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CBS 2's Joanie Lum, Mike Parker and Alita Guillen contributed to this report.
CHICAGO (CBS) ― A former top aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley and three other one-time city workers were convicted Thursday in a scheme to load the city payroll with campaign workers in defiance of a federal court order.

Jurors deliberated for three and a half days before convicting Robert Sorich, Daley's 43-year-old former patronage chief, of two counts of mail fraud. Jurors acquitted him of two additional mail fraud counts.

"Taxpayers' dollars were used to protect the political armies of the favored few," Gary S. Shapiro, the first assistant U.S. attorney, told a news conference after the verdict. "The notion of serving the citizens of Chicago by giving all applicants for jobs a fair shot became a joke."

Prosecutors seemed to crow about the fact that the convictions nailed higher-ups at City Hall.

"None of these defendants were mopes. None of these defendants were low echelon, hard-working, blue collar guys," Shapiro said.

The verdict represented a fresh victory for federal prosecutors in a two-year investigation of corruption at Chicago's City Hall that has thus far brought charges against 44 individuals and 41 convictions. One defendant died after being charged and two others are awaiting trial.

CBS 2's Alita Guillen reports investigators say they're not finished yet.

"We are continuing to investigate. Things are not over," FBI Chicago Agent-In-Charge Bob Grant said.

Daley, who is expected to run for re-election next year, has been accused of no wrongdoing in the case.

The mayor spoke for less than two minutes about the jury's decision and took no questions. When asked him how this would affect his bid for re-election, he did not respond.

"While I accept the jury's decision, I am saddened by the verdict for these men and their families, because I've never known them to be anything but hardworking and I feel for them at this difficult time," Daley said Thursday evening. He added that the city has taken steps to prevent abuses of the hiring process.

"We are committed to pursuing our reforms in the future to ensure that the best-qualified applicants are hired," he said.

In the mayor's 90-second response, he never alluded to knowing about any misdeeds, but he did defend current City Hall hiring practices.

"We appointed a new inspector general, a former prosecutor, and gave him broad new investigating powers and expanded staff and a wide range of tools," Daley said.

Shapiro said that city Corporation Counsel Mara Georges' office has provided "wholehearted cooperation" that has made the investigation much easier.

But Shapiro did not rule out the possibility that higher-ups at City Hall might be the focus of future criminal cases.

"I really can't say anything more than stay tuned," Shapiro said.

Sorich's former aide in the mayor's office of intergovernmental affairs, Timothy McCarthy, 35, was convicted of two counts of mail fraud. Patrick Slattery, 42, a former official of the department of streets and sanitation, was convicted of one mail fraud count.

Another former official, John Sullivan, 38, was convicted of one count of lying to an FBI agent and acquitted of another count of lying.

CBS 2's Joanie Lum reports there were some tears after the verdicts were read, with some from defendants and many from their families.

U.S. District Judge David H. Coar set Nov. 15 for sentencing.

Sorich left the courthouse without commenting but his chief defense counsel, Thomas Anthony Durkin, said that he was "bitterly disappointed" by the verdict and planned to appeal.

"We're drained. We're exhausted," Durkin said.

Durkin said the case was brought "with an eye toward attempting to unseat Mayor Daley, and I think that is a very dangerous way to use the federal criminal justice system."

The lawyers who defended Sorich and the three other defendants failed in their effort to portray their clients' actions as not worthy of prosecution.

"I don't believe this was a crime in the first instance," Durkin said.

The jury didn't buy that.

"They may have been doing that for decades, but it's still wrong," juror Michael Hall said.

CBS 2's Mike Parker reports most of the jurors vanished quickly after the verdict, but two stayed behind to talk with reporters, including the jury foreman.

Prosecutors said Durkin was the one who most often brought Daley's name into the case, and the foreman of the jury, University of Illinois-Chicago professor S. Jay Olshansky, said Daley was not discussed in the deliberations. He said jurors agreed not to focus on possible wrongdoing by City Hall higher-ups. He said Daley's name never came up during deliberations.

"There was absolutely no message in this verdict," said Hall, a furniture delivery man for a downtown department store.

Olshansky, however, said he had arrived at the courthouse knowing nothing about city politics and was disappointed in what he learned.

"I guess appalled is the word," he said.

The jury deliberated for three and a half days over evidence at the five-week trial. Witnesses testified that Sorich dictated who would get which city jobs and that those without political clout were frozen out.

"The overarching thrust of the prosecution's case, in my opinion, was extraordinarily strong. They presented evidence, testimony from individuals who were involved in the practice of modifying forms and doing things that were illegal according to what we had read about the Shakman Decree and city ordinances," said foreman Jay Olshansky.

The jury foreman also said one of the first things they did after getting the case was sit down in the jury room and rate each witness on credibility. Olshansky said City Corporation Counsel Mara Georges rated extremely high.

Witnesses said members of so-called patronage armies that got out the vote for Daley and his allies on Election Day got all the jobs. They also said that Sorich directed how and where the patronage armies would be sent, pinpointing specific wards and a congressional district.

Sorich's attorneys said he made recommendations on who should be hired with an eye toward insuring diversity in the city work force. But they denied he ever had forced the hiring of any specific applicant.

None of the defendants testified at the trial.

Prosecutors said the fraud scheme was designed to hide the fact that city officials were violating the so-called Shakman Decree -- a 30-year-old court order that bars consideration of political affiliation in awarding all but about 1,300 of the 38,000 jobs on Chicago's city payroll.

The decree effectively outlaws Chicago's century-old political patronage tradition, long the fuel that made the city's once mighty Democratic political machine run. The decree is named for patronage-hating attorney Michael Shakman who blames his defeat in a 1970 election on hordes of campaign workers with city jobs who worked on behalf of a rival.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)