If you drive about an hour southwest of Chicago, you will arrive in the Village of Minooka. A businessman there is facing a federal wire fraud charge. Prosecutors accuse the 49-year-old owner of The Income Store of operating a Ponzi scheme.
They allege that his scheme took in $75 million from hundreds of investors.
On the list of disgraced and corrupt Chicago cops, former officers Xavier Elizondo and David Salgado will always have prominent places. The two were convicted last October of manufacturing evidence, stealing money and drugs and then engaging in a cover-up of their criminal activities.
Elizondo and Salgado are back in the news after two city residents filed federal lawsuits against the pair, stating that the former officers illegally raided their homes using warrants based on fabricated information and then falsely arrested them.
If you drive just north of Cook County, you will find Lake County and Gurnee. According to news reports, a Chicago man was recently arrested there and charged for his alleged involvement in the theft of $50,000 worth of diamonds.
Law enforcement officials said the diamonds were stolen from a Gurnee jewelry store in December.
In 2019, the Chicago Police Department made national headlines after it announced that its very first gun arrest of the new year had taken place just one minute after midnight of January 1st. The announcement highlighted the department’s focus on making weapons arrests – except that it was not the first gun arrest of 2019. And two weeks after the arrest, the weapons charge was dropped.
One more thing: the only ones who were punished for the arrest were the arresting officers and the sergeant who signed off on the arrest report. All three were suspended for falsifying the time and date of the arrest.
Just four miles north of Chicago’s northern border, Wilmette is often ranked as one of Illinois’s best places to live, partly because of its school system and partly because of its low crime rate. Three men recently arrested there on charges that include money laundering and continuing a financial crimes enterprise might well question whether law enforcement officials are wrongly blaming them for what others did.
Police claim the men have been operating a retail theft and fencing ring for nearly a year, buying stolen merchandise and then reselling the items online.
If you drive about an hour north of downtown Chicago, you will arrive in McHenry County. A woman there was recently charged with felony theft and forgery for allegedly stealing more than $100,000 from her suburban Gilberts employer.
The 39-year-old Spring Grove woman is accused by Kane County prosecutors of taking the money from 2016 to earlier this year.
Chicago police recently named a 13-year-old boy as “a person of interest” in last month’s shooting death of a nurse in the Little Village neighborhood. We do not know why police have singled the young teen out, but we do know that in other situations, police use the “person of interest” label because they believe the individual might have witnessed a crime or participated in criminal activity.
No charges have been filed against the boy. However, a 19-year-old man has been arrested and charged with murder in the shooting of the 32-year-old nurse who was struck in the chest by bullets on Nov. 12 in the 3700 block of West 32nd Street.
Last year, the Chicago Police Department announced what it said was a multi-year effort to reform itself in the wake of a 2014 video that showed a white cop shooting a black teenager 16 times. Last year, the officer was found guilty of second-degree murder. CPD said the reform would result in improved policing and public accountability.
Yet less than two week ago, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was fired for what Mayor Lori Lightfoot described as “ethical lapses.”
If you drive straight through the 2,000-mile journey from Chicago to Los Angeles suburb Huntington Beach, you will get there in about 32 hours. The city famous for its sandy beach and excellent surfing is home to a 64-year-old man who was recently pulled over in Chicago’s southwest neighbor, Joliet – a city famous for its prison, the Blues Brothers and a pair of casinos.
According to news reports, the California man was driving an RV on Interstate 80 when he was apparently pulled over for a windshield-wiper violation (he was reportedly using his wipers without having the headlights on). Will County sheriff’s deputies searched the RV and reported finding 190 pounds of marijuana and six grams of methamphetamine. The driver was charged with possession of more than 5,000 grams of cannabis and manufacturing or delivering more than 5,000 grams of cannabis.
The numbers for City Colleges of Chicago are impressive: seven community colleges, six satellite campuses, 4,000 instructors and more than 80,000 students across the metro. Another figure has been making headlines for the system, however: a former vice-chancellor and seven others are facing federal fraud charges in what officials call a $350,000 kickback scheme.
The eight people indicted were allegedly involved in a plan that awarded contracts to firms tied to the former vice chancellor’s associates and relatives.
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