In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 17-1747 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

GARY SOLOMON, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 15 CR 00620-2 — Edmond E. Chang, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED DECEMBER 5, 2017 — DECIDED JUNE 5, 2018 

____________________ 

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and HAMILTON,

Circuit Judges. 

WOOD, Chief Judge. Hard as it may try, Chicago has not yet 

managed to shake free from the scourge of public corruption. 

Gary Solomon, Thomas Vranas, and Barbara Byrd-Bennett 

have added another chapter to this inglorious history. As CEO 

of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Byrd-Bennett worked behind the scenes to assure that two companies headed by Sol-
2 No. 17-1747 

omon and Vranas would receive 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 in 

violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 and 1346. Solomon was sentenced to 84 months’ imprisonment, 30 months more than 

Byrd-Bennett received. Solomon’s sentence also significantly 

exceeds Vranas’s, though that gap is irrelevant for this appeal. 

Solomon wants a new sentencing hearing. He accuses the 

district court of incorporating the value of a contract unrelated to the criminal agreement into his advisory sentencing 

guidelines calculation. That alleged error resulted in an offense score that was four levels higher than Solomon believes 

it should have been. Additionally, Solomon believes that the 

disparity between Byrd-Bennett’s sentence and his sentence is 

unwarranted, making his sentence substantively unreasonable. Because the record supports the court’s decision to include the contested contract in the offense level calculation, 

and because dissimilar cooperation is a reasonable basis for a 

sentencing disparity, we affirm the district court’s sentence. 

I 

Before she joined CPS in May 2012, Byrd-Bennett briefly 

consulted for a pair of companies (The SUPES Academy, LLC, 

and Synesi Associates, LLC) to which we refer as SUPES. 

SUPES provided training services for educators. Solomon was 

its CEO, and Vranas its President. Byrd-Bennett’s consulting 

role with SUPES entitled her to a percentage of the companies’ 

revenue. When Byrd-Bennett assumed her public positions, 

first consulting for CPS and later as its CEO, her relationship 
No. 17-1747 3

with SUPES persisted, despite the fact that as an agent of CPS 

she was not allowed to have an economic interest in any vendor contracts. Byrd-Bennett used her authority as the head of 

CPS to ensure that SUPES won two lucrative contracts. The 

first, ultimately valued at $2.54 million, was awarded within 

two weeks of her taking over the top job for the school district. 

The second followed her ascension by eight months and was 

worth $20.5 million. Each was a sole-source contract—meaning it was a contract for which there could be only one bidder. 

In exchange for this largesse, Solomon and Vranas deposited a percentage of the revenue generated from those contracts into trusts for the benefit of Byrd-Bennett’s two grandsons. The plan was that once she finished with her CPS service, she would return to SUPES and receive control of the 

trusts as a “signing bonus.” SUPES also set aside revenue into 

a “development fund,” a portion of which was earmarked for 

Byrd-Bennett, again to be paid on her return to SUPES. 

As Robert Burns observed, “The best laid schemes o’ mice 

an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.” So it was here. No more than a 

month after the second contract was awarded, the Inspector 

General for the Chicago Board of Education launched an investigation into Byrd-Bennett’s relationship with SUPES. As 

Vranas would later admit, he and Solomon deleted emails 

sent between them and Byrd-Bennett when they learned 

about the investigation. Almost two years to the day of ByrdBennett’s taking the reins as CEO, a grand jury returned a 23-

count indictment against Solomon, Vranas, and Byrd-Bennett. 

They were charged with, among other things, a scheme to obtain public money through bribery and kickbacks. All three 

defendants pleaded guilty on one count. 
4 No. 17-1747 

At Solomon’s sentencing hearing, he and the government 

disagreed about the scope of the fraudulent arrangement. He 

argued that his agreement with Byrd-Bennett reached only 

the first of the two contracts SUPES received, while the government countered that the agreement remained in force 

through the second contract. If Solomon was right, the value 

of the monetary benefit he and Vranas received from the 

scheme, calculated as the profit earned from each contract, 

was $508,000. If the government was right, the benefit was 

$2.9 million. This translated, for purposes of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, into a difference of four levels in the required 

enhancement to the baseline offense score of 12, see U.S.S.G. 

