Reception begins at 5:00 pm

This event has been cancelled.

Join WTTW and Kartemquin Films for a screening and discussion of the award-winning documentary All the Queen’s Horses.

Rita Crundwell stole more than $53 million of public funds across two decades in office as the City Comptroller and Treasurer for Dixon, Illinois, a town with a population of just 16,000. She used the funds to build one of the nation’s leading quarter horse breeding empires and threw lavish parties for community leaders at her home, all while the town endured cuts to public staff, emergency services budgets, and work on maintaining public infrastructure. In 2012 after a close colleague turned whistleblower finally uncovered her scheme and alerted the Mayor, the FBI arrested Crundwell as the largest municipal fraud perpetrator in American history.

How did Crundwell manage to steal an average of over $220,000 a month from a town with an annual budget of around $6 million? How could such embezzlement go undetected in annual audits by two independent accounting firms and in annual audit reviews by state regulators? How did local residents not become suspicious of Crundwell’s extravagant wealth and frivolous spending? This film attempts to answer these questions.

A discussion will follow the screening.

This is a free event; please RSVP.