Former ComEd CEO sentenced to 2 years for bribery scheme targeted at Madigan

CHICAGO — Once a darling in the world of electric utilities and in Chicago’s dual communities of big business and philanthropy, former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore on Monday was sentenced to two years in prison for her role in a yearslong bribery scheme meant to influence ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Pramaggiore is the second of the “ComEd Four” to be sentenced after their 2023 across-the-board convictions on charges of bribery and falsifying records to conceal the scheme. That included paying $1.3 million to a handful of Madigan’s political allies who did little to no work for the utility, all while ComEd was pushing for major legislation in Springfield.

Though U.S. District Judge Manish Shah tossed most of the bribery counts earlier this year and based Pramaggiore’s sentence and $750,000 fine only on guilty verdicts for cooking ComEd’s books to mask the payments and an overarching conspiracy charge, he made clear his disbelief in the former CEO’s testimony at trial.

“You did participate in a quid pro quo,” Shah said after siding with prosecutors’ post-trial claims that she perjured herself while testifying in her own defense, which amounted to obstruction of justice.

The judge referenced key wiretapped phone calls played at trial, in which Pramaggiore is heard discussing certain Madigan-recommended contractors and other job recommendations that came through ComEd’s top contract lobbyist, Mike McClain.

McClain, who is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday for his role in the ComEd Four, was also a longtime friend and advisor to Madigan. McClain pushed Pramaggiore and her direct reports to hire people recommended either directly by the speaker or by staffers at his 13^th Ward office in Madigan’s power base on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

In one 2016 email repeatedly shown at trial, McClain warned Pramaggiore that she needed to get involved with renewing ComEd’s contract with a law firm owned by Madigan ally and Democratic fundraiser Victor Reyes or else “provoke a reaction from our Friend” — a nickname McClain used often when referring to Madigan.

“I know the drill and so do you. If you do not get involve(d) and resolve this issue of 850 hours for his law firm per year then he will go to our Friend,” McClain wrote of Reyes. “Our Friend will call me and then I will call you. Is this a drill we must go through?”

Pramaggiore responded to McClain’s email apologizing that she hadn’t been informed and saying she was “on this.”

Shah pointed to more than 100 letters he’d received on her behalf, which described Pramaggiore as a “transformational” leader at ComEd, which demonstrated that she “had the power to change the culture at ComEd.” Shah echoed praise heaped on Pramaggiore by former colleagues in the character letters, including prioritizing employee safety and ratepayer service in addition to improving the utility’s response to sexual harassment.

“You were a force for change on those fronts,” the judge said. “But when it came to Mr. McClain and Mr. Madigan, you didn’t think to change the culture of corruption. Instead, you were all in.”

After Madigan was convicted on bribery and other corruption charges in February in a related trial, he was sentenced last month to 7 ½ years in prison. The jury deadlocked on all six charges that also included McClain, but the longtime lobbyist will face sentencing for his ComEd Four trial convictions on Thursday.

Shah sentenced former ComEd executive John Hooker to 18 months in prison last week, while longtime lobbyist Jay Doherty, who agreed to be a pass-through for payments to the no-work Madigan allies, is scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 5.

During Monday’s sentencing hearing, Pramaggiore declined to make a statement to Shah, letting her lawyer, former U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar, speak on her behalf. Lassar got emotional as he said the judge would “never have a finer person appear before you than Anne Pramaggiore,” and told Shah about how she helped a former employee whose daughter went missing.

“Now I’m sure your honor has asked himself, ‘How can this wonderful person engage in such criminal activity?’” Lassar said. “We have an answer to that: she didn’t. But your honor disagrees.”

Lassar stressed that the original subcontractor arrangements and contract for Reyes’ law firm were approved by Pramaggiore’s predecessor, former ComEd CEO Frank Clark. And more than that, Lassar said Pramaggiore never once asked Madigan for help passing legislation ComEd was pushing.

Shah, however, didn’t buy those defenses.

“You had the power to stop this,” the judge said. “You could have said, ‘No, this is not how legislation should be done.”

Pramaggiore is scheduled to report to prison Dec. 1, giving both her and her husband time to recover from September surgeries. After Shah handed down Pramaggiore’s sentence, the former CEO hugged her husband, sister and friends in attendance and exited the Dirksen Federal Courthouse with her legal team.

In a statement issued via a spokesperson shortly after the hearing’s conclusion, Pramaggiore vowed to appeal both the verdict and the sentence, insisting on her innocence.

She also quoted President Donald Trump, who paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in February, saying the law “has been systematically, and to a steadily increasing degree, stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” and claiming that her sentence “rests solely” on the FCPA.

“There is nothing foreign or corrupt about the facts here,” the statement continued. “Ms. Pramaggiore faces jail despite the documents at issue being true. Chicago is not a foreign jurisdiction.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Hannah Meisel

Hannah has been covering Illinois government and politics since 2014, and since then has worked for a variety of outlets from NPR affiliate stations to a startup newsletter. She’s a graduate of both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U of I’s Springfield campus, where she received an M.A. through the Public Affairs Reporting program and got her start reporting in the Capitol.