United States v. Solomon, No. 17-1747 (7th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseAs CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Byrd-Bennett worked behind the scenes to assure that companies headed by Solomon and Vranas received lucrative contracts. In exchange, Solomon and Vranas agreed that they would pay Byrd-Bennett a percentage of the revenue generated by those contracts when she came to work for them at the end of her tenure with CPS. After the fraudulent scheme was exposed, each participant pleaded guilty to committing wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. 1343 and 1346. Solomon was sentenced to 84 months’ imprisonment, 30 months more than Byrd-Bennett received. Solomon argued that the district court erred by incorporating the value of a contract unrelated to the criminal agreement into his advisory sentencing guidelines calculation, resulting in an offense score that was four levels higher than Solomon believes it should have been and claimed that the disparity between Byrd-Bennett’s sentence and his sentence is unwarranted, making his sentence substantively unreasonable. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. The record supports the court’s decision to include the contested contract in the offense level calculation, and dissimilar cooperation is a reasonable basis for a sentencing disparity.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.