Remember all that hoopla going on over a pretrial hearing that Barb Wingo and Terrie Eichorn had held for them in late July? And all the media outlets ran with it, making it like it was some kind of big stinking deal...but it really wasn't, it was just a pretrial hearing?
That got our curiosity up. Because it wasn't a slow news day; it just appeared to be much ado about nothing...which is exactly what it was, it was like lamestream media and TV were trying to make up for the fact that they hadn't been the ones to break the story about the grand jury in Saline County being conducted by the Illinois Attorney General's office, so they were going to report on every little step in court.
And so, when our curiosity was up, we looked into the matter, thinking maybe there was something that had happened that the other media didn't want to report, but were going to slyly mention they knew something about. Turns out, that wasn't the case at all...but when we researched files on PACER, we found the material that came up that produced this article for your mid-day Read the Lead: Anna Bixby hoopla turns up federal records
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Barb Wingo, mugshot from Saline County Detention Center Monday, March 30.
SALINE CO.—For all the July 31 hoopla surrounding the court appearance made by the two women charged with serious felonies in connection with the Anna Bixby Women’s Center, the public probably thought there was something huge happening in the case.
But there wasn’t. It was just a pretrial conference previously scheduled for Barbara Wingo, 77, and her daughter, Terrie Eichorn, 50, both of them accused of Forgery, Wire Fraud, Monetary Concealment, Loan Fraud, Defrauding a Financial Institution, Trustee Misusing Funds, Continuing Financial Criminal Enterprises, and more.
Not that that’s not enough.
But the situation in Saline County criminal court for the two, indicted by an Attorney General’s grand jury held in that county, is very typical for these kinds of serious felonies and misdemeanors, and since the late March indictments and arrests, has been dragging through the court system and likely will be until the two tire of putting out money and agree to some kind of equitable first-time offender plea…which may or may not entail some prison time.
What the hoopla on Friday, July 31, did do, however, is cause Disclosure to begin digging into what was going on with the two at the Anna Bixby Women’s Center (ABC) in the months leading up to the charges, those ensuing months being when Disclosure was among the first to indicate that there was something big brewing for the domestic violence/abused women’s center.
As it turns out, Wingo knew all of it was being investigated and was likely just sitting around fretting, waiting to be indicted.
But while she was sitting and fretting, she was griping mightily to the feds…who hadn’t even gotten involved in the matter (and still aren’t; the case remains at the state level for now).
In January of this year, Wingo filed a motion in federal court, Benton, for an order pursuant to “customer challenge provision of the right to financial privacy act of....
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