30th District Senator Link Charged With Tax Evasion, Part of Larger Federal Corruption Probe

By Benjamin Cox on August 13, 2020 at 5:24pm

A State Senator who allegedly wore a wire to help the FBI in an ongoing probe of ethics complaints at the State Capitol was charged today in U.S. District Court.

Long-time 30th District State Senator Terry Link of Waukegan was charged in U.S. District Court today with income tax evasion.

The one-page criminal information filed in U.S. District Court accused Link of failing to report income on his 2016 tax return to the IRS. The Chicago Tribune says that defendants are typically charged via an information if they intend to eventually plead guilty. Link becomes the third Democratic state senator to face felony charges in a little more than a year.

The Chicago Tribune reported last year that Link wore a wire for the FBI in a bribery investigation of his colleague, then-state Representative Luis Arroyo. Federal prosecutors alleged Arroyo had sought an unnamed state senator’s support on legislation involving video gambling sweepstakes games that would benefit one of Arroyo’s lobbying clients. The state senator was wearing a wire for the FBI when Arroyo delivered the first of the promised $2,500 checks at a restaurant in Skokie in August 2019. Additional $2,500 payments were expected to be made over the next six to 12 months, federal authorities alleged.

The complaint against Arroyo revealed that the unnamed state senator first began cooperating with the FBI in 2016 but was terminated as a confidential source after it was revealed he had filed false income tax returns. The senator later agreed to cooperate with the FBI again in the hopes of winning a break at sentencing on expected tax fraud charges, according to the complaint. The Chicago Tribune has previously identified the state senator as Link, though he has repeatedly denied being the cooperating witness mentioned in the complaint. Arroyo has plead not guilty in the pending case.

Link is one of four state senators who serves on the Legislative Ethics Commission. He turned in his resignation to Senate President Dan Harmon today from the commission on the heels of the recent charges.