Former county official charged with falsifying documents
July 13, 2012 3:16PM
The former acting director of a Cook County job-training program was arrested Friday for engaging in a scheme to falsify documents related to a state review of a 2009 Summer Youth Program funded by a federal grant, according to federal prosecutors.
Brendolyn Hart-Glover, 42, of Chicago was field operations manager and, in 2010, acting director of the Cook County President’s Office of Employment Training, or POET, now known as “Cook County Works,” a release from the U.S. Attorney’s office said.
POET received federal grants totalling about $5.67 million for summer youth jobs in 2009 and 2010, and enrolled about 1,400 participants in the 2009 program. Hart-Glover, who supervised POET field offices in Oak Forest, Cicero, Maywood, and Chicago Heights, alledgedly schemes to falsify documents, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Friday following her arrest.
According to the complaint, in October 2009, the state Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity sent a letter identifying problems with hundreds of participant files, including about 70 that were missing entirely. In July 2010, DCEO informed POET it would not reimburse about $1.4 million in questionable costs based on the documentation produced to that point.
According to several cooperating witnesses, including POET employees, Hart-Glover instructed them to “reproduce” or “re-create” the missing files. “Let me make something clear. It is not an option for you to not have the Summer Youth files,” she allegedly told a small group of employees in the summer of 2010, the complaint alleges.
In August 2010, Hart-Glover wrote a letter to DCEO, sent with two boxes of re-created files and documents, claiming 56 six of the 70 missing files were located.
However, the charges allege POET employees did not “locate” the files and, instead, forged, altered, and backdated documents. The complaint also alleges staff did not verify applicant compliance with the Selective Service Act or check their low-income status because they did not have access to computers.
In March 2011, federal agents interviewed Hart-Glover. The complaint alleges that she denied knowing about the fabrication of documents.
She is scheduled to appear at 4 p.m. Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert in Chicago. She faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
