Attorney blames couple's bookkeeper in fraud case
SPRINGFIELD - Misplaced confidence, not criminal intent, is to blame for a Chicago couple's involvement in a $5 million fraud scheme that rocked the Illinois Department of Public Health and dragged a friend of President Barack Obama into the spotlight, a defense attorney said Tuesday.
Leon and Karin Dingle received $11 million in public health grants, and the Justice Department alleges they converted $3.4 million of it to personal use for luxury cars and vacation homes. But their attorney, Ed Genson, told a federal jury in closing arguments that Leon Dingle earned the millions he made and that the couple just made a mistake in failing to check on book-cooking by longtime and trusted employee Jacquelyn Kilpatrick.
The Dingles are charged with conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering for, authorities allege, steering grant money intended for AIDS and cancer-awareness campaigns through unauthorized nonprofit organizations and into their business and personal accounts. The government claims they used the money to buy two Mercedes Benzes, renovate vacation homes in Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head, South Carolina, and pay $97,000 on their son's mortgage.
Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion in October and testified against the Dingles in the seven-week trial.
Genson said it was Kilpatrick who began taking money that was moving between approved nonprofit organizations Dingle had arranged to do the work, netting $1 million for herself.
"Leon did not know she was stealing," Genson said. "There's no evidence he knew she was stealing; there's no evidence he told her to steal. He trusted her. ... She was very good at forgery."
He said that if Dingle made millions of dollars on the grants, the jury should consider the value of the work he performed in helping and educating minority communities about health issues.
Grant money was steered to nonprofits controlled by Leon Dingles by Quinshaunta Golden, who has pleaded guilty to bribery and other charges and is awaiting sentencing. Golden was chief of staff to the IDPH director, Dr. Eric Whitaker, a golfing buddy of Obama's who is not accused of wrongdoing. He was considered a government witness in the trial but did not testify.
Genson painted a picture of Dingle as a shrewd businessman who was an early investor in cable television in Chicago and a consultant evaluating people for public assistance eligibility when he met Kilpatrick, then a 21-year-old single mother who had gone to the YWCA to find a job. Kilpatrick - who served felony probation for forgery in the 1980s - learned how to hide things from Dingle during the three decades they worked together, Genson said.
If federal agents found erroneous and fabricated entries in the Dingles' books, "that's not Leon Dingle, that's her," Genson said.
Jury deliberations will begin Wednesday.