Dixon Officials Decry Commutation of Former Comptroller Rita Crundwell, Who Embezzled Almost $54M in Public Funds: ‘It’s Not Justice’

Amanda Vinicky | December 12, 2024, 6:24 pm

The city of Dixon is pictured in a file photo. (Credit: “All the Queen’s Horses”)

Rita Crundwell infamously charted a new chapter in Illinois’ storied corruption saga by committing what the FBI believes to be the largest theft of public funds in U.S. history.

Now she’s part of history again.

Thanks to our sponsors:

View all sponsors

She’s among the 1,500 “non-violent offenders” whose sentence was commuted Thursday by President Joe Biden, in the nation’s largest single-day act of clemency.

The commutation means Crundwell’s is getting a reprieve from the nearly 20-year sentence handed down in 2013 for stealing almost $54 million when she was serving as comptroller for the city of Dixon, a community of 15,000 an hour and a half west of Chicago where President Ronald Reagan grew up.

For many in Dixon, the move was not a welcome one.

“This definitely cuts the scar open. It’s not a scab, it’s a scar. It’s a deep one,” said Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss, who was the city’s police chief when Crundwell’s theft was discovered. “At a time when the federal government is the least trusted institution in the country, to do something like this?”

Langloss said as a former police officer who fundamentally values justice, he considers the commutation a travesty.

But he said feelings of outrage, disgust and shock are widespread in Dixon. Residents were already upset that she was released from prison to home confinement in the summer of 2021.

“It’s not justice. This is a criminal,” said Langloss. “A sociopath who demonstrated no remorse, who destroyed the people that were closet to her without a feeling of guilt of what she put our town through. And after eight years, she walks? It’s just not right. Just the laziness to carte blanche commute the sentence of everyone, or nearly everyone that was put on home detention during COVID, without even giving consideration to the victims or their crimes.”

Following Crundwell’s downfall, Dixon residents in 2015 voted out the mayor and entire city council, and moved to a different, professionalized form of government.

Their new mayor, Li Arellano – who completed two terms in May and was last month elected to serve in the state Senate – said they worked to right the city’s fiscal and ethical ship.

Arellano said Biden’s commutation of Crundwell falsely gives the impression that white collar crime is victimless.

“Anyone who thinks you can steal $54 million from a town and call that non-violent? You can’t steal $54 million and it’s non-violent. It hurts your public safety,” Arellano said. “We had an ambulance that smoked when it went down the street. We weren’t able to hire as many police officers. It caused a lot of damage, and yes it also caused some violence, without a doubt.”

Crundwell used the stolen taxpayer money to fund a lavish lifestyle, including a ranch where she bred show horses.

“While the city was suffering, the defendant was living her dreams,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Pedersen is quoted as having told the judge during a 2012 sentencing hearing, and her “conduct in continuing to take millions of dollars from the City of Dixon to support her lavish lifestyle while she knew that Dixon was in dire financial straits was especially egregious.”

According to Federal Bureau of Prisons records, Crundwell had been under supervision by a residential reentry management field office in suburban Downers Grove. She left prison in August 2021.

A call to the office seeking more information about Crundwell was not immediately returned.

The office’s “minister contracts for community-based programs and serves as the Federal Bureau of Prisons local liaison with the federal courts, the U.S. Marshals Service, state and local corrections, and a variety of community groups within their specific judicial districts,” according to the prisons bureau.

Crundwell’s sentence was scheduled to run through Oct. 20, 2028.

The press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office at the time said “Crundwell must serve at least 85 percent of her 235-month sentence and there is no parole in the federal prison system.”

In a statement announcing her clemency action, Biden said the almost 1,500 people whose sentences he was commuting had been “placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance.”

President Biden also gave pardons Thursday to 39 individuals, an action which effectively forgives and erases the crime, including to La Grange resident Diana Bazan Villanueva, who in her 20s was convicted of a non-violent drug offense.

“I am pardoning 39 people who have shown successful rehabilitation and have shown commitment to making their communities stronger and safer,” Biden said.

According to the White House, Villanueva is 51 years old and is a “dedicated mother” who has worked in payroll and who volunteers at school events.

“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden’s statement said in explaining both clemency actions. “As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

A commutation, like Crundwell’s, shortens the punishment for a crime. A pardon like Villanueva’s exonerates someone of a crime.

Dixon leaders said they were given a heads up that Crundwell would be given early freedom, and there’s not much they can do about it now other than prepare residents for potentially running into someone who betrayed them.

If she ventures into Dixon, she’ll be met with a community that Langloss and Arellano said is greatly improved from how she left it.

Officials recovered $40 million of the stolen city money from court settlements, the work of auditors and proceeds from the liquidation of Crundwell’s assets, Langloss said.

Some of it went to pay off debt.

Some, said Arellano, allowed Dixon to “do the things that we could have been doing all along, and becoming the vibrant community we should have been.”

Investments in economic development and street resurfacing were made. The town also won a grant to revitalize the riverfront and make it into a gathering place.

“We’re a thriving rural community. We’re the gold standard of rural communities,” Langloss said. “So much happening in our industrial park, our commercial district, our riverfront. Dixon is on the move. And in a weird, strange way we are much better for all the change that came after Rita Crundwell, and our city council’s doing a great job of allocating the money we recovered.”

Both men said Dixon’s recovery and successes often go untold in the story of Crundwell and the mess she made.

“Every time the focus is on her, it’s on the fraud, which is important …,” Arellano said. “But the recovery gets lost. Thanks to the work of the U.S. Marshal, thanks to the work of the U.S. justice system and thanks to a lot of reform work that we did locally afterward, we’ve had one of the largest municipal recoveries in U.S. history.”