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 practically $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 traders of greater than $665 million.
The selections on the clemency petitions for Crundwell and Bloom had been introduced by the White House as a part of a massive list of approximately 39 pardons and 1,499 commutations. Biden’s orders don’t erase their felony convictions, however instantly finish their sentences.
Crundwell, 71, pleaded responsible in 2012 to what authorities later known as the largest municipal fraud in the history of the countryadmitting that he stole $53.7 million from the town over greater than a decade and used the cash to finance his quarter horse enterprise and splendid life-style.
She was sentenced in 2013 to just about 20 years in federal jail. In April 2020, Crundwell had petitioned a federal choose for early compassionate launch as a result of his poor well being and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I did all the things in my energy to be a ‘mannequin prisoner.’ Work as exhausting 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.
Bloom, in the meantime, the previous head of Sentinel Management Group, was convicted by a jury in 2012 of what was billed by prosecutors on the time. as the largest financial fraud within the historical past of the federal courtroom in Chicago.
Prosecutors mentioned that as Sentinel’s boss, Bloom secretly started exposing his rich shoppers 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 free change,” Bloom advised 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. He was presently serving his sentence at a residential reentry facility in Florida, jail data present. His sentence was as a result of expire in May 2026.
