The owner of a company that’s won more than $9.5 million in public contracts as a certified minority-owned and woman-owned business pleaded innocent Tuesday to federal fraud charges tied to the jobs it won, including runway work at O’Hare and landscaping work for a new Metra station in Orland Park.
Aurora Venegas, 61, owner of Azteca Supply Co., and her husband, Thomas Masen, 65, entered the plea in U.S. District Court, the Sun-Times is reporting.
Azteca was supposed to have full control of its contracts, but federal authorities charge the company improperly subcontracted work to businesses owned by white men.
Venegas allegedly was little more than a supplier of materials obtained from National Concrete Pipe Co., where her husband is comptroller.
When the FBI served a search warrant on National Concrete Pipe two years ago, company president John Esposito, 65, assaulted one of the FBI agents. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
Prosecutors accuse Azteca of fraudulently receiving more than $9.5 million in contracts from the city of Chicago between 2001 and July 2008.
In that same period, Azteca also got a $57,168 landscaping contract for a new Metra station in Orland Park.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services