A disgraced ex-municipal comptroller who embezzled practically $54 million from her northwest Illinois metropolis acquired a commutation from President Joe Biden on Thursday, wiping out about 4 years in a residential reentry program remaining on her sentence for the staggering monetary crime.
Former Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell was amongst a record-high 1,499 folks to obtain commutations in a single day from the outgoing president, a listing that additionally included one other notorious Illinois fraudster: Eric Bloom, who bilked traders out of greater than $665 million within the greatest monetary fraud case ever tried in Chicago.
Bloom, previously of Northbrook, had one other 1½ years to go on his reentry program till the wave of commutations from the White Home, which centered on criminals who had been launched from jail and positioned on dwelling confinement early within the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden additionally pardoned 39 folks, together with a clear slate for one Illinoisan: 51-year-old Diana Bazan Villanueva of La Grange, convicted of a nonviolent drug crime when she was in her 20s.
“Within the years since, Ms. Villanueva has been a devoted mom to her kids and has labored in payroll and accounts,” the White Home mentioned in a press release. “Ms. Villanueva additionally often volunteers in school occasions, fundraisers, and annual autism-related charitable occasions. Mates and coworkers uniformly reward Ms. Villanueva and describe her as heat, dependable, and at all times keen to assist.”
Villanueva couldn’t be reached for remark.
Pardons — an influence granted presidents and usually exercised late of their phrases — clear an individual’s prison report. Commutations scale back sentences however don’t exonerate folks of crimes.
The White Home didn’t elaborate on the commutations for Crundwell or Bloom.
Dixon Mayor Glen Hughes mentioned, “A lot of the metropolis might be surprised, and perhaps even offended, that President Biden would offer clemency to Rita Crundwell, the perpetrator of in all probability the biggest municipal misappropriations of funds in U.S. historical past.”
“The Crundwell incident is one which the Metropolis want to transfer previous,” Hughes mentioned in an electronic mail. “Though right now’s information might be a darkish second in Dixon’s historical past, Dixon has recovered very properly each financially, and developmentally, from the Crundwell days.”
Crundwell, 71, captured nationwide headlines for her brazen misconduct on the expense of taxpayers in Dixon, a metropolis of 15,000 about 100 miles west of Chicago.
She was handed a 19-year sentence in 2013 after pleading responsible to stealing greater than $53.7 million from Dixon whereas serving as comptroller between 1990 and 2011, siphoning roughly $2.5 million per 12 months from metropolis accounts to her personal.
The windfall funded a championship-winning horse breeding enterprise, basic automobiles and a lavish way of life for Crundwell, who additionally purchased a home in Florida and 4 dozen vans.
By the point she was sentenced, the feds had recovered about $12.4 million for Dixon, the childhood hometown of President Ronald Reagan.
Earlier than she was launched from the medium-security federal jail in downstate Pekin in 2021, Crundwell wrote in a letter searching for compassionate launch that she “had a number of gives for books and films. My reply has at all times been I might not converse to anybody till I used to be launched and any remuneration would go first to town of Dixon.”
Bloom defrauded traders
Bloom, 59, obtained a 14-year sentence in 2015 for wire and funding adviser fraud as head of Sentinel Administration Group Inc., which used prospects’ cash to take out an enormous mortgage for Bloom’s personal dangerous portfolio, which crashed.
Bloom strung alongside key traders in 2003 by artificially boosting their returns on the expense of much less favored shoppers, costing all of them greater than half a billion {dollars} by the point the scheme fell aside in 2007.
Prosecutors declared it the biggest monetary fraud case ever prosecuted in Chicago’s federal court docket.
Earlier than the commutations, Crundwell and Bloom had been registered at residential reentry administration discipline places of work — higher often known as midway homes — in Downers Grove and Miami, respectively, in response to the federal Bureau of Prisons, nevertheless it wasn’t clear the place both has been residing.
Crundwell beforehand urged she may reside together with her brother on his farm in Dixon.
The Biden administration granted 1000’s of prisoners compassionate launch early within the pandemic to assist sluggish the unfold of the virus in prisons, which proved to be main vectors for COVID-19.
Earlier than Thursday’s record-setting 1,538 clemency grants, the earlier excessive was set by former President Barack Obama in 2017, when he pardoned or commuted sentences for 330 folks.
Biden may grant extra clemency petitions earlier than his time period ends subsequent month.
Contributing: Related Press
