The daughter of President Barack Obama's former pastor was convicted of laundering thousands of dollars from a state grant for a Chicago-area job-training program, federal prosecutors said.
A federal jury took less
than two hours to find Jeri Wright, 48, the daughter of Jeremiah
Wright, guilty on all counts for her part in a fraud scheme led by a
former suburban police chief and the chief's husband, according to the
U.S. Attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois in
Springfield.
The $1.25 million state
grant was for a not-for-profit work and education program called We Are
Our Brother's Keeper, owned by Regina Evans, former police chief of
Country Club Hills, and her husband, Ronald Evans Jr.
Wright, a close friend
of the couple, took as much as $11,000 from checks worth more than
$30,000 that were supposed to be for work related to the grant,
prosecutors said. About $20,000 was deposited back into accounts
controlled by Regina and Ronald Evans.
The couple has pleaded guilty to the fraud scheme.
The grant agreement was
supposed to provide bricklaying and electrical pre-apprenticeship
training and GED preparation at the Regal Theater, another entity owned
by the couple. Little, if any, of the training provided in the grant
agreement was ever completed, according to prosecutors.
Jeremiah Wright was the
Chicago pastor whose inflammatory church sermons, which often condemned
U.S. attitudes on race, poverty and other issues, became a focus during
the 2008 presidential campaign.
Jeri Wright also was
convicted of making false statements to law enforcement officers and
giving false testimony to a grand jury. The maximum penalty for money
laundering is up to 20 years in prison, and five years in prison on the
other counts. Sentencing is scheduled for July 7 2014.
