As her renown in the elite world of quarter horse breeding grew, Rita Crundwell kept her unglamorous day job as the $80,000-a-year comptroller of Dixon, Ill., a working-class city of nearly 16,000, most famous as the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan. Year after year, she delivered the bad budget numbers to councilmen and department heads–numbers that meant streets couldn’t be repaved, ambulance equipment couldn’t be purchased, and replacement radios for cops and firefighters would have to wait. Eventually the city workforce was cut. When asked in 2011 about the city’s worsening cash crunch, Crundwell blamed lagging payments from the state, which collects and remits Dixon’s share of tax revenues. It was a display of chutzpah worthy of Bernie Madoff. In fact, the money had arrived, and she had spent it–on herself. Between 1991 and April 2012 she embezzled $53.7 million from Dixon, using the loot to acquire 400 quarter horses (the quintessential American racehorse), a ranch in Dixon and horse trailers and trucks. She traveled to equestrian competitions in a $2 million motor home and remodeled her Illinois home with an in-ground pool and a chandelier made of old revolvers and spurs, in addition to buying another home in Englewood, Fla., minks, jewels, a 1967 Corvette convertible and a bar of gold bullion valued at $1.5 million. More in Forbes here.
