A pair of city employees, including an assistant housing commissioner and a Chicago Police officer, who fraudulently obtained more than $51,000 in forgivable Payroll Protection Program loans tailor-made to help businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
A City Council member who threw his weight around by trying to avoid waiting in line, then threatening to have city inspectors harass a business owner who refused the favored treatment.
A city auditor who sold “large quantities of” cocaine and misused sick time to testify in federal court and an airport operations supervisor who “fraudulently obtained fourteen identification cards” from states outside Illinois.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s latest quarterly report is chock-full of anecdotes like these against city employees, even though it once again withholds the names of the accused.
The alleged wrongdoing even extends to the inspector general’s own office, where four employees were referred for verbal counseling after applying for jobs in other departments without seeking the prior approval required to avoid an investigative conflict.
Witzburg said she’s not at all embarrassed by the alleged wrongdoing in her office.
“What would be embarrassing is if we failed to hold our own people accountable when something goes wrong. We ought to hold our own people to at least as high a standard as we hold others in city government,” she said.
The inspector general said she is particularly concerned about “all of the PPP” cases, many of which are still being investigated.
“You don’t get to work for the government and defraud the government,” she said. “One of the PPP cases here is a high-ranking city official. We can’t have people in positions of public trust abusing that trust.”
The most costly wrongdoing outlined in the quarterly report involves the $51,000 in federal PPP loans fraudulently obtained by and forgiven for a pair of city employees.
The program has been rife with fraud across the country and Chicago’s City Hall was no different.
An assistant housing commissioner received a pair of PPP loans totaling over $33,264 and applied for forgiveness for all of it by claiming to have an “administrative services” business.
“OIG did not find evidence that the subject ever had such a business,” the report states. “Moreover, despite substantial efforts to contact the subject and interview them regarding this allegation, the subject never contacted OIG to set up a time for an interview.”
The accused employee resigned to avoid being fired and was placed on the “do not hire” list.
The police officer was accused of “illegally” obtaining $18,000 from the PPP program for a non-existent insurance agency business. The cop was further accused of making “several” fraudulent applications for federal “Economic Injury Disaster Loans” for other businesses that did not exist and lying to the IG when confronted about those fraudulent applications.
The officer is now facing discharge.
Yet another troubling case involved allegations of identify theft and fraud. Witzburg recommended firing the airport operations supervisor accused of having “fraudulently obtained 14 identification cards or state ID cards from several states outside of Illinois.”
The quarterly report accuses a city employee who was working at the time as a “senior emergency management coordinator” of blowing through a red light to avoid being late for training, triggering a crash that “resulted in property damage and personal injury” to the employee “and their passenger” who was a co-worker at the city’s 911 emergency center.
Witzburg recommended “discipline commensurate with the gravity of the violations and past disciplinary record.” The coordinator was slapped on the wrist with a three-day suspension.
A business compliance investigator was recommended for firing after being accused of driving a city vehicle on “four separate days” on a license suspended for driving under the influence.
Witzburg’s investigation further revealed that the investigator tried to get out of the field sobriety test, the arrest and the police lock-up by making “their city employment known.”
“The subject told the police officer, `Take care of me, bro. I am a city of Chicago inspector,’” the quarterly report states.
The appeal continued even after the arrest while the investigator was in the police station lock-up.
“Come on, bro. Have some heart and compassion. I am enforcement, too, bro,” the investigator was quoted as saying in a video of the incident.
“I am a city investigator. We all enforcement. Have some compassion for what we do.”
The drug-dealing city auditor faces firing after being accused of “distributing and delivering…potentially more than 20 kilograms” worth cocaine while working for the city and fraudulently claiming sick time to appear in federal court.
A city plumber was recommended for firing—but managed to keep his or her job with a mere three-day suspension—after being accused of “possessing a loaded firearm while on the clock traveling between city work sites without a valid Concealed Carry license.”
The alderperson accused of throwing their weight around after being denied favored treatment was accused of violating the city’s ethics ordinance by demanding service from a private business without waiting in line.
The Board of Ethics has subsequently found “probable cause,” the first step toward levying a fine.