Feds Probe Nearly $420K in LW 210 Payments to Lettering Company

NEW LENOX, IL — Lincoln-Way High School District 210 payment records to a lettering company with an employee who did side jobs for embattled former superintendent Lawrence Wyllie were subpoenaed in December by federal prosecutors investigating the district, according to the Daily Southtown.

All records connected to Evans Custom Lettering going back to January 2005 were subpoenaed for a grand jury Dec. 21, the report stated. Payments, invoices, quotes and other communications between the District 210 and the company were requested, the report added.

The lettering company was paid almost $420,000 by the district for various work going as far back as 2005, the report stated. The jobs included lettering work and creating championship signs and plaques, the report added.

In 2013, now-retired Evans Custom Lettering employee Tom Evans admitted to a private investigator hired by the district that he made signs for Wyllie, but he did so on his own and without using district resources, the report stated. The investigator was hired to check out a Freedom of Information Act request involving a claim that staffers from district schools did private work for Wyllie on public time, the report added.

Since landing on the state's financial watch list in 2015, Lincoln-Way has been the target of multiple investigations centering around allegations of fiscal mismanagement and possible fiscal wrongdoing by the district. Currently, no criminal charges have been brought against Wyllie, who ran the district as superintendent from 1989 to 2013, or any other Lincoln-Way officials.

More via the Daily Southtown

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