How a city worker stole more than $53 million in 22 years of deception

The town of Dixon, Illinois, population 16,000, has long been known as the hometown of former President Ronald Reagan. In 2012, it became infamous when it was revealed that one of its residents had embezzled $53.7 million from the community over 22 years.

Rita Crundwell used her position as city comptroller and treasurer to siphon off money to finance her Quarter Horse breeding, become big business in the competitive equestrian world and establish a luxurious home life, according to the Department of Justice. Justice.

“Scam Goddess,” which premieres January 15 at 10 p.m. ET on Freeform and streams the next day on Hulu, follows host Laci Mosley as she meets the people who knew Rita Crundwell and saw the fallout after the discovery of his crimes.

Crundwell has had decades to familiarize himself with the intricacies of the city’s finances, having started working there as a teenager.

“She was their runner when she was in high school. They would say, Rita, here, take this, and she would run and come back,” said former Mayor Jim Dixon. “But at the same time, she was dealing with some books, so she was learning that skill.”

After leaving high school, Crundwell found full-time employment in the city and eventually secured the position that she would use to her advantage.

“Right before I became mayor, the comptroller retired and they gave Rita the title of comptroller without taking away her title and authority as treasurer,” Dixon said. “She then had complete control over all finances.”

She maintained her side business showing horses throughout this period, earning the admiration of the community.

“Rita received a lot of local publicity for her work with the Quarter Horses and all her shows, etc. Every once in a while there would be a story about Rita in the paper,” Dixon said. “She sold a Quarter Horse for $150,000. It must be a wonderful deal.”

However, the $80,000 salary she earned as a city employee and the awards she won in the horse world were not enough to fund her business and lifestyle. She purchased a camper van worth $2.1 million in 2009, at a time when Dixon was struggling in the midst of the global financial crisis.

Crundwell lived the life of a rock star, with a huge farm and a beautiful house, which included custom furniture like a chandelier made from old revolvers, personalized tables and a floor inlaid with his initials. She owned campers, horse trailers, custom furniture and a vacation home in Florida.

Dixon City Manager Danny Langloss noted that community public works was “severely neglected” during this time.

“We had people driving around in pickup trucks with holes in the ground,” he said. “The projects that couldn’t be done because we didn’t have that money.”

When the town of Dixon closed its swimming pools because it could not afford to operate them, the defendant built a swimming pool with a sauna.

Kathe Swanson, Dixon’s deputy treasurer, highlighted Crundwell’s savings. When people retired, no one was hired to replace them and more work fell to Swanson.

“She left me high and dry,” she said. “And then when we had to pay the bills, she would sit there and go through each envelope and say, ‘Pay this, don’t pay this. Pay this, don’t pay this.'”

More seriously, Swanson said Crundwell rejected a request to upgrade emergency services.

“The police chief went to her and said, you know, we need a new radio system because there are dead spots in Dixon,” Swanson said. “And she told him, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have the money budgeted for.'”

Crundwell got away with it for so long because she is “a master manipulator,” according to Langloss.

“She always made the people with her feel like the most important people in the room,” he said. “If you think about it, it’s true, a lot of these people have worked with her since she was 16 or 17 and she was an intern, and turned a lot of heads with her work ethic, her personality, the the way she was able to connect with people.

In her capacity as comptroller and treasurer, Crundwell opened a secret bank account in her name in 1990. Once the account was opened, Langloss said she created fictitious invoices for large sums of money for road projects around Dixon.

“And now this bank allows you to accept payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars and deposit them into this account that only your name is on and that no one knows about,” he said. “And then you can take that and move it to your own account, and that’s exactly what she did.”

In 1991, she siphoned off $181,000, the Justice Department noted. Over the course of two decades, Rita executed 169 transfers, averaging $2.5 million per year. His embezzlement spree continued unchecked until 2012, with his thefts totaling 28% of Dixon’s budget over the past six years.

Crundwell’s plan collapsed while she was away at a horse show and her deputy Swanson had to obtain the treasurer’s report for a city council meeting and received statements for an account she had no access to previously – Crundwell’s secret account – according to Swanson.

“I looked at it, and it wasn’t our account. But it had the name of the town of Dixon on it, and I immediately thought that doesn’t seem to be legit,” she said .

The deposits Swanson saw were massive amounts of money with no clear source or legitimate city purpose. The frequency and scale of these transactions immediately raised red flags.

“About three days later, the mayor came into my office and he started telling me what a dire situation we were in, the city,” she said.

Swanson revealed what she found, and then-Mayor Jim Burke immediately called the FBI. She participated in their six-month investigation, and Crundwell was arrested in April 2012. She eventually pleaded guilty to wire fraud and admitted she engaged in money laundering as part of her plea deal.

Crundwell, who was 60 at the time, was sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison.

“I attended the sentencing because I wanted to hear him say ‘I’m sorry for what I did’ or apologize to the citizens of Dixon,” Swanson said. “She didn’t do it. She apologized to her friends and family.”

Dixon managed to recoup much of what Crundwell had embezzled by selling his assets at auction and settling a lawsuit with the city auditors, who botched his project for more than 20 years.

After serving eight years of her sentence, Crundwell was transferred to home confinement during the pandemic and President Joe Biden commuted her sentence in December. It is rarely seen in the community now, but the city took advantage of its economic recovery to modernize its infrastructure and build its new waterfront project.

“You can’t look in the rearview mirror. We have to keep our eyes on the future,” Langloss said. “We must continue to create Dixon’s future. Rita is just a name. She doesn’t matter anymore.”

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