ROCKFORD – Former Dixon Comptroller Rita Crundwell has lost her bid to keep the last vestiges of her once-impressive – and ill-gotten – equine empire.
U.S. District Court Judge Philip Reinhard ordered Tuesday that she forfeit her collection of trophies and awards, her show clothes, and the remaining miscellaneous household goods and other personal items being held in storage in Wisconsin and Dixon, to help satisfy the $53 million-dollar debt she owes her hometown.
The U.S. government filed a motion in December seeking to force the turnover of what it described as assets discovered as the result of further investigation by the U.S. Marshal Service after her sentencing.
In her motion to keep the items, filed in January, Crundwell’s attorney, Ruth Robinson, argued that the items weren’t newly discovered – that the Marshal’s Service had known of their existence all along – and that they lacked “objective value” and wouldn’t benefit the city if applied toward Crundwell’s restitution order.
The remaining assets include framed photographs of Crundwell, various pieces of artwork, about 700 trophies she won in horse competitions, a computer, her show clothing, bicycles, patio chairs, two motorized scooters, and an all-terrain vehicle.
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