Iroquois County Former Health Administrator Facing Maximum of 275 Years in Prison

Iroquois Co. (ECWd) –

According to Charging Documents Dee Schippert is facing a maximum of 275 Years in prison for alleged crimes that include Forgery of timesheets, whistleblower retaliation, theft of property, and Official Misconduct.  A copy of all the counts can be viewed below or downloaded at this link.

After the arrest and public exposure of the alleged crimes by Schippert, many locals are asking some serious questions regarding what appears to be a two-tier justice system.  Back in 2013 we exposed massive fraud that was taking place in what was then the bi-county health department between Ford and Iroquois County.  Read many of those articles at this link.

During the prior investigations back in 2012-2013, we met with the Iroquois County State’s Attorney in the law library in Champaign.  During our presentation of information to him, he recognized the name of a person listed on a particular grant and said, “That’s grant fraud”, as he knew the person listed was not working on that particular grant as claimed on the document. With millions of dollars of misconduct and outright insider dealings that included the grant administrator’s husband receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of a 4.3 million dollar grant, employees rigging bids for solar panel purchases from the spouse of an employee, double billed pension costs for years, pornography on the former administrator’s computer, setting up a Ford Iroquois County Health Department in Indiana with intention of converting that office to their personal property, selling personal property (side business), from the front window of the maid FIPHD office and much more.   Not one person was charged with a crime nor did the County Sheriff or the ISP investigate the matter.  It appeared it mattered who you were as these members had direct family ties to the Sheriff, a sitting judge, and other politically connected officeholders.

Ironically, Schippert was there during those operations but had zero involvement in those alleged crimes.  After the bi-county health department was closed down, Iroquois County established its own county health department and Schippert was appointed as administrator.  According to today’s publication of the Ford County Chronicle, Shippert’s comments after being appointed appear to have been nothing but window dressing.

“After accepting the public health administrator’s job, Schippert said her focus as administrator would be “to make sure that we are good stewards of public resources.”

“Fiscal responsibility is going to be one of my main tasks,” Schippert said.

After 100’s of hours of work exposing the past alleged crimes and not seeing a single person held accountable even when a State’s Attorney confirmed to us a case of Grant Fraud, we can only wonder why now are we seeing potential accountability while all the prior events were ignored and they were far worse than the allegations of Shippert in our opinion.

Considering these alleged crimes took place during the performance of her official public employment, she will lose her pension if found guilty.  We note that it is the Illinois Attorney General who brought the charges in this case, not the State’s Attorney.

We will update with a new article as this matter moves through the courts.

***As a reminder, all persons are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law***