Personal Life
- Husband's bank fraud and tax evasion convictions
On March 11, 2004, Schakowsky's husband, lobbyist Robert Creamer, the executive director of the Illinois Public Action Fund, was indicted in federal court on 16 counts of bank fraud involving three alleged check-kiting schemes in the mid-1990s, leading several banks to experience shortfalls of at least $2.3 million. In August 2005, Creamer pleaded guilty to one count of failure to collect withholding tax, and bank fraud for writing checks with insufficient funds. All of the money was repaid. Schakowsky was not accused of any wrongdoing. Schakowsky served on the organization's board during the time the crimes occurred, and Schakowsky signed the IRS filings along with her husband. U.S. District Judge James B. Moran noted no one suffered "out of pocket losses," and Creamer acted not out of greed but in an effort to keep his community action group going without cutting programs, though Creamer paid his own $100,000 salary with fraudulently obtained funds. On April 5, 2006, Creamer was sentenced to five months in prison and 11 months of house arrest. Creamer served his five-month incarceration at the Federal Correction Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana and was released on November 3, 2006.
Read more about this topic: Jan Schakowsky
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“... it is a rather curious thing to have to divide one’s life into personal and official compartments and temporarily put the personal side into its hidden compartment to be taken out again when one’s official duties are at an end.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)