The first person named as Public Enemy Number One was Chicago’s notorious Al Capone. The designation shifted a few years later to John Dillinger (who also had Chicago connections), “Pretty Boy” Floyd, “Baby Face” Nelson and others.
The latest to receive the dubious honor is "El Mencho," alleged to be at the very top of drug trafficking in Chicago.
Those who have been around Chicago for a while undoubtedly recall Operation Greylord, the 1980s investigation into corruption among Cook County judges, cops, court officials and others. One of the prosecutors who headed the undercover operation was Dan Webb, then U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.
Webb has long since been in private practice, now representing Ukrainian industrialist Dmitry Firtash, who officials want to extradite to Chicago to face racketeering charges. The wealthy businessman is accused of masterminding a scheme in which officials in India were allegedly bribed to approve titanium mining operations.
East Chicago’s name is at odds with its location. If you travel east of the city, you wind up in Lake Michigan. But if you go south of the city and then slightly east, you’ll find yourself in East Chicago.
The modest city of about 30,000 is home to a pair of businesses that shared a bookkeeper. The 45-year-old Indiana woman has been charged by law enforcement officials with two counts each of felony theft and fraud on a financial institution.
Federal and state officials allege that the drug deals stretched across Chicago, from the South Side to the West Side and Humboldt Park. Authorities say more than two dozen suspects have been charged with a variety of drug trafficking crimes, including distribution of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl.
Only three of the 29 suspects named had been taken into custody at the time of the news report, a state’s attorney spokesperson said. When others are arrested, they “will be charged with 27 deliveries (combined) of heroin/fentanyl, and/or heroin and/or cocaine."
Investigations of white collar crime can often be slow-moving, taking weeks, months and sometimes even more. A law enforcement investigation of two women recently arrested far south of Chicago reportedly began six months ago, news reports have stated.
Days ago, the women were taken into custody and charged with forgery, computer fraud and identity theft after allegedly sending forged documents to Colonial Life Insurance, Mutual of Omaha and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana insurance companies.
The Boy Scouts’ motto is “be prepared.” It is not clear if a former top Scouts official with the Northeast Illinois Council was prepared to be indicted on white collar charges. He faces allegations of wire fraud and forgery, law enforcement officials said.
According to a Chicago Tribune report, the 51=year-old lives in suburban Deer Park, northeast of the city. Highland Park police were contacted n May by the scout council said the city’s police chief.
As regular readers of our Chicago criminal law blog know, the Department of Justice has for several years prioritized health care fraud. The DOJ recently announced that a federal grand jury has indicted three more doctors and three employees of a home health care agency on charges of health care fraud.
The FBI said its investigators have determined that the doctors received payments in exchange for referring Medicare patients to a California home health care agency.
Information on just about every subject is today readily available online. Because data about Chicago real estate listings and sales are now publicly available, experts say that we have entered a golden age of mortgage fraud.
Real estate experts say that because real estate listing services spread information about a home within hours of it being placed on the market, people around the nation – and even around the world – have access to detailed data. When the property’s status changes to pending sale, a window is open for outsiders to commit wire fraud, a real estate publication reports.
Of all of Chicago’s suburbs, Ford Heights is one of the smallest and least well-known. Covering slightly less than two square miles, the village about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago has fewer than 3,000 residents.
Ford Heights is not too small to make headlines, however, which it did recently when its former mayor was arrested on public corruption charges.
A Chicago woman was recently accused by federal prosecutors of defrauding the IRS. She and two others allegedly filed false tax returns for clients and then received the refunds.
The three women each face 10 counts of wire fraud and five counts of aggravated identity theft.
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Darryl A. Goldberg
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