Perhaps the robbers were disgruntled former employees. Maybe their cars had been illegally impounded by the rogue towing company. Maybe they just follow the newspapers and target victims who are known to keep wads of loose cash on hand.
Whatever the reason, you can't ignore the poetic justice of last Friday's mugging in Town and Country. According a press release from the T&C police department, the victim of that crime was none other than William Bialczak, the co-owner of the scandal-plagued St. Louis Metropolitan Towing Company and S&H Parking, among other enterprises, who knows a thing or two about picking people's pockets himself.
At around 9:30 p.m. last Friday, Bialczak had just parked his car in front of his home, when two men clad in ski masks popped out from behind a tree. One brandished a handgun and approached the husky Bialczak; he seized man's key, then grabbed "a bank bag with an undisclosed amount of money out of the victim's vehicle," according to the press release.
Last year, you'll recall that Bialczak and his brother, Kenneth, pleaded guilty in federal court for tax evasion after skimming millions off company profits. The scandal went all the way up to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, forcing Chief Joe Mokwa to resign.
The U.S. Attorney's Office discovered that about $1 million in income generated by the Bialczaks' businesses during tax years 2005 and 2006 hadn't been deposited into the business bank accounts or reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
The Bialczaks are believed to have padded their coffers thanks to favors offered to the police department and schemes that may have led to improperly seized cars. The police department stopped doing business with the towing company in 2008, around the time of Mokwa's resignation. Following their guilty plea, the Bialczaks each received 366-day sentences -- one to follow the other -- and were forced to pay nearly $1 million collectively.
According to the Town and Country police, Bialczak appeared to have been deliberately targeted by the muggers. Hmmmmm.
