President Joe Biden on Thursday commuted the sentences of two of the Chicago space’s most infamous scammers: former Dixon Comptroller Rita Crundwell, who embezzled almost $54 million from the small city to finance a lavish life-style, and Eric Bloom, the previous chief of a Northbrook administration agency that defrauded buyers of greater than $665 million.
The choices concerning the clemency requests for Crundwell and Bloom had been introduced by the White House as a part of an intensive record of some 39 pardons and 1,499 commutations. Biden’s orders don’t erase their felony convictions, however instantly finish their sentences.
The White House stated the commutations have an effect on folks launched from jail and confined to house through the coronavirus pandemic.
Crundwell, 71, pleaded responsible in 2012 to what authorities then referred to as the biggest municipal fraud within the nation’s historical past, admitting that she stole $53.7 million from town over greater than a decade and used the cash to fund his quarter horse enterprise and his lavish life-style.
She was sentenced in 2013 to almost 20 years in federal jail. In April 2020, Crundwell had petitioned a federal decide for early compassionate launch on account of his poor well being and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I did all the pieces in my energy to be a ‘mannequin prisoner.’ Work as laborious as I can and have by no means complained about my circumstances right here or the pay we obtain,” Crundwell wrote. “Not a day goes by that I do not remorse my crime.”
She had served about eight years behind bars earlier than being launched in 2021 to a midway home in Downers Grove, U.S. Bureau of Prisons data present. Crundwell would full his sentence in October 2028.
Republican U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, who represents Dixon, stated the president had proven contempt “for our justice system and the rule of regulation” by commuting Crundwell’s sentence.
“While lots of Dixon’s households lived paycheck to paycheck, she took benefit of their belief in authorities and used her alternative to stay a lifetime of undeserved luxurious, in what the FBI nonetheless believes to be the biggest theft of public funds in United States historical past,” LaHood stated in a press release Thursday. “The pendulum of his 20-year sentence is a slap within the face to all of the hardworking cops, firefighters, metropolis staff and residents of Dixon.”
Bloom, in the meantime, the previous head of Sentinel Management Group, was convicted by a jury in 2012 in what prosecutors referred to as on the time the biggest monetary fraud within the historical past of federal courtroom in Chicago.
Prosecutors stated that as Sentinel’s boss, Bloom secretly started exposing his rich purchasers to an more and more dangerous mixture of leveraged trades in 2003, resulting in the corporate’s collapse 4 years later.
“Have (my assistant) search my sofa for unfastened change,” Bloom instructed an affiliate in courtroom paperwork throughout a name days earlier than the Sentinel collapse.
Bloom, 59, was sentenced in 2015 to 14 years in jail. According to jail data, he’s serving his sentence at a residential reentry facility in Florida. His sentence was on account of expire in May 2026.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
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