The owner of a Chicago-area construction company was sentenced Wednesday to 7 1/2 years in federal prison in a scheme to bribe a corrupt Amtrak official overseeing a $58 million contract to renovate a historic train station in Philadelphia with hundreds of thousands of dollars in lavish gifts, including trips, meals, jewelry and a German shepherd puppy.
Mark Snedden, 69, of Munster, Indiana, the founder and president of Dolton-based MARK 1 Restoration, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia earlier this year to one count each of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery and making a false claim.
In addition to a 90-month prison term, U.S. District Chief Judge Wendy Beetlestone fined Snedden $250,000 and ordered him to pay just over $2 million in restitution, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
In asking for a sentence of up to 9 years behind bars, prosecutors argued in a recent court filing that Snedden and his co-defendants, who worked for him at Mark 1, “paid a staggering number of bribes” in order to illegally obtain millions of dollars in bogus contract payments — and did so out of sheer greed.
“The scheme was completely unnecessary as Snedden was already a millionaire many times over at the time,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grennel wrote. “He just wanted more money.”
Snedden’s attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday, and their sentencing filings were not public on the court docket. A spokesman for MARK 1 had previously told the Tribune that Snedden has “accepted full responsibility for this matter” and provided extensive cooperation to the government after being confronted with his wrongdoing.
Another employee of MARK 1, Donald Seefeldt, has already been sentenced to nearly 5 years in prison for his role in the scheme, court records show. Two others, Lee Maniatis and Khaled Dallo, have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Snedden’s sentencing comes more than four 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.
Among the gifts allegedly bestowed upon Bhaskaran by Snedden’s company were trips to India and the Galapagos Islands, meals at an expensive steakhouse, lavish parties at Atlantic City casinos, tickets to see Bruno Mars, and a Tourneau watch that cost more than $11,000, according to the charges.
Shortly after receiving the watch, Bhaskaran approved millions in additional spending for MARK 1, the charges alleged. On Jan. 23, 2017, Maniatis forwarded the approval of the change order to Snedden with the notation “$ ding.”
Later that year, Maniatis, with Snedden’s approval, spent $4,700 related to the purchase of a purebred German shepherd puppy, according to an FBI search warrant affidavit unsealed several years ago.
About a month after receiving the dog, which he named Matcha, Bhaskaran requested that Amtrak authorize an additional $5.7 million for the facade restoration project, with much of the requested funds to go to MARK 1.
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.
Bhaskaran 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.”
Meanwhile, Snedden and his firm were both referenced in the 2024 trial of another businessman accused of paying bribes to Cook County Assessor’s Office employees to help reduce property tax assessments.
One of the county employees, Basilio Clausen, testified in the trial he helped funnel property tax appeals for MARK 1 to two underlings in exchange for free rounds of golf for all of them at the exclusive Lost Dunes club in Bridgman, Michigan, with Snedden helping pay part of the tab.
Snedden was not charged in that case, and his business associate, Robert Mitziga, was acquitted by the jury.
Clausen pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com