More than six years after being indicted on charges of misusing district funds, the former superintendent of Lincoln-Way High School District 210 is no closer to having his case heard in federal court.
Ongoing health issues are again pushing back a new hearing on the case against Lawrence Wyllie, which dates to September 2017 and has the federal government alleging Wyllie misspent millions in bond proceeds and spent district funds on personal projects, including a dog training school.
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While he awaits possible trial, the 85-year-old Wyllie, who lives in Naperville, continues to collect a taxpayer funded pension that, in 2020, was more than $351,000, according to state records.
That figure doesn’t account for annual cost-of-living increases.
The case was scheduled in court for an update next week, but a filing by prosecutors and Wyllie’s attorneys asked that it be rescheduled to January.
The U.S. attorney’s office Thursday declined to comment in response to questions about the case, including details about Wyllie’s health problems and whether possible plea negotiations are in the works.
A message left Thursday for Wyllie’s attorneys was not immediately returned.
In regular status reports filed by both sides, they have pointed out Wyllie, since August 2018, has experienced health issues described as “serious and ongoing.”
In a January report, prosecutors and defense lawyers said, for the first time, that Wyllie’s health status had taken a turn for the worse, and that he was not able to “meaningfully participate in his own defense.”
The most recent filing said Wyllie’s medical condition has not changed.
Attorneys said, as they have in past status reports, they hoped to have a better sense of where the case is headed by the January status date.
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 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.
Wyllie became Lincoln-Way superintendent in 1989 and oversaw the district’s expansion from a two schools 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 when he was indicted in 2017.
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.
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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.
The understatement of operating expenditures and misuse of bond funds during that time was at least $7 million, prosecutors said.