Fake Senate Candidate, Attorney Gets Probation For ID Theft

WAUKEGAN, IL — A man who used a stolen identity to pay months’ worth of bills at a Deerfield Residence Inn and pretended to be a lawyer and a U.S. Senate candidate — all while a wanted fugitive out of Wisconsin — has avoided being sentenced to prison in Illinois.

John R. Ryan Jr., 32, pleaded guilty to identity theft Wednesday in Lake County Court. He was sentenced to 30 months probation and ordered to pay $8,500 in restitution, according to a spokesperson for the Lake County State’s Attorney.

Ryan had been in custody since his arrest Feb. 20 following a month-long investigation that led police from Deerfield to identity theft victims in Kentucky and Texas, before eventually nabbing Ryan in a hotel room near O’Hare International Airport. (Rosemont Police still have a pending investigation against him, according to a Rosemont detective.)

The investigation discovered Ryan had been acting as an attorney in Cook County, Deerfield Police said. But there is no indication Ryan — who previously listed a home address in Chicago as well as Fort Atkinson and Madison, Wisconsin — has ever been licensed to practice law in Illinois or Wisconsin, according to both states' attorney registration and disciplinary commission records.

Investigators eventually tracked him to a Rosemont hotel, where staff said Ryan had told them he was running for a seat in the United States Senate, according to Deerfield police. In addition to claiming to be a lawyer and a senate candidate, police said Ryan told hotel employees in Deerfield that he was the CEO of several companies.

He convinced Residence Inn staffers to allow him to use employer authorization forms to set up hotel payments using stolen credit card numbers.

Ryan has multiple previous felony convictions, according to Wisconsin court records.

In 2013, he was sentenced to nine months in prison for strangling his girlfriend.

While allowed out of jail to attend school, Ryan did not voluntarily return. He spent eight months as a fugitive, conducting a series of business transactions on the lam. He created 16 different corporations with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions before being caught in a law enforcement sting operation, WKOW reported in 2014.

In 2015, Ryan pleaded guilty to felony escaping arrest, court records show.

When released, Ryan will be turned over to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, a spokesperson for the Lake County Sheriff said. His extradition status hearing has been set for Friday.

Photos | John R. Ryan Jr. Booking Photographs | Courtesy Lake County Sheriff's Department, Wisconsin Department of Correction