Chicago-area exec charged in scheme to bribe Amtrak official with trips, steaks and jewelry in $100M Philadelphia train station renovation

An executive for a Chicago-area construction company has been charged in a scheme to bribe an allegedly corrupt Amtrak official overseeing a $58 million contract to renovate a train station in Philadelphia with hundreds of thousands of dollars in lavish gifts, including trips to India and the Galapagos Islands; meals at an expensive steakhouse; luxury watches; and limousine rides to Atlantic City casinos.

Lee Maniatis, 56, of Palos Park, currently the chief operating officer of Dolton-based MARK 1 Restoration, was charged in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia in a criminal information made public Wednesday with one count of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery, court records show. An arraignment date has not been set.

Maniatis’ Chicago-based attorney, Ted Poulos, told the Tribune Wednesday that Maniatis “has been cooperating in the government’s investigation since 2019 and will continue to do so.”

“Lee Maniatis deeply regrets his role in the charged conduct,” Poulos said.

The charges come nearly three years after the Tribune exposed the Chicago-area connections to the investigation, which centered on an Amtrak official, Ajith Bhaskaran, who allegedly approved tens of millions of dollars of extra payments for MARK 1 over the course of the project to restore the facade of Philadelphia’s 30th Street train station, nearly doubling the amount promised in the original contract.

In exchange, Bhaskaran accepted nearly $325,000 in gifts from MARK 1 officials, the charges alleged, “including, among other things, paid vacations, jewelry, cash, dinners, entertainment, and transportation.”

The charges only specify one of the alleged gifts: a Tourneau watch costing more than $11,000. However, an FBI search warrant affidavit made public in Chicago in 2021 detailed a long list of specialized items allegedly bestowed upon Bhaskaran, who inundated MARK 1 officials with demands, including birthday parties, tickets to see Bruno Mars, and even a German shepherd puppy that the company later paid to have trained.

Another former MARK 1 employee, Khaled Dallo, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, was charged in March and has since pleaded guilty, court records show. He’s scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 26.

The investigation is ongoing and further charges are expected, sources have said.

Bhaskaran, meanwhile, was found dead in his home of an apparent heart attack in October 2020. At the time, he had been negotiating a plea deal with the government on separate charges alleging he bilked the Social Security program out of a quarter-million dollars, the Tribune previously reported.

The bribery scandal, which began when an anonymous letter accusing Bhaskaran of fraud was sent to Amtrak’s inspector general in March 2018, is one of the biggest to ever hit Amtrak, a quasi-public corporation that is heavily subsidized by the U.S. government, with nearly $4.3 billion in taxpayer funds going to the agency in 2022.

Amtrak has said it “took swift and definitive action to terminate the employees” involved in the scheme and enhanced its oversight to “protect the company from criminal activities.”

An Amtrak representative was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.

The contract to restore Philadelphia’s 30th Street train station was inked in December 2015 and originally called on MARK 1 to be paid $58.5 million to restore and clean the almost 90-year-old building’s limestone facade and provide a “complete window restoration,” records show.

To do the job, MARK 1 had to replace nearly 950 limestone panels, which were made from stone mined in Alabama and then fabricated in Chicago before being shipped back to Philadelphia for installation. The company also replaced or restored more than 2,000 window panes from the old Art Deco windows, outsourcing some of the work to an Oregon glass manufacturer to match the originals.

As a program manager for Amtrak’s major capital construction division, Bhaskaran oversaw work on the project and had control over the purse strings, approving payments to MARK 1 as well as any applications for additional funds due to cost overruns, according to the charges.

In March 2016, just three months after the contract was granted, a MARK 1 project manager emailed Maniatis saying he had been given inside information by Bhaskaran and that they had plans to take him out to dinner, the affidavit stated. “Keep it tight between us,” the email quoted in the document stated. “When r u coming into Philly? … Steak dinner, cigars and whiskey. Let me know.”

Maniatis replied with a smiley face emoticon and wrote, “Plan on steak Tuesday night baby.”

The affidavit alleged that over one two-day period, Maniatis and his team racked up more than $2,000 in charges at a high-end Philadelphia steakhouse and a nearby cigar bar.

After one such excursion in Jan. 19, 2017, Maniatis received notification that Amtrak had approved extra funding submitted by Bhaskaran and sent a text to MARK 1’s owner reading, “Dinner was worth it,” according to the charges filed this week.

Four days later, Maniatis forwarded the notification of the approval to another MARK 1 official with the notation, “$ ding.”

Later that same year, Maniatis was also working to find a German shepherd puppy for Bhaskaran, sending him links to a well-known dog breeders in Chicago’s far north and west suburbs, the affidavit alleged.

On Nov. 11, 2017, Maniatis used his personal checking account to pay $4,775 to Mittelwest breeders in Wonder Lake for a purebred puppy, which Bhaskaran named Matcha, according to the affidavit.

Then, in early 2018, Bhaskaran emailed Maniatis a $1,475 invoice from a dog-training school with instructions to “Please call and discuss this with me.” Credit card records show Maniatis paid for that invoice as well as an additional charge from the training school for $3,875 in March 2018, the affidavit alleged.

FBI agents later were watching Bhaskaran at his home and took photos of him with the dog.

“Your affiant is aware, based on FBI surveillance, that Bhaskaran is the present owner of a German shepherd,” the affidavit stated.

FBI agents raided MARK 1’s headquarters on Maryland Avenue in Dolton on Nov. 14, 2019, seizing cellphones and other items from company executives and employees involved in the Philadelphia project, the records show.

Bhaskaran was arrested the same day on separate wire fraud charges alleging he used his deceased former mother-in-law’s information to fraudulently collect $250,000 in Social Security benefits, court records show.

At the time of his arrest, Bhaskaran had an “armada” of fancy cars in the driveway, including a Mercedes and two BMWs, according to a filing by prosecutors. He also had a number of fraudulent passports and other government-issued IDs and more than $7,000 in cash that he could not explain, the filing stated.

In a post-arrest statement to investigators, Bhaskaran “admitted to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from contractors performing significant contract work for Amtrak,” according to prosecutors.

He was negotiating a plea deal with the government when his body was found at his home in Cherry Hill on Oct. 16, 2020, according to court records.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com