William Bernard Goodstein was the first president of Marina Towers Condominium Association. He was elected in 1977 at the age of 63 and was still serving two years later when the Chicago Tribune wrote a story about him, Condo’s president like a town mayor. Goodstein described his job as “part public relations man, part umpire, and part businessman.” “In this building there are 896 bosses, and each one of them wants a say-so as to what happens here.” (Left) William Goodstein (right in photo) in November 1962 with an unidentified man on the balcony of a Marina City apartment. On the man’s hard hat is printed “MARINA CITY” and “B.G.A.,” the initials of Bertrand Goldberg Associates.

Goodstein was a real estate lawyer. He owned a condo at Marina City but lived in Skokie. “The owners of the condominium property like to have the buildings run like small towns,” he told the Tribune. “They want to maintain the services they initially paid for, and they want the quality of the building, or ‘neighborhood,’ to stay competitive.”

It was interesting work and a good way to learn about the residents. “People ask me about insurance benefits, about land value, and how they could improve their property. However, when things go wrong, I have to act as an umpire between the condo board and the residents.”

His biggest responsibility, he said, was to be accessible to residents. “When you are president, you wear a lot of hats. The trick is knowing when to take the right hats off, and put the right hats on.”

Resigns to spend more time defending indictment

Goodstein resigned as condo board president on May 27, 1987, exactly one week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges he took $741,000 from the employee pension fund of Du Page County Boiler Works, a company in Naperville where 50 longtime employees had worked. According to the Chicago Tribune, his resignation “followed a call for his ouster by unit owners because of his indictment.”

Also part of the 34-count indictment were two business partners of Goodstein, including one man known to Goodstein as Robert Caldwell but whose real name was Morton Scherl. Scherl had been convicted twice for swindling and was wanted in four states for fraud. Goodstein had met Scherl sometime after 1983 through a longtime friend.

Convicted on December 7, 1987, Goodstein was sentenced to three years in prison. The Tribune said the judge told Goodstein he had “never before had a case involving such massive fraud.”

Goodstein served his time in California, first at Terminal Island and then at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc. He was disbarred on December 5, 1988. He died in California on February 1, 2011 at the age of 97.

Near-fatal illness was beginning of problems

In 1983, when Goodstein was 69 years old, he became seriously ill. He was hospitalized in Evanston for at least two months with a staph infection that led to kidney failure and three weeks of dialysis. Although he recovered, he was never the same.

“My father’s fate turned irretrievably downward,” recalled his son, Daniel Goodstein, in 2012. While still recovering from his illness, Goodstein was ousted after 31 years by his partners in a Chicago law firm. That same year, his mother died.

“I certainly believe that this ordeal contributed to the behavior and decisions that were the target of his criminal investigation, trial, and conviction,” says Daniel.

His father, he insists, “never took a dime from those pension funds.” He says it was Scherl, the business partner, who took the money after being given access by his father.

“That did not excuse everything by any means. The pension funds had been entrusted to my father and it was his duty as an attorney to safeguard them.”

Scherl was a fugitive for about a year, having absconded with the pension fund money, most of which, at least 80 percent, says Daniel, was eventually recovered. He was caught in 1988 and in 1990 Scherl pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, unlawful conversion of profit sharing funds, income tax evasion, and escape. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Goodstein always maintained his innocence. In a letter to the judge in his father’s trial, Daniel said his father was “honestly saddened by the loss of the pension and profit sharing funds involved.”

“Nonetheless, he too has suffered enormous financial and emotional hardships as a result of these proceedings. He can no longer practice law or engage in any of the activities that formerly were his life. I would hope that this would be punishment enough.”

As a child, Daniel ran errands for his father’s law firm, which was located at LaSalle & Wacker, three blocks from Marina City.

“He had a marvelous sense of humor which I believe got him through all this,” Daniel remembers about his father. “During his last 20 years you could tell he had been hurt but he never showed it outwardly.”