A Look Inside Dem Hopeful’s Scheme to Defraud Taxpayers

Billionaire J.B. Pritzker, the Democrat’s nominee for governor in Illinois stands accused of participating in a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers according to a bombshell report.

Kaitlyn Schallhorn, at Fox News, reports:
 

Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard found Pritzker was able to receive more than $331,000 in property tax breaks on a mansion he owns in Chicago as “part of a scheme for obtaining money by means of false representations.”

The county, Blanchard said, “ultimately fell victim to a scheme to defraud.”

The inspector general’s report included an email from a project manager who said M.K. Muenster Pritzker, his wife, requested workers remove all toilets from the house in order for it to be considered an “uninhabitable structure” in 2015. Then, after the house was to be reassessed, a toilet was to be put back in on the first floor, according to the email’s instructions.

Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt hotel chain, said the report was “leaked for political purposes in this last month of a campaign.” He said his family “sought a reassessment like other people do” and blamed the “flaws in the property tax system” in Cook County, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Pritzker has also received criticism for not being forthcoming about the details of his tax plan, not that he’d comply with it anyway.