Dee Ann Schippert, 57 of Watseka, is due back in court at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 18, before Kankakee County Judge William Dickenson. The former Iroquois County Public Health Department administrator is charged with 33 felonies, including theft of government property, forgery and official misconduct. Iroquois County Jail booking photo
KANKAKEE — Over a 20-month span during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dee Ann Schippert spent at least 759 hours at a Watseka gambling establishment — an average of almost 38 hours a month — while claiming to be performing her duties as administrator of the Iroquois County Public Health Department, prosecutors alleged in a recent court filing.
In a 10-page response to a motion filed in December by Schippert’s attorneys, Assistant Illinois Attorney General Haley Bookhout outlined the state’s evidence against the 57-year-old Schippert, of Watseka, who was charged last March with 33 felonies, including eight counts of theft of government property by deception, eight counts of forgery and 17 counts of official misconduct.
The evidence includes timestamped video recordings from Winnie’s Gaming Café, 1004 E. Walnut St., plus witness testimony from county employees who said they often would see her vehicle parked there on weekdays during regular business hours. Other evidence includes Schippert’s cell-phone and office call logs and her remote-access log-in information from her work laptop.
“The People are not offering evidence of the Defendant video gaming to inflame the prejudices of the jury, but instead to show what the Defendant was doing with her time while she claimed to be working,” Bookhout said in her written response to a Dec. 9 motion in limine filed by Springfield attorneys Mark Wykoff Sr. and Daniel Fultz, seeking a judge’s order to have such evidence and testimony barred from Schippert’s jury trial.
In their motion in limine, Wykoff and Fultz called the evidence of Schippert’s video-gambling “irrelevant,” but Bookhout, in her Jan. 24 response seeking the denial of the motion, argued otherwise.
“The People intend to present evidence from both witnesses as well as documentary records reviewed during the investigation to demonstrate that the Defendant was not only not working her required 40 hours per week (but) was also falsifying her overtime hours in order to receive overtime pay,” Bookhout wrote. “Evidence of her hours spent at Winnie’s, coupled with other evidence obtained, is both highly relevant and necessary to the People’s case in-chief.”
Schippert, who remains free from custody on pretrial conditions, appeared with Wykoff in court for a scheduling conference on Thursday, Jan. 30. Both Wykoff and Bookhout agreed to a continuance, and another hearing was set for 9:30 a.m. March 18 before Kankakee County Judge William Dickenson, who was reassigned the case after it was filed in Iroquois County Circuit Court last year due to the recusal of two Iroquois County judges.
The charges filed by Bookhout and fellow Assistant Attorney General Mara Somlo on March 20, 2024, allege that Schippert stole more than $100,000 from the health department between May 31, 2020, and July 15, 2022. The charges allege she submitted fraudulent timesheets claiming hours she did not work, including overtime and backpay she never earned; made “false representations” to the board of health to obtain its approval to receive pay for 179 hours of overtime; and fraudulently used grant funds from a grant for COVID-19 contact tracing to “pay for her overtime.” Additionally, Schippert allegedly committed “whistleblower retaliation” by firing an employee on June 15, 2022, after the staffer tipped off authorities to her conduct.
In their motion in limine filed in December, Schippert’s attorneys argued that the gambling evidence was irrelevant. They noted that, under her employment agreement with the board of health, she was required to work at least 40 hours per week, but the agreement did not specify the days of the week or hours of the day that her work should be performed. They also noted that the agreement did not state which activities she was permitted to perform or prohibited from performing during her “128 hours per week that constituted her personal and discretionary time.”
“Permitting the state to present speculative evidence and/or elicit testimony that (Schippert) was engaged in vice, as opposed to being fully engaged in her duties, would serve no purpose other than to inflame the passions of the jury,” the motion argued.
In Bookhout’s response, she noted that, while Schippert’s employment agreement did not specify her daily work schedule, it did specify that Schippert was to work at least 40 hours a week — which, the evidence shows, she did not.
“Records and witness testimony, … including evidence of hours spent gaming, are expected to demonstrate that, while the Defendant was reporting to ICPHD employees, the board of health and the county board that she was working all hours of the day, she was, in fact, not working her required hours, much less the additional overtime claimed,” Bookhout said. “The People further argue that gaming evidence from all seven days of the week, both during and after the ICPHD’s normal business hours, becomes relevant precisely because the Defendant’s contract does not specify when she was to work her 40 hours a week. This evidence is crucial for the trier of fact to determine whether the timesheets and hours claimed are indeed fraudulent and whether the Board of Health was, in fact, deceived. Furthermore, evidence of the Defendant’s gaming is relevant to show the Defendant falsely claimed she was contact tracing, despite being paid out of grant requiring said funds be used for that specific purpose.”
