APRIL 28--The man in both of the below mug shots is Mark E. Perk. The 40-year-old Illinois man is a sex offender who must think he pulled one over on the Chicago Police Department, which is responsible for maintaining--and publishing--a list of convicted Windy City perverts. That registry, of course, serves to alert neighbors that a sex offender resides in their midst. Which apparently does not sit well with Perk, because when he posed last month for a registry photo taken by Chicago cops (below right), he clearly wore a cheap disguise--wig, phony mustache, and glasses. Perk's ruse was discovered by a neighbor--the mother of a young child--who was checking to see if any convicted sex offenders lived near her Hyde Park home. Along with reviewing the Chicago police's online list, the neighbor (who tipped off TSG) ran Perk through the Illinois statewide sex offender registry, where she also found his name. But the 1999 photo accompanying that listing (below left) showed Perk sans the get-up he employed for his Chicago P.D. photograph. When we asked Deputy Pat Camden, a police spokesman, how the department could snap an apparently disguised Perk, he said, "We photograph them the way they come in. If this is the way he appears in public, that's the way he's pictured." Perk, who could not be reached for comment, was placed on the two registries following his 1999 conviction for criminal sexual abuse, a misdemeanor involving a 14-year-old girl who was a music student of Perk's. He was sentenced to two years probation, fined $1000, and ordered to take an HIV test. TSG went looking for the court file on his case, but, strangely, we were told the folder had disappeared from the Circuit Court clerk's office. (1 page) Join TSG's mailing list. Search The Smoking Gun. < 1 > home | archive | contest | search