Here's but a sampling of the scandals that have made headlines over the years: Otto Kerner, the former Democratic governor from 1961 to 1968, was convicted in the early 1970s of failing to pay the proper taxes on racetrack stock

and lying to a federal grand jury about it. The former federal appeals judge received the stock from Marjorie Lindheimer Everett, the owner of Arlington Park racetrack, allegedly in exchange for special treatment from the state. Kerner died in 1975 from cancer.

In 1973, the first two mayors of Hoffman Estates, Edward F. Pinger and Roy L. Jenkins, were sent to prison along with several other village officials for taking bribes from what was then the largest home-builder in the country to get favorable zoning from the village.

One year later, three Wheeling officials were swept in a zoning shake-down scandal. Wheeling Township committeeman James Stavros, a political power in the area, pleaded guilty to extorting $62,000 from three developers and filing a false tax return. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Former village building commissioner William Bieber, also convicted of extortion, served one year in prison, while ex-village trustee William Hart was convicted of conspiracy to commit extortion and received one year of probation. In 1987, former Arlington Heights village Treasurer Lee L. Poder was sentenced to 18 months in jail after he was found guilty of transferring $136,400 in village money to his personal account. He was also ordered to get psychological treatment. Poder was accused of investing village money in a highly speculative scheme then plotting to escape detection after the investments soured.

Two years later, the former village manager of Streamwood, Edward J. Emond, was sentenced to six years in prison for pocketing illegally $16,200 in return for promising to deliver village favors. Emond took $5,000 to ensure a senior citizen retirement complex would sail through the village approval process and was paid $10,000 for selling village land at a bargain price to two used-car dealers, among other improprieties.

Alleged investment whiz Thomas W. Collins showed a prolific ability to rip off public officials throughout the 1990s, even police chiefs like Gerald Aponte, then of Rolling Meadows, and Jerry Bratcher, of Palatine, plus doctors, lawyers and restaurant owners.

Collins promised astronomical returns on investments and for a while delivered until his Ponzi scheme collapsed of its own weight. He scammed investors out of millions of dollars only to end it all in 1996 by killing himself on the run in San Diego.

Collins, desperate for money despite all he had taken, had just robbed a bank.

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