§ 2C1.1(a)(2), from 12 additional levels to 16, see U.S.S.G.

§§ 2B1.1(b)(1), 2C1.1(b)(2). Solomon did not dispute the government’s benefit calculation if the second contract was found 

to be part of the agreement. 

The district court found that the evidence backed the government. After adding another four levels because the scheme 

involved a public official in a high-level position, U.S.S.G. 

§ 2C1.1(b)(3), plus two more levels for obstruction of justice, 

U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, and then subtracting three levels for acceptance of responsibility, U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1(a), (b), the court 

found a final offense level of 31. Together with Solomon’s 

Criminal History Category I, this yielded an advisory sentencing range of 108–135 months. After weighing the sentencing factors outlined by 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), the court selected 

a final sentence of 84 months’ incarceration. 

Though Byrd-Bennett was still awaiting sentencing at the 

time of Solomon’s hearing, the district court discussed her and 

Solomon’s relative culpability. The government acknowledged that had all things been equal, it would have preferred 
No. 17-1747 5

that Byrd-Bennett receive a harsher sentence than Solomon. 

And indeed, the advisory guidelines sentence for Byrd-Bennett, which accounted for the fact that she was a public official, was 135–168 months. But the government advised the 

judge that it supported a higher sentence for Solomon. It did 

so in large part because of Byrd-Bennett’s much more extensive cooperation with the investigation—cooperation that the 

government intended to reward through the filing of a motion 

under U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1 at the appropriate time. Moreover, Solomon profited immediately from the scheme. While ByrdBennett was promised a payout, she never actually saw those 

dollars, because they were not supposed to be paid until she 

returned to SUPES. In the end, the court sentenced Byrd-Bennett to 54 months’ imprisonment. 

II 

Solomon first challenges the district court’s finding that 

the $20.5 million contract was part of the criminal agreement 

between him and Byrd-Bennett. This was a finding of fact, and 

so we review it for clear error. United States v. Coscia, 866 F.3d 

782, 801 (7th Cir. 2017). The district court needed to find by a 

preponderance of the evidence that the second contract was 

part of the bribery scheme. See United States v. Holton, 873 F.3d 

589, 591–92 (7th Cir. 2017). If so, it was properly incorporated 

into the offense level calculation. 

Solomon pleaded guilty to the version of wire fraud that 

covers “a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” 18 U.S.C. § 1346. To convict 

someone of honest-services fraud, the government must 

prove that there is an agreement to pay a bribe or kickback. 

Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358, 408–09 (2010). As the district court observed, this reaches schemes that involve a 
6 No. 17-1747 

stream of benefits over time, not just singly negotiated deals. 

See Ryan v. United States, 688 F.3d 845, 852 (7th Cir. 2012); see 

also United States v. Wright, 665 F.3d 560, 568 (3d Cir. 2012) 

(“The bribery theory does not require that each quid, or item 

of value, be linked to a specific quo, or official act.”). Consequently, the district court did not have to find an explicit 

agreement to exchange payment for awarding the second 

contract. It was enough to find sufficient evidence of an ongoing agreement to compensate Byrd-Bennett for sending contracts to SUPES, and that this agreement was still active at the 

time SUPES won the $20.5 million contract. 

The district court primarily relied on three pieces of evidence in this respect. First, Byrd-Bennett sent Solomon an 

email five days after SUPES won the $20.5 million contract. In 

that email, she wrote that “anything u can provide to me or a 

designated person relative to the future college and weddings 

for the boys might be helpful.” The district court interpreted 

that email as demonstrating that the agreement to fund trusts 

for Byrd-Bennett’s grandsons in exchange for awarding contracts to SUPES was still in place at the time. Second, ByrdBennett steamrolled internal resistance to ensure that SUPES 

received the $20.5 million contract. She pressured CPS officials to find money to fund the program; she shepherded 

