KANKAKEE — A Kankakee County judge will allow a jury to hear evidence of Dee Ann Schippert’s gambling in the former Iroquois County Public Health Department administrator’s upcoming theft, forgery and official misconduct trial.
During a status hearing on Tuesday, June 24, Kankakee County Judge William Dickenson denied a motion in limine filed last December by Schippert’s Springfield attorneys, Mark Wykoff Sr. and Daniel Fultz, that had sought a judge’s order to prohibit evidence and testimony at trial related to Schippert’s gambling, claiming it is “irrelevant.”
Dee Ann Schippert’s Iroquois County Jail mugshot from March 2024.
Schippert’s attorneys said they plan to file a motion asking Dickenson to reconsider the decision, and a hearing on that motion was set for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 20, in Kankakee County.
Charged with 33 felonies — including eight counts of theft of government property by deception, eight counts of forgery and 17 counts of official misconduct — the 57-year-old Schippert, of Watseka, remains free from custody on pretrial conditions as she awaits her trial.
Assistant Illinois Attorneys General Haley Bookhout and Mara Somlo are prosecuting the case, which was reassigned to Kankakee County’s Dickenson after it was filed in Iroquois County Circuit Court in March 2024 due to the recusal of two Iroquois County judges.
The charges allege that Schippert stole more than $100,000 from the health department between May 31, 2020, and July 15, 2022, by submitting fraudulent timesheets claiming hours she did not work, including overtime and backpay she never earned. Schippert also allegedly 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 court documents, prosecutors argued that the evidence will show that over a 20-month span during the COVID-19 pandemic, Schippert spent