CLAYTON — Former ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Department of Public Health employee Monique Campbell solicited bribes from a convenience store owner in late 2019, according to a guilty plea agreement with federal prosecutors unsealed last week.
The guilty plea agreement ties yet another former local government official to bribes from a government informant who helped the FBI and prosecutors indict some of ºüÀêÊÓƵ’ most prominent politicians, including longtime former Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed, three other aldermen and a longtime north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County political operative.
According to the agreement, Campbell in December 2019 approached the owner of Mally’s Supermarket at 7445 West Florissant Avenue in Country Club Hills and “falsely†represented herself as a public health inspector. She told the owner she had observed liquor sales to minors and sales of single cigarettes at Mally’s. She told the owner the store would be “shut down†unless he paid her, according to the plea.
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The owner contacted the FBI, which arranged for recording future interactions.
Campbell met again with the owner a week later and offered to provide the owner with a letter clearing the store in exchange for cash. The owner paid her $500. Campbell said that was a “good start,†according to court records.
She called the owner Dec. 20, 2019, and said $2,500 would be enough to finish the transaction. The two met three days later, and the owner recorded giving Campbell $1,500 of FBI-authorized funds.
Campbell sought the last $1,000 on Dec. 27, but she did not have the promised letter absolving the owner of wrongdoing, so the owner refused to pay her.
Campbell had been hired by the county in October 2019 and left her job as a medical assistant at the North Central Community Health Center in Pine Lawn in January 2020, ºüÀêÊÓƵ County spokesman Doug Moore said. She was not fired and her job did not involve spot inspections of convenience stores. County officials only found out about her attempts to solicit bribes when the guilty plea agreement was unsealed last week, Moore said.
Campbell, 37, was released without bond and scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 17. Her attorney, Sandra Moore-Dyson, did not respond to a request for comment.
Although he is not named in the plea documents, one of the owners of Mally’s was Mohammed Almuttan. The Palestinian national, whose family owned other convenience stores in the area, had been indicted in a 2017 cigarette and synthetic marijuana trafficking sting. Facing prison time and deportation, he began cooperating with the FBI.
In 2022, Reed and former ºüÀêÊÓƵ Aldermen John Collins-Muhammad and Jeffrey Boyd were all indicted for accepting bribes from Almuttan in exchange for help with ºüÀêÊÓƵ government matters. All recently completed their prison sentences.
A longtime political operative who was working for the ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Jail at the time, Tony Weaver, was also indicted that year for working with Almuttan in an attempted pandemic relief kickback scheme. Former ºüÀêÊÓƵ Aldermen Brandon Bosley has also been indicted on insurance fraud charges where he sought Almuttan’s help. A federal search warrant also indicates Almuttan tried to bribe former Congressman Lacy Clay, though Clay was never charged.
Almuttan is serving a sentence for conspiracy to traffic cigarettes at a federal prison in Wisconsin and is scheduled to be released in early 2027.