Bookkeeper in burg tied to $30M theft

Big embezzlement stuns little town. City Hall worker lived lavish lifestyle of horse breeder.

DIXON, Ill. — The smalltown bookkeeper dazzled friends and co-workers with invitations to her immaculate horse ranch and home, where she displayed trophies from world championship exhibitions and visitors in cowboy hats arrived to buy some of the best-bred horses in the nation.

“She has a trophy case that you wouldn’t believe — actually a room,” said Stephanie Terranova, who worked with Rita Crundwell for 15 years at City Hall and attended her parties and auctions.

The gulf between Crundwell’s two worlds was breathtaking, and her colleagues and neighbors never guessed how the two entwined: Crundwell is accused of using her modestly paid town hall job to steal their tax dollars, support an extravagant lifestyle and win national fame as a breeder.

Federal prosecutors say Crundwell, 58, who handled all the city’s finances, embezzled $30 million in public funds from Dixon, the boyhood home of the late President Ronald Reagan.

In a criminal complaint, they say they’ve obtained bank records that document each step she took in shifting taxes and other public funds through four city bank accounts before hiding them in a fifth account no one else knew about. Still, they are trying to fig- ure out how she kept the scheme a secret, even from outside auditors, for at least six years. It unraveled only when a co-worker filling in for Crundwell while she was on an extended vacation stumbled upon the secret account.

Crundwell had an encyclopedic knowledge of city business down to which drawer contained a particular document, said Mayor James Burke, who recalled feeling uneasy about the city comptroller’s growing wealth.

“There wasn’t anything to hang my hat on,” said Burke, who has known Crundwell since she was a teenager.

On Monday, the city fired Crundwell, who was arrested by FBI agents April 17 on a charge of wire fraud and later freed on a $4,500 recognizance bond. She could enter a plea at a May 7 status hearing. Her lawyer, federal public defender Paul Gaziano, refused to comment on the case. Phone messages left at numbers listed for Crundwell’s Dixon home and ranch were not returned.

Her arrest stunned tiny Dixon, a small city along a picturesque vein of the Mississippi River about a two-hour drive west of Chicago in Illinois farm country. Its 16,000 people are largely lower-middle class, working at factories, grain farms, the local prison and a hospital, among other places.

“People just don’t understand it, just how $30 million could ...,” cafebookstore owner Larry Dunphy said, trailing off at the thought of it. “It’s hard to believe.”

Agents searching Crundwell’s home, office and farms seized seven trucks and horse trailers, three pickup trucks, a $2.1 million motor home and a Ford Thunderbird convertible.