, Mich., Register of Deeds. Investigators are seeking real estate records for Thompson’s Grand Beach home going back to 2011, according to the document obtained by WBEZ.
The 2019 subpoena to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds office also sought records for a home in the 3500 block of South Lowe Avenue, which the alderman and his wife owned for nearly 20 years.
The Thompsons bought that house in 1998 for $157,500 and sold it in February 2017 for $335,000.
The feds’ subpoena time frame would also include records from the 2017 sale and a subsequent sale of the home last year.
The current home owner and the person who bought the home from Thompson both said they’ve not been contacted by federal agents.
The grand jury that issued the subpoena for documents on the houses on Lowe is the same one investigating Washington Federal Bank for Savings, according to court documents obtained by WBEZ.
And the same prosecutor who has been looking into Washington Federal — Assistant U.S. Atty. Brian Netols — asked county officials for the documents pertaining to the two properties on Lowe.
In a court hearing in October, Netols told a federal judge in Chicago there could be “many” people charged in the investigation of the bank, which was located in Bridgeport.
Other subpoenas sent to county officials sought records on properties associated with the bank, including a condo building in the 3800 block of South Lowe Avenue.
Washington Federal made loans to that building’s owner, William Mahon — a $126,000-a-year deputy commissioner in Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation, according to the city’s website.
Mahon’s attorney did not return calls for comment.
Tony Arnold covers state politics for WBEZ. Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter at WBEZ. Follow them @tonyjarnold and @dmihalopoulos.
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