Elmhurst Political Forgery Suspect Pleads Guilty: County

ELMHURST, IL – A longtime Republican Party official accused of forging pages of signatures for a former Elmhurst mayoral candidate's petition has pleaded guilty, according to public records.

Longtime Addison resident Lawrence Moretti was charged with 14 felony forgery accounts in connection with 2025 mayoral candidate Mark Mulliner's petition.

Last April, Mayor Scott Levin defeated Mulliner, a former longtime Elmhurst alderman, for a second term in a landslide.

Paul Darrah, a spokesman for the DuPage County state's attorney's office, confirmed Friday that Moretti pleaded guilty in December and was placed into a diversion program.

Under the program, the office will vacate the guilty plea and dismiss the charges next December if Moretti follows the program's rules and stays out of trouble.

A DuPage County Republican Party spokesman said he believed that Moretti was no longer an Addison Township party committeeman and not involved in any campaigns.

In late 2024, Moretti turned in four pages of signatures for the petition to get Mulliner on the ballot.

Moretti's pages looked much different from the other 68. All the signatures on the four pages were illegible, while that was only the case with a few on the other pages.

The signatures on Moretti's pages were typically angled scribbles.

Moretti's pages were notarized by his wife, Pamela Moretti, the former clerk of Addison Township. In April, she lost her re-election bid, as Democrats swept township offices county-wide.

In December 2024, Patch interviewed residents at addresses where Moretti purportedly collected signatures. They all denied that anyone in their homes signed the petition. Some of the houses were near Mayor Levin's.

Questions about the signatures emerged shortly after Mulliner turned in his petition in November.

Since then, Mulliner has not returned messages for comment. Patch has been unable to reach Moretti.

During the state's attorney's investigation, Mulliner said he almost did not submit the signatures that Moretti turned in because of suspicions that something was wrong, according to a report that Patch obtained through a public records request.

Moretti has made the news before.

In 2010, Moretti caused a stir near an election polling place in Addison when he wore a hat reading "ICE," the acronym for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, according to the Daily Herald.

Democrats accused Moretti of trying to intimidate voters in a heavily Hispanic area, the newspaper said. He was a credentialed Republican Party poll watcher.