It's Good to Be Queen

Nancy Miller (0:08)

Welcome back to Dead Sleep True Crime for Bedtime. It's Nancy Miller here, recovering from a cold. So this episode will be extra raspy.

And for the sake of your ears and my throat, let's just get started with the episode. And for a change of pace, let's unwind with a thought exercise. Think of the most shameless, most ruthless, most notorious financial fraudsters of the 21st century. What names immediately come to mind? Hmm, maybe it's Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Samuel Bankman Freed. But there's another name I'd like us to add to the top of our fraudsters list. A name not enough people know about, but you'll hear a lot about tonight. And that name is Rita Crundwell. In 2012, 59-year-old Rita Crundwell was accused of embezzling more than $53 million from a small town in Illinois called Dixon. The largest municipal theft in American history. And nobody, not a single person, noticed. For years. This was a case that not only rocked a small town, it shocked the FBI in its breadth and scope. A truly mind-boggling tale of boundless greed, bitter betrayal, and astounding audacity.

It's a story about how one person can destroy an entire town. And it's also a story about how one person, armed with the truth, can get justice in the end. I first heard about this story from a really entertaining podcast and TV series called Scam Goddess with Laci Mosley, along with a densely detailed documentary produced by an accounting expert named Kelly Richmond Pope. I'll share those links along with a few other key documents, including a fascinating analysis of this specific fraud by the Center for Ethical Organizational Cultures at Auburn University. As always, this is the Dead Sleep version of events, factual but impressionistic. And in our version of events, this story begins. In Heaven.

Or as close to Heaven on Earth as any town could be, for a little boy named Ronald Reagan. Back in the early 20th century, just after the First World War, little Ronnie Reagan ran around the tiny town of Dixon, population 8,000. And back then, as a boy, Dixon made such an impression on Reagan, that when he later played an American soldier in a World War II drama called The Hasty Heart, he asked the script be changed so his character came from Dixon instead of Boston as part of his backstory. And sometime in 1983, when Ronald Reagan played the role of a lifetime as President of the United States, he returned to Dixon and gave a rousing speech about the core values of that town and how those values were a reflection of our great nation.

And in Dixon, Reagan learned that only when people have a personal stake in their own destiny, benefiting from their own risks, do societies prosper, grow, and remain free. And that day, he told the people to read the Constitution. The first three words he said are, we the people, not we the government. And only by working together, neighbor to neighbor, were we going to build a brighter future, not just for Dixon, but for America.

His speech was met with rapturous applause. There was something inspiring about Sagan's notion of self-determination, where destiny was in your hands and no one else's. And somewhere out there in the crowd, no doubt, was the beaming and bespectacled face of a bright young woman named Rita Crundwell. Born Rita Humphrey, she spent her whole life in Dixon. She and her family lived on a modest farm, just outside of town. She went to school in Dixon, graduating from the local high school in 1970 And while in high school, she did a work study, basically an internship, at City Hall. With the promise that once she graduated, she would secure a job there. Which she did. Like many girls at that time, Rita didn't attend a four-year college. Instead, she learned the practical skills of secretarial work and bookkeeping. She was just a supporting player. A role she was used to ever since high school. Rita was popular, but not the most popular. During Homecoming, she was a member of the Homecoming Court. A bit player, a duchess, but she was never the queen. Who knows? Maybe it was Reagan's speech that day in 1983 that inspired Rita to become more than what she was. That she would one day be queen of something. Where and when? Well, that was a secret only Rita knew.

And maybe it was just an unfortunate coincidence that in 1983, the very same year Ronald Reagan came to town, the mayor of Dixon would make a decision. A fateful miscalculation that would change the course of Dixon's future.

In 1983, Mayor Dixon, whose great-great-grandfather founded the town of Dixon in 1830, well, he made a big announcement. 30-year-old Rita Cranwell would be Dixon's new city comptroller and treasurer. It was an impressive position indeed. One that was quite unique in city government. In most local governments, the city comptroller and the treasurer were distinct roles, intentionally kept separate. The comptroller was like the town's chief financial officer, who planned the city's fiscal budgets, decided which money went where. Then there was the treasurer, who was the gatekeeper of the town's funds, a custodian of their money. And keeping those two jobs separate ensured appropriate ethical oversight. But in Dixon, well, after a couple of people retired, the mayor decided to merge that role into one. And at the time it made sense. Wasn't it more efficient to have one full-time person who knew everything about their town finances and controlled the ebb and flow of cash? It was certainly cheaper. One salary instead of two. It also did away with red tape. We the people, not we the government. Towns like Dixon didn't have fast budgets for staffing. In fact, many of the city council members, even the mayor, this was a part-time job. Each one of them had their own real job. A high school teacher, a business owner. And for their contribution to city government, they were paid a pittance. It was more like volunteer work. So it made sense to invest most of that money into the staff position that oversaw the budget. And with 16,000 residents, Dixon's needs weren't complicated. It was mostly infrastructure, road repair, public works, emergency services, and let's not forget, the annual Petunia Festival.