CHICAGO (Capitol News Illinois) – Before the sun rose on a cold Wednesday morning in January 2019, Fidel Marquez agreed to a life-altering assignment as a cooperating witness in a criminal case the government was building against his colleagues at electric utility Commonwealth Edison and powerful Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Marquez agreed to the request without consulting an attorney or any of the family members in his mother’s Hammond, Indiana, home where a pair of FBI agents showed up at 6 a.m. on Jan. 16, 2019. Marquez stood with the agents in the foyer as they played him a few recordings of phone conversations with his colleagues they’d intercepted via a wiretap on Marquez’s cell phone.
While Marquez was still in the clothes he’d worn to bed, the agents asked for his cooperation. And as others in the house began to wake up, Marquez got dressed and met the agents in the …