Homewood Woman Trysted with Accused Fraudster in Her State Office: Feds

Leon Dingle and Quinshaunta Golden

A Homewood woman’s alleged tryst in her state health department office prompted a $10,000 bonus to a social service agency employee who walked in on the encounter.

The accusation is part of a six-year federal investigation into a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme involving state grants awarded to Leon Dingle, a South Side businessman who claimed to be using the money to help people with AIDS and cancer.

Quinshaunta Golden, 45, of Homewood, and the 76-year-old Dingle were in her Illinois Department of Public Health office in Chicago when a Dingle staffer working on faith-based initiatives walked on in the disrobed Golden and Dingle, federal prosecutors allege, according to a Chicago Tribune report.

Golden is the niece of Congressman Danny Davis and was chief of staff in the health department from 2003 to 2008 and overseer of state grants.

The two collected themselves, according to federal prosecutors, praised the employee, whom the government hasn’t identified, and offered a $10,000 bonus. Prosecutors say bank records show the money was paid.

Indicted in August 2013 on bribery, theft and fraud charges, Golden pleaded guilty in April to bribery and obstruction of justice charges and admitted she received more than $400,000 in kickbacks in a scheme through which she gave Dingle more than $11 million in state grants.

» Read: Quinshaunta Golden’s indictment

The director of the IDPH at the time and Golden’s boss, Dr. Erik Whitaker, is a close friend of President Obama and is said to have cooperated fully with the federal investigation. Obama, at the time a state senator, had suggested Gov. Rod Blagojevich appoint Whitaker to the state health department. He brought Golden to the department. Whitaker held the job from 2003 to 2007, when he left to join the University of Chicago Medical Center where Michelle Obama worked as vice president of community and external relations.

In 2008, Golden left the IDPH and took a job at the University of Chicago Medical Center to work for Whitaker, according to Chicago Magazine.

That same year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office began investigating the grant fraud involving Golden, Dingle and his company. Golden urged a witness to lie to federal investigators to cover up her crimes, according to her indictment.

The Chicago Sun-Times had published several investigative reports on the grant fraud unfolding under Golden on Whitaker’s watch. The Sun-Times described her actions in its 2013 report on her indictment:

Part of Golden’s alleged scheme involved getting kickbacks from a security company that employed Roxanne B. Jackson, who worked under both Whitaker and Golden as human resources director for the health department in 2003 and 2004. Jackson then left that job and became “director of legal services” for V.I.P. Security & Detective Services, which got about $2 million in health department money starting in 2006 to do criminal-background checks on nursing home residents under a new state law.

The indictment identifies the company only as “Security Firm A,” but details within it make clear that the company is V.I.P. Security. The document also cites an unnamed “Individual A” who was “an associate of defendant Golden” and “an associate and paid consultant” to the security firm.

V.I.P. was paid $300 per background check, but “Golden required Individual A to pay Defendant Golden kickback payments of approximately $35 to $40 for each” check. All told, Golden got about $109,500 through that arrangement.

Dingle’s alleged criminal activity and betrayal of the African-American community that relied on him for money to fund breast cancer and prostate cancer initiatives and AIDS education are on a much grander scale.

Federal prosecutors say Dingle used the money on yacht clubs, expensive cars and luxuriant vacations. Dingle’s lawyer, Ed Genson, told the Chicago Tribune the allegation Dingle and Golden engaged in a sexual encounter in her office is “categorically denied.”

His trial is expected to begin in October.