4.1 • 7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
We’ll be back next week with all-new episodes but in the meantime we’re bringing back a very timely episode. In 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people in one day… including one of our very own Scamfluencers. Rita Crundwell had horse girl dreams, and she used her job as comptroller of a small Illinois town to pull off a colossal fraud. She poured millions into showing quarter horses and lived extravagantly… until one nosy co-worker unraveled the entire scheme. Rita bankrupted an entire town in what became the biggest case of municipal embezzlement in U.S. history.
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0:00.0 | Wonderie Plus subscribers can listen to scam fluencers early and ad-free right now. |
0:04.6 | Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondry app or Apple Podcasts. |
0:08.0 | Hey, everyone. We'll be back next week with all new episodes. |
0:11.4 | But in the meantime, we're returning to one of our scammers who actually has a huge update. |
0:16.6 | Yeah, Rita Crundwell was an unassuming comptroller of her small hometown of Dixon, Illinois, |
0:22.3 | until she decided to crime, big time, to pursue her horse girl dreams. |
0:27.9 | Rita stole more than $53 million to buy fancy horses, trailers, and outfits for horse shows. |
0:35.0 | But she also built a mansion with a pool, a house in Florida, and crystal |
0:39.4 | studded sponge bob jewelry. It was the largest municipal theft in U.S. history. She was sentenced |
0:46.4 | to nearly 20 years in federal prison, but in 2021, after serving just eight years, she was released to a |
0:53.6 | halfway house to serve the rest of her time. |
0:56.1 | But in December 2024, then President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people in one day, including Rita. |
1:06.5 | Biden said that, quote, these commutation recipients who are placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance. |
1:18.4 | You know, I feel kind of ambivalent about this. This is not the worst thing Biden did at any point in his political career. |
1:26.0 | But I imagine people in her hometown weren't very happy about it. |
1:29.5 | Yeah, this did not go over well with the people of Dixon. |
1:32.7 | Dixon's city manager, Danny Langloss, Jr., said the decision to commute Rita's sentence was, quote, |
1:38.3 | a complete travesty of justice and a slap in the face for our entire community. |
1:43.5 | No word on whether Rita has plans to reenter the horse world, but wherever she is, she's |
1:48.9 | living scot-free. |
1:50.3 | This story came up during our Thanksgiving special, and it reminded us just how insane |
1:54.7 | the story was. |
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