Dixon failed to score any points in eight out of the 10 categories of the checklist, including budgets, financial audits, expenditures and contracts with third parties. When graded for online transparency in April 2012, the city of Dixon scored only a 16.7 out of a possible 100 points. Dobrowski’s alleged embezzlement occurred between 20, and Rita Crundwell was convicted of stealing funds from 1990 until 2012.īut the similarities between the two towns’ corruption cases don’t end there.ĭixon and Burnham did a terrible job of promoting online transparency.Įach community had stunningly poor online transparency grades under the Illinois Policy Institute’s 10-Point Transparency Checklist, and the lack of a comprehensive online transparency policy left both towns vulnerable to corruption. Both incidents happened over extremely long periods of time.Dobrowski allegedly used stolen public funds to fuel a gambling addiction, while Crundwell’s used stolen public funds to fuel an expensive addiction to training show horses. Both defendants dealt with addiction issues.Both were accused of providing false information to outside auditing firms to conceal their crimes.Both were longtime elected officials with control of their municipality’s finances.Both Burnham’s Nancy Dobrowski and Dixon’s Rita Crundwell were charged with wire fraud and stealing public funds.Here are the shocking similarities between the two cases. Rita Crundwell, Dixon’s comptroller, was charged, convicted and sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for stealing more than $53 million from local taxpayers. The case is eerily similar to the corruption scandal that hit the city of Dixon in 2012, which made nationwide news. 9 sentencing and must pay more than $700,000 in restitution to the village, including about $50,000 in ill-gotten pension funds.” UPDATE: On May 22, Dobrowski pleaded guilty to stealing more than $700,000 from the village of Burnham.”According to her plea agreement with prosecutors, she faces from 3 to about 4 years in prison at her scheduled Sept. Allegedly, Dobrowski “used most of the cash to gamble at casinos in Indiana and elsewhere.” Recently, federal authorities charged the village of Burnham’s long-time village clerk, Nancy Dobrowski, with stealing over $650,000 in funds from local taxpayers. When it comes to government corruption, history often repeats itself in Illinois, both in terms of types of corruption and the failure of government to implement policies that could prevent it. Burnham’s $650K corruption scandal a lot like Dixon’s
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