SUPES through CPS’s sole-source contract process; and she 

strong-armed a CPS employee who raised concerns about the 

procurement process to resign. Third, the district court highlighted evidence that Solomon and Vranas had deleted emails 

about the $20.5 million contract upon learning about the Inspector General’s investigation. It regarded those deletions as 

evidence of their consciousness of guilt. 
No. 17-1747 7

Solomon sees the evidence differently. He relies heavily on 

Byrd-Bennett’s testimony before the grand jury, where she denied that the $20.5 million contract was part of her agreement 

with Solomon. He criticizes the evidence contradicting her account as nothing but “speculation and conjecture.” But Solomon’s position suffers from at least two faults. First, the district court found Byrd-Bennett’s testimony incredible, observing at sentencing, “I think ultimately you and Ms. Byrd-Bennett are—you’re fooling yourselves a little at this point, you 

know, after the fact, that this 20.5 was not part of the bribery 

scheme.” Second, even if Byrd-Bennett’s testimony were believable, she never negated the facts on which the district 

court relied. Solomon ignored those facts in his opening brief, 

waiting until his reply to comment on a few of them. He argues that the district court misconstrued the import of the 

email Byrd-Bennett sent following the second contract. The 

email, Solomon insists, sought payment from SUPES for the 

contract that had been finalized eight months earlier, and not 

the contract won five days prior. Even if this argument were 

not made too late (and it was), it is far-fetched. It was not 

clearly erroneous for the district court to find that the email 

was about the $20.5 million contract. Additionally, Solomon 

fails to address Byrd-Bennett’s efforts to secure the second 

contract for SUPES. While it might be argued that Byrd-Bennett was so tenacious because she genuinely believed in the 

value of SUPES’s services, Solomon has not pressed that argument on appeal, and it fails in any event to take into account 

her conflict of interest. 

Compounding Solomon’s problems is the additional evidence in the record indicating that the bribery scheme was 

alive and well at the time the $20.5 million contract was finalized. Shortly after CPS awarded the large contract to SUPES, 
8 No. 17-1747 

Solomon emailed Vranas telling him that Byrd-Bennett had 

called to celebrate. Two days later, as CPS and SUPES were 

preparing to pitch the contract to the CPS Board, Byrd-Bennett wrote to Solomon “I obviously have a very personal interest in our success. So much on many levels will be impacted now and in the future.” Neither email is a smoking 

gun, but both buttress the district court’s findings. 

Solomon may be right that it is a stretch to see the evidence 

of his and Vranas’s deletions of emails as an indication that 

the $20.5 million contract was part of the bribery scheme. That 

evidence is in the record because Vranas confessed to the deletions while making a proffer to the FBI. We do not know the 

content of the deleted emails. Deleting emails might display a 

general consciousness of guilt, but it does not speak to the 

scope of the illegal agreement. Yet any error in this respect 

was harmless. Even without the evidence of the deletions, 

there was ample evidence to support the court’s finding by a 

preponderance of the evidence that the $20.5 million contract 

was properly included. 

III 

Next, Solomon argues that the disparity between his and 

Byrd-Bennett’s sentence was unwarranted and that this disparity renders his sentence substantively unreasonable. “We 

review the reasonableness of a sentence for an abuse of discretion ... and note that a below-guidelines sentence is ‘presumptively reasonable against an attack by a defendant 

claiming that the sentence is too high.’” United States v. Harris, 

791 F.3d 772, 782 (7th Cir. 2015) (quoting United States v. Lidell, 

543 F.3d 877, 885 (7th Cir. 2008)). A defendant rebuts the pre-
No. 17-1747 9

sumption only by showing that the sentence does not comport with the factors outlined in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). United 

States v. Durham, 645 F.3d 883, 897 (7th Cir. 2011). 

A sentence might be unreasonable if it creates “unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar 

records who have been found guilty of similar conduct.” 

18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6). If a district judge “correctly calculated 

and carefully reviewed the Guidelines range, he necessarily 

gave significant weight and consideration to the need to avoid 

unwarranted disparities.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 54 

(2007). But the guidelines are not a straitjacket. A district court 

is entitled, if it wishes, to apply the rule against unwarranted 

disparities to co-defendants’ sentences. See United States v. 

