Chicago businessman sentenced to 6 years for grant fraud
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - A Chicago businessman convicted of stealing millions in state grant funds was sentenced Monday to six years in prison.
Leon Dingle Jr. was convicted in December 2014 along with his wife, Karin, on 17 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering. A jury found they had engaged in a scheme in which they stole at least $2.9 million in Illinois Department of Public Health grant funds. Karin Dingle, 76, was scheduled to be sentenced later Monday.
The trial included testimony by Dr. Eric Whitaker, a close friend of President Barack Obama, who was director of the Public Health Department from 2003-2007. U.S. Attorney James Lewis said last year that Whitaker was not a target of the investigation.
U.S. District Judge Richard Mills said he took into consideration that Dingle did a lot of good during his life, but that his actions showed a pattern.
"This is a very serious offense, involving a staggering amount of money which occurred over several years," Mills said. "It's not an aberration, something that occurred once or twice. This offense was based on greed."
The government had recommended an eight-year sentence for Dingle, but his attorney Ed Genson argued would be like a death sentence because of Dingle's age.
Dingle apologized during the sentencing when he was allowed to speak.
"Please consider leniency without reservation before passing judgment," he said. "I've always prided myself about improving the quality of life by doing things based on what I learned along the way. Until this trial, I saw no need to change anything in my life. Maybe I was asleep at the wheel and for that I am sorry."
The Dingles and their co-defendants, who earlier pleaded guilty, stole what amounted to $2 of every $5 they received in grant funds form the Public Health Department from 2004 to 2010, prosecutors said. The scheme involved $11 million of mostly no-bid, upfront-funded grants ostensibly doled out for AIDS-and cancer-awareness campaigns in minority and underserved communities.
The government contends it's a "conservative" estimate that the Dingles took $2.9 million. Authorities say the money financed a lavish lifestyle: luxury cars; renovations of vacation homes in Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head, South Carolina; yacht-club expenses; and copious family gifts, such as a $95,000 payment on their son's mortgage.
The verdict is a victory for U.S. Attorney James Lewis, whose public corruption task force has obtained 13 convictions since 2011 involving state grant fraud. In a case related to the Dingles', Quinshaunta Golden, niece of U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, a Chicago Democrat, was sentenced to eight years in prison last summer after she pleaded guilty to participating in a kickback scheme on the grants when she was chief of staff at the Public Health Department.
In other public corruption cases, Lewis' office has snagged former state Rep. Connie Howard, a Chicago Democrat who was sentenced last week to three months in federal prison, and Jeri Wright, the daughter of President Barack Obama's one-time pastor, who was sentenced to two years in prison last summer.
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Contact Political Writer John O'Connor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor .