Today in Chicago History: Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell arrested for stealing millions from the city
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on April 17, according to the Tribune's archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
1934: After Nation of Islam founder Wallace Fard Muhammad disappeared, Elijah Muhammad assumed leadership of the Nation of Islam and moved its headquarters to the city's South Side.
1945: Edward 'Jim' Sparling, president of Central YMCA College in Chicago, resigned after the school's board asked him to put together a census of the student body that included race and religion. Believing the census would lead to racial discrimination, 62 faculty members followed him. They created together a new school — Roosevelt College — named after recently deceased President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now the school is known as Roosevelt University.
2006: Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was convicted on sweeping federal corruption charges uncovered during the federal Operation Safe Road investigation that exposed rampant bribery in state driver's license facilities while he was secretary of state as well as misdeeds as governor. Ryan was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison and entered on Nov. 7, 2007. He was released on Jan. 30, 2013, then remained on home confinement until July 2013.
2012: Dixon comptroller Rita Crundwell was arrested on charges of misappropriating more than $30 million in city money. She pleaded guilty in 2012 to stealing almost $54 million over 22 years from her northwestern Illinois city, best known as the boyhood home of former President Ronald Reagan.
Authorities at the time called it the largest municipal fraud in the country's history. Crundwell used the money to finance her quarter horse business and lavish lifestyle, according to the FBI. She was released from prison in 2021 with about eight years left on her 19 ½-year sentence. Her sentence was commuted by President Joe Biden in December 2024.
2015: Cardinal Francis George, the first Chicago native to serve as the local archbishop and a man who during his 17-year tenure became the intellectual leader of the American church, died after a yearslong struggle with cancer; he was 78.
Also in 2015: Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett went on leave amid a federal probe into a no-bid contract. She later pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud for steering the $20 million contract to her associates at SUPES Academy (an education consulting firm where she previously worked) in exchange for the promise of up to $2.3 million in kickbacks.
Byrd-Bennett was sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison but was released about a year early, through an initiative to free inmates particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Her lawyer said at the time of Byrd-Bennett's release that she would serve the rest of her sentence on home confinement.
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