Former North Chicago school officials charged in kickback scheme

Two former officials with North Chicago School District 187 have been charged by federal officials with collecting at least $800,000 in kickbacks from student busing contracts.

Gloria Harper, 59, a former school board member, and Alice Sherrod, 59, district transportation director from 2001 to last July, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of wire fraud, bribery and tax evasion charges.

The indictment says Harper and Sherrod collected payments of up to $20,000 a month from Derrick Eubanks, 47, of Lake Villa, Tommie Boddie, 66, of Wadsworth, and Barrett White, 52, of Matteson, in return for steering district bus business to companies owned by the three men.

The payments took place between 2001 and August of last year, the indictment states.

None of the defendants or their attorneys could be reached for comment Thursday.

The indictment announced Wednesday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago is not Harper’s first brush with law enforcement during her time on the school board from 1999 until May 2009.

In 2009, Harper and Tyrone Pipkin, then the district’s director of technology, were sued in federal court and criminally charged in Lake County with falsifying documents in a federal program to help underprivileged schools.

The pair operated computer companies that did business with the federal government and were accused of overcharging the Department of the Interior more than $241,000 for equipment they supplied an elementary school in Twin Buttes, SD.

The federal government won full reimbursement in the lawsuit, and Harper and Pipkin received court supervision after pleading guilty to attempted forgery in Lake County Circuit Court.

In the new case, the government claims Harper and Sherrod collected money from Eubanks, Boddie and White by arranging for a series of bus companies owned by the men to get contracts from District 187.

The payoffs started in the $4,000 to $5,000 per month range, according to the indictment, but by 2003 had grown to $20,000 per month.

The last of the companies alleged to have been part of the scheme, Quality Trans, LLC of Waukegan, won a five-year contract to provide bus service for the district in 2009.

Sergio Acosta, the attorney for District 187, said the school board terminated that contract on June 15 for what a board resolution called “a series of overcharges for services and failure to refund those overcharges.”

Nothing in the federal indictment issued Wednesday mentions overcharges, and Acosta said he could not comment when asked if there was any other criminal investigation of Quality Trans under way.

Local prosecutors also declined to comment when asked if Quality Trans was under investigation, and a recording on the company telephone line said the number had been disconnected.

Eubanks, Boddie and White are also charged with wire fraud and bribery, and Eubanks and Boddie face tax evasion charges as well.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said the government is also seeking forfeiture of more than $9.67 million from the various bus companies created as part of the scheme, and 55 buses and personal cars owned by the companies.

Arraignment dates for the five have not yet been scheduled, Samborn said.