Suffering from ongoing health problems and awaiting trial on federal fraud charges, Lawrence Wyllie, former superintendent of Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210, has apparently taken a turn for the worse, a new court filing indicates.
Wyllie was indicted in September 2017, accused of misusing millions in bond proceeds and spending school funds on personal projects, including a dog training school he had built, authorities allege.
In regular status reports to the court, attorneys for the 85-year-old Naperville resident and prosecutors have pointed out Wyllie has, since August 2018, experienced health issues described as “serious and ongoing.”
The most recent update, filed Wednesday, says that due to his health issues Wyllie “cannot meaningfully participate in his own defense at this time.”
A status hearing in the case scheduled for Friday was scratched and a new hearing set for April 13, according to a filing Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Elaine Bucklo. She instructed attorneys in the case to file an updated status report by April 6.
The joint status reports have not gone into detail regarding Wyllie’s health problems, and documents including doctors’ reports were previously filed with the court under seal.
The attorneys, in the report filed Wednesday, said they are “not yet in a position to determine how this case will ultimately proceed,” and asked the judge to reschedule. At that point, according to the lawyers, they “hope to be better positioned” to lay out the next steps in the case.
They did not respond to messages seeking more information regarding Wyllie’s health.
The federal indictment followed a yearlong investigation by the Daily Southtown that exposed questionable financial practices at Lincoln-Way, private uses of public resources and deals benefiting insiders, including Superdog, a dog-training center.
In 1989, Wyllie became Lincoln-Way superintendent and oversaw the district’s expansion from a single school in New Lenox to four campuses before retiring in 2013.
Lincoln-Way primarily serves students from New Lenox, Frankfort, Mokena, Manhattan and Tinley Park.
As Will County’s population grew during the 1990s, Wyllie pushed hard for a $225 million referendum in 2006 to build two new schools.
The district went on to issue $52 million in bonds in 2006, $123 million in 2007 and $29 million in 2009.
The district began eating up its cash reserves, and as Lincoln-Way’s finances atrophied, Wyllie fraudulently used bond funds to conceal the district’s true financial condition, prosecutors said at the time he was indicted.
The district’s problems did not become apparent to the public until 2015, when Lincoln-Way landed on the state’s financial watch list and the school board voted to close Lincoln-Way North High School in Frankfort to cut expenses. The district remained on the watch list until March 2019.
Between March 2010 and October 2012, Wyllie repeatedly reclassified millions of dollars and transferred bond funds from the U.S. Bank account where the district maintained them to Old Second Bank, which the district used to pay operating expenses, according to the indictment.
By doing that, Wyllie “concealed the scheme and the true financial health” of the district by fraudulently “appearing to lower the district’s net operating expenditures in its audited financial statements,” prosecutors said.
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The understatement of operating expenditures and misuse of bond funds during that time was at least $7 million, prosecutors said.
While he awaits possible trial on the charges, Wyllie continues to collect a taxpayer funded pension that, in 2020, amounted to a bit more than $351,250.