Statham, 581 F.3d 548, 556 (7th Cir. 2009) (“We are therefore 

open in all cases to an argument that a defendant’s sentence is 

unreasonable because of a disparity with the sentence of a codefendant ... .”). Indeed, in Gall the Supreme Court approved 

a district court’s decision to take into account the sentences 

that co-defendants had received. 552 U.S. at 55–56; see Statham, 581 F.3d at 556. We take this opportunity to clarify that 

the district court’s discretion extends this far—a point that 

may not be as clear as it should be in light of language in some 

of our decisions. See, e.g., Durham, 645 F.3d at 897 (stating that 

the elimination of sentencing disparities should be viewed 

across judges or districts, not co-defendants, but then comparing co-defendants and finding no error); United States v. Scott, 

631 F.3d 401, 404–05 (7th Cir. 2011) (making same statement 

about disparities among judges and districts, but then holding that there could be no disparity among defendant and his 

coconspirator “when the latter does not even exist”). 
10 No. 17-1747 

Solomon relies on similarities between himself and ByrdBennett as evidence that the sentencing disparity is unwarranted. They each pleaded guilty to the same criminal charge, 

they were equal partners, and they had the same criminal history score. If anything, he argues, Byrd-Bennett—the public 

official—is the more culpable defendant. Both the government and district court acknowledged at sentencing that in 

the abstract it makes sense for the public official to receive the 

harsher punishment. The respective advisory ranges corroborate that notion. 

But sentencing is never abstract: the district court is required by statute to tailor its sentence to the particular defendant before it. And as soon as we look at the specifics, it is apparent that all things are not equal. Byrd-Bennett cooperated, 

and Solomon did not (at least in any meaningful way). Disparate cooperation warrants disparate sentencing. United 

States v. Orlando, 819 F.3d 1016, 1026 (7th Cir. 2016). We have 

held as much, even when the less culpable of co-defendants 

finds himself staring at the harsher sentence. See United States 

v. Boscarino, 437 F.3d 634, 637–38 (7th Cir. 2006) (finding the 

district court’s sentencing of the more culpable of two co-defendants to a lesser term of imprisonment to be reasonable 

based on his cooperation).

Solomon urges that the district court erred by failing to 

equate his cooperation to Byrd-Bennett’s. He highlights flaws 

in her proffers, and her initial failure to tell the truth. He adds 

that he was honest in his own proffers, conceded the bribery 

scheme as it related to the first contract, and provided valuable information. Nonetheless, a district court may accept one 

account of cooperation over another. United States v. Knox, 
No. 17-1747 11

573 F.3d 441, 453 (7th Cir. 2009). Here, the district court credited the government’s assessment. The judge remarked at sentencing, “But I also can’t give you credit for coming completely clean, at least based on the facts that I have found ... . 

You did try to cooperate. The bottom line there is that the 

prosecution found that the actual substantial assistance came 

from Ms. Byrd-Bennett and Mr. Vranas.” The government reported that Solomon waited four months after he became 

aware of the investigation before he tried to proffer. Even 

then, he was not entirely forthcoming, and he sent the government to chase false leads. While Byrd-Bennett also failed 

to come clean initially, eventually she did so. Moreover, 

though it seems to have been a secondary reason for the disparity, Solomon immediately profited from the criminal 

agreement while Byrd-Bennett never actually pocketed her 

share of the revenue. 

Before leaving this subject, we note that we are not disposed to accept the government’s invitation to hold flatly that 

a sentence cannot become substantively unreasonable based 

upon a co-defendant’s later sentence. The government reasons 

that if a later sentence may render an earlier one unreasonable, then the district court is put in the untenable position of 

having to predict the future. That may often be true, but it is 

not inevitable. Here, for instance, the district court was handling both cases simultaneously. Despite the sequence of the 

sentencing hearings, it had enough information available to it 

at Solomon’s sentencing hearing to compare his and ByrdBennett’s culpability. And the judge did so ably. Case-by-case 

consideration of this point is all that is needed. 
12 No. 17-1747 

IV 

Though Solomon will pay a heavy price for his role in this 

seamy business, his sentence is based on a properly supported assessment of the scope of his criminal agreement. The 

court’s decision to impose a harsher sentence on him than it 

did on Byrd-Bennett also has ample support in the record; Solomon’s sentence is not substantively unreasonable. We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s judgment.