In outlining the evidence to be presented at trial, Bookhout said Schippert’s timesheets contained “fraudulent information” about both her 40-hour weekly work schedule and her overtime hours worked.
“The evidence will show that the defendant was not frequently present at the ICPHD during normal business hours,” Bookhout said. “The evidence will also show that the defendant was not physically present at the ICPHD on weekends.”
Meanwhile, between March 2020 and July 2022, Schippert claimed on her biweekly timesheets and was paid for more than 1,830 hours of overtime, including more than 1,500 hours spent on COVID-19 contact tracing alone, Bookhout said. While Schippert told health department staff and board members that she would often work daily from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. taking work-related phone calls related to contract tracing, her personal cell-phone and office phone call logs challenge that contention, Bookhout said.
“If this matter proceeds to trial, the People would be prepared to elicit testimony regarding how many calls were made and/or received outside of the ICPHD’s normal business hours, how many calls were made and/or received during the ICPHD’s normal business hours, and whether the evidence is consistent with an individual doing contact tracing,” Bookhout said. “The People will also present evidence from Ruder Technologies documenting the number of calls made to and from the defendant’s assigned desk phone at the ICPHD, challenging this contention.”
County employees are prepared to testify that they routinely saw Schippert’s vehicle on weekdays during regular business hours at either Winnie’s Gaming Café or Scotchmons East in Watseka, Bookhout added.
“The People have tendered statements to the defense that the defendant told several ICPHD employees that she would go to Winnie’s during work hours to cope with stress,” Bookhout said.
Hours of video footage obtained from Winnie’s show Schippert using gambling machines there on weekdays, both during regular work hours and after business hours, plus weekends, Bookhout said. The video footage shows that Schippert spent at least 759 hours at Winnie’s between Oct. 4, 2020, and June 11, 2022.
That includes 14 1/2 hours spent there during normal business hours and 22 1/2 hours spent there after business hours from Oct. 4, 2020, through Dec. 31, 2020 — a time period for which she claimed at least 52 holiday hours and 263 hours of overtime on her timesheets.
In 2021, Schippert is seen on video at Winnie’s for nearly 142 hours during normal business hours, plus for 147 1/2 hours between normal business hours and after hours, and for nearly 158 hours after business hours. That same year, she claimed at least 796 hours of overtime.
From Jan. 1, 2022, through July 5, 2022, Schippert was seen on video there for 104 hours during normal business hours, for 46 hours between normal business hours and after business hours, and for 36 hours after business hours. During that same time frame, she claimed at least 275 hours of overtime.
According to Bookhout, additional evidence to be presented at trial includes: remote-access log-in information from Schippert’s work laptop; recordings from public and executive sessions of meetings of the board of health and its committees, including statements she made to those bodies; evidence of how much she was paid, in addition to her normal salary, as a result of claiming overtime; and board of health members’ testimony that they never approved her claiming more than 28 hours of overtime per pay period, never approved her claiming backpay, and never received documentation of her overtime hours.
Meanwhile, Bookhout had not yet filed a response to a second motion in limine that Schippert’s attorneys filed in December. That motion seeks to bar prosecutors from introducing evidence or testimony at trial indicating that Schippert does not support the “LGBTQIA+ agenda.” In the motion, the defense attorneys noted that discovery tendered by the prosecution “would seem to indicate” that Schippert “was not an advocate of and/or a proponent for the LGBTQIA+ agenda,” but they said “such evidence has no bearing on a fact of consequence” and asked that it be barred from trial “on the ground of relevance.”
Schippert resigned as health department administrator more than a year before the charges were filed. Schippert was appointed administrator upon the agency’s establishment on July 1, 2014, which coincided with the dissolution of the Ford-Iroquois Public Health Department, where she had worked the previous 22 years, starting as a home health care nurse in 1992 and then as community and school health coordinator since 2009.
Penalties if convicted
The most serious of the 33 charges filed against Schippert are two Class X felony counts of theft of government property, each punishable by six to 30 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections and up to a $25,000 fine. The other six theft counts are Class 1 felonies, each punishable by four to 15 years in prison and up to a $25,000 fine, while all eight forgery charges and all 17 official misconduct charges are Class 3 felonies, each punishable by between two to five years in prison and up to a $25,000 fine.