Cook County State's Attorney's Office:
Press Releases

Richard A. Devine
Cook County State's Attorney
500 Richard J. Daley Center
Chicago, IL 60602
(312) 603-3423

Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine today charged a Cook County employee with embezzling more than $180,000 from the county-run employment and training program she was supposed to oversee.

Shirley Glover, 50, of 3749 W. 168th Pl., Country Club Hills, was the fiscal manager of the President's Office of Employment and Training (POET) program when she used her position to systematically pilfer $181,102 in government funds between February 2001 and January 2005. She has been charged with multiple felonies including theft, forgery, mail fraud, bribery, official misconduct, money laundering, and misapplication of funds.

To execute her fraudulent scheme, Glover would take checks issued to her by the Cook County Comptroller for the payment of federal job training grant funds. Glover would then deposit those checks into a previously maintained POET checking account that State, Cook County, and POET officials thought was closed. The account was previously maintained by POET to disburse petty cash-type funds dedicated to a now-defunct federal job training grant program. Because this account was thought to be closed, it was not subject to audit by the state or Cook County.

Glover then withdrew money from that account in the form of cash or cashiers' checks. Initially, she used it to fund activities including Christmas parties, gift certificates for POET employees, an outing to Six Flags Great America theme park, donations to the United Negro College Fund, and t-shirts to be worn by county employees at the Bud Billiken Parade. None of these expenditures was legal under state or federal statutes.

In May 2002, the defendant began making cash withdrawals on the account. Her withdrawal amounts gradually increased from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. A final cash withdrawal of $7,500 was made on Jan. 25, 2005. In addition to using some of these funds as spending money, Glover would also on occasion deposit large sums of withdrawn cash directly into her personal checking account.

After the defendant became confident that she could secure these funds undetected, she began to make split deposits with simultaneous cash withdrawals from the POET account. The first such deposit occurred Sept. 12, 2003, when Glover obtained a Cook County check for $16,096, deposited $14,096 into the POET account, and simultaneously withdrew $2,000 in cash. Glover received an additional $23,000 over the next two years via six more split deposit transactions.

"Such brazen misuse of taxpayer money is unconscionable," Devine said. "A person who was entrusted to manage funds earmarked for important public services has abused that trust."

Investigators from the Governmental and Financial Crimes Unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office conducted the probe. The most serious offense facing the defendant is a Class X felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison. She began working as a Cook County employee in May 1998.

- Back -