Off it all went to the highest bidder.
In the following weeks, the Englewood vacation house that was built with stolen money stood empty as the nation’s worst government embezzler went to jail.
This week, the house officially went up for sale as the government tries to liquidate the last big ticket item belonging to Rita Crundwell.
On Valentine’s Day, Crundwell was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to stealing more than $53 million from the city government in Dixon, Ill. The former comptroller, who controlled the city’s funds without a proper check and balance system in place, embezzled the money over about two decades and used it to build up her equestrian empire and a lavish lifestyle.
The government seized her house — a Spanish-style property built on a private canal and complete with its own elevator — and listed it with a Realtor for $254,900 this week.
Even though the property has only been on the real estate market since Monday, already there have been five showings in a real estate market with a dearth of supply, said Jason Wojdylo, the chief Inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service’s Asset Forfeiture Division.
Crundwell built the 2,304-square-foot house house at 821 E. Fifth St., in a neighborhood full of mostly modest one-story homes worth considerably less. She chose the site because her boyfriend’s mother lived directly across the street.
“The challenge we face is the location of where this residence is,” Wojdylo said. “We can all agree, it was built with no expense spared and it was built in a neighborhood where it doesn’t fit.”
“This particular location works against us,” he said.
Hiring a real estate agent was the last option since it requires the government to take out real estate fees, closing costs and delinquent taxes on top of the proceeds that will go back to Dixon.
With the heightened media coverage, Wojdylo said he had hoped to receive “unsolicited” offers from potential buyers. Six people were interested in the property, but their bids were at least $100,000 less than what the government had wanted to sell for.
“We gave it our best,” Wojdylo said. “We waited a considerable amount of time to see if additional offers came in and they did not.”
Most people in the unincorporated city that straddles the Charlotte-Sarasota county line had never heard the story behind the vacation house.
“Most people in Englewood had never heard of Rita Crundwell,” Wojdylo said.
Already, the government has seized and sold Crundwell’s assets, including the prized horses she was famous for, a vintage red Corvette, her ranch back in Illinois and her furniture from the Englewood home. The total returned to Dixon will be about $10 million, which does not include whatever the Englewood house sells for as well as potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sequined horse show outfits and cowboy hats.
But most of the stolen money was spent on more intangible things: expensive parties, fuel for horse trailers, gourmet food.
“Ten million is less than 20 percent,” Wojdylo said. “It is certainly more than what we often find in fraud cases.”