10 years for Bartlett woman who lied about deaths

Bridgette Buckner was nowhere to be found at the DuPage County courthouse Wednesday, but that didn’t stop a judge from sentencing her to a decade behind bars.

Buckner, 50, received consecutive five-year terms for defrauding a former employer with bogus insurance claims in which she falsely reported the deaths of a young daughter and her supposed FBI agent husband.

Calling the crime “particularly egregious,” Judge John Kinsella sentenced Buckner without her presence in court after finding she “willfully failed to appear.”

“It’s quite remarkable in terms of being able to convince folks of the most unpleasant of circumstances, and play on their sympathies to her benefit,” Kinsella said.

Buckner, who last lived in Bartlett, pleaded guilty in June to making the phony insurance claims to Hallmark Services Corp., then in Aurora, in 2008. She has been missing since a Cook County grand jury indicted her last month on unrelated identity theft charges, prosecutors said.

In arguing for a prison term rather than probation, Prosecutor Helen Kapas noted Wednesday that Buckner falsely reported the death of a child or children to at least two employers other than Hallmark, and on one other occasion reported her husband had died. In total, Buckner netted more than $70,000 in insurance payouts, Kapas said.

“It’s clear that Bridgette Buckner is a con artist. She’s a fraud, she’s a thief, and if you were to look up pathological liar in the dictionary, a picture of Bridgette Buckner would be next to pathological liar,” Kapas said.

Defense attorney Matthew Hachigian said that while his client’s whereabouts remain unknown, it’s clear she needs professional help. “These are sick acts from a person who needs a lot of help,” he told the judge.

Buckner’s story fell apart after it caught the attention of two retired FBI agents now working as corporate security investigators for Hallmark’s parent company.

The investigators testified Wednesday that Buckner apparently fabricated death certificates for both a young daughter and a husband, who she claimed was an FBI agent killed in the line of duty in Chicago. They said Buckner eventually confessed her husband was alive and not an FBI agent after the investigators explained they would have heard about a fellow officer being gunned down in the city.

Buckner currently is being sought in Cook County, where she is accused of stealing the identities of dozens of people and using the information to rack up $34,000 in credit card debt and utility bills.

In a letter to the court written before her recent indictment, Buckner asked for forgiveness, telling Kinsella she’d been “called to the ministry.”

“I always thought I would be famous, but never like this,” she wrote in the letter presented in court. “God has truly changed my life and opened my eyes to a new life to live.”

By law, Buckner must serve at least half of her sentence, or five years. Kinsella said he was “confident” she will be found.