A former Teamsters union boss who was once one of the most powerful labor leaders in Chicago was sentenced Wednesday to 19 months in federal prison for extorting $325,000 from the head of a film studio in the city.
The sentence comes more than three years after John Coli Sr. pleaded guilty to extortion, faced with secret recordings made by Cinespace Chicago Film Studios President Alex Pissios in which Coli could be heard threatening a union strike if Pissios didn't pay him.
In one tape, Coli tells Pissios that he would have union workers walking a picket line that would shut the studio down "within an hour" if he didn't continue making the secret payments.
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss several counts against the 63-year-old Coli in exchange for his guilty plea to receiving prohibited payments as a union official and making a false income tax return.
In exchange, Coli agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and that cooperation helped build an extortion case that landed former state Sen. Thomas Cullerton in prison this year. Cullerton pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges for improperly taking more than $248,000 from the Teamsters.
Apple sells $46 billion worth of iPhones over the summer as AI helps end slump
Apple snapped out of a recent iPhone sales slump during its summer quarter, an early sign that its recent efforts to revive demand for its marquee product with an infusion of artificial intelligence are paying off.
Sales of the iPhone totaled $46.22 billion for the July-September period, a 6% increase from the same time last year, according to Apple's fiscal fourth-quarter report released Thursday. That improvement reversed two consecutive year-over-year declines in the iPhone's quarterly sales.
The iPhone boost helped Apple deliver total quarterly revenue and profit that exceeded the analyst projections that sway investors, excluding a one-time charge of $10.2 billion to account for a recent European Union court decision that lumped the Cupertino, California, company with a huge bill for back taxes.
Apple earned $14.74 billion, or 97 cents per share, a 36% decrease from the same time last year. If not for the one-time tax hit, Apple said it would have earned $1.64 per share — topping the $1.60 per share predicted by analysts, according to FactSet Research. Revenue rose 6% from last year to $94.93 billion, about $400 million more than analysts forecast.
But investors evidently were hoping for an even better quarter and appeared disappointed by an Apple forecast that implied its revenue for the October-December quarter covering the holiday shopping season might not grow as robustly as analysts envisioned. Apple's stock price shed about 2% in Thursday's extended trading, leaving the shares hovering around $221 — well below their peak of about $237 reached in mid-October.
The latest quarterly results captured the first few days that consumers were able to buy a new iPhone 16 line-up that included four different models designed... Read More