A six-term state lawmaker from downstate Urbana was temporarily removed from legislative committee assignments and barred from meetings of the House Democratic caucus Wednesday after a federal grand jury indicted her this week on charges including wire fraud and obstruction.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s office, meanwhile, said it would review state grants listed in a 12-page indictment that alleges Rep. Carol Ammons had “devised a scheme to defraud” the state starting around 2017, which included directing state and federal funds to organizations that used public dollars to pay her daughter.
The indictment, handed up Tuesday from a federal grand jury in central Illinois, also alleges Ammons falsified state campaign finance records to disguise payments to herself and her daughter and that she overpaid individuals out of campaign funds, “then required the individuals to provide cash kickbacks to her.”
Ammons then lied to an FBI agent about the matter and conspired with her husband, Champaign County Clerk and Recorder Aaron Ammons, to conceal the alleged misuse of campaign and public funds, according to the indictment. Aaron Ammons was charged in the same indictment with conspiracy to obstruct justice and a separate count of obstruction.
Neither Carol Ammons, who was first elected to the Illinois House in 2014 and is running unopposed for a seventh term in November, nor Aaron Ammons could be reached Wednesday for comment.
House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, in a statement announcing sanctions that will continue for the duration of Ammons’ case, called the allegations against her “extremely serious,” while also noting her right to due process. Welch said he directed his staff to review the state budget “to determine whether any funds need to be paused or reconsidered.”
The indictment shows the state “identified and took steps to stop an impermissible conflict of interest with a state grant,” Pritzker spokesperson Matt Hill said, but in light of the “extremely concerning” allegations against Ammons, the governor’s office “will review all the other grants listed in the indictment to ensure we are taking all steps possible to protect taxpayer dollars.”
Republicans are calling for Ammons’ resignation, with House GOP leader Tony McCombie of Savanna asking Welch to join her in urging the lawmaker to step down. The charges against Ammons came four days after Democratic Rep. Harry Benton of Plainfield resigned in the wake of an inspector general investigation.
Tuesday’s indictment accuses Ammons of directing government funds to three specific community organizations that then paid her or her daughter.
For the state’s 2020 budget year, Ammons directed a grant to an organization called Hood Vote Neighborhood Transformation, according to the indictment.
More Top Picks Best Off Road Lights
Hood Vote paid Ammons’ daughter more than $3,300 in salary from the state grant, the indictment alleges.
After the state told Ammons it was a conflict for her daughter to be paid with the state funds, Ammons helped another organization, Bridgewater Sullivan Community Life Center, secure grants for the next year “and assisted Bridgewater in drafting her daughter’s employment contract with Bridgewater,” the indictment alleges.
While not named in the indictment, the Ammonses’ daughter Titianna Ammons was indicted last month on separate charges alleging the former Democratic Champaign County Board member defrauded the federal government and the state by collecting pandemic-era unemployment benefits for which she was ineligible.
The June 2 grand jury indictment alleges that both Hood Vote and Bridgewater paid Titianna Ammons while she was receiving the unemployment benefits for about a year beginning in October 2020. Titianna Ammons, who has pleaded not guilty, also was receiving payment as a county board member and from her mother’s campaign fund during that time, according to her indictment.
Carol Ammons paid her daughter about $600 per month from her Friends of Carol Ammons campaign fund, payments totaling more than $15,500, according to Tuesday’s indictment. Under Illinois election law, candidates can only pay themselves or their family members with campaign funds as “compensation for services actually rendered.” Ammons’ payments to her daughter were “not in proportion with services actually rendered,” the indictment alleges.
From January 2019 to November 2020, Ammons’ state campaign finance disclosures failed to show more than “$25,000 in payments to individuals, a portion of which were paid back” to the state legislator in cash, the indictment alleges. And from March 2021 to August 2022, campaign disclosures falsely said $15,000 in payments went to a consulting firm, when in reality they went to an individual who paid some of it back to Ammons, according to the indictment.
In all, Ammons and her daughter “received financial benefits in excess of $100,000,” the indictment alleges.
After helping secure the state grant for Bridgewater, Ammons required an unnamed individual to pay cash kickbacks “to avoid detection of the payments to herself,” the indictment alleges.
The court document details three deposits, ranging from $500 to $700, from Bridgewater into a credit union account from June to December 2022 that were then partially withdrawn, allegedly to make cash payments to Ammons.
Within about a day of each deposit, Ammons allegedly texted a person about a “gift,” messages that were, in reality, about illegal cash payments stemming from the Bridgewater grant, according to the indictment.
“What’s up? Gift,” read one of the messages Ammons allegedly sent, according to the indictment. Another coordinated a time to “grab the gift,” and a third asked, “Hey you dropping my gift off today?”
Ammons’ daughter, meanwhile, made more than $60,000 as program director at Bridgewater from the state grant from August 2021 to May 2023, though Ammons “knew full well it was a conflict of interest,” according to the indictment.
Additionally, Ammons helped the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, where she’d previously worked, to get more than $1 million in state grants from 2021 to 2022, the indictment alleges. Much of that money came from the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the COVID-19 relief package approved in 2021 under President Joe Biden’s administration.
The Tribune highlighted $700,000 in federal relief money the state awarded to the Independent Media Center in a 2021 story detailing how Democrats in Springfield were doling out the funds. At the time, Ammons told the Tribune she was “advocating for the grassroots organizations that are trying to do community service work.”
Ammons’ daughter, while working full time at Bridgewater and as an intermittent public service representative with the Illinois secretary of state’s office, received nearly $10,000 from June to October 2022 for working as a digital marketing coordinator for the Independent Media Center, according to the indictment. Titianna Ammons resigned from the position with the secretary of state’s office, which she’d held since August 2022, on Jan. 16 of this year, according to the office.
Messages left Wednesday with the Independent Media Center weren’t immediately returned. A phone number and an email address for Bridgewater appeared not to be in service. A person listed online as the executive director of Hood Vote Neighborhood Transformation did not respond to requests for comment.
Titianna Ammons’ attorney, Melinda Longford Power, said in a brief phone call that she couldn’t knowledgeably comment on the allegations in Tuesday’s indictment, but she added that members of the Ammons family have dedicated their lives to public service and helping others, calling them “civic-minded.”
More Top Picks Best Low Blue Light Monitors For Eye Strain
In addition to eight counts of wire fraud, the indictment charges Carol Ammons with making a false statement to a federal agent, stemming from an allegation that she told the FBI she had no knowledge of a conflict of interest with Hood Vote paying her daughter from state funds.
The indictment also charges both Carol Ammons and Aaron Ammons, who was first elected Champaign County clerk in 2018 and is facing Republican Alan Anderson of Urbana in the November general election, with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Part of that conspiracy was a similar statement that she made to an FBI agent in 2024 while her husband was present, according to the indictment.
Aaron Ammons months later also told “a potential witness that there is ‘nothing illegal’ about friends giving friends money regarding illegal cash kickbacks paid to Carol Ammons” from her campaign account, according to the indictment.
“Aaron Ammons communicated with the potential witness on a paper note that Aaron Ammons destroyed after showing it to the potential witness,” the indictment alleges. The “potential witness” is not named.
Aaron Ammons also allegedly told “a potential witness that they should communicate in code words about the ongoing federal investigation.”
He later “directed a potential witness to ‘muddy the waters’” with the FBI about the alleged illegal cash payments to his wife, according to the indictment, resulting in a separate obstruction of justice charge.
Carol Ammons and Aaron Ammons are scheduled for initial appearances July 16 at the federal courthouse in Urbana.
baiduhai’s Dan Petrella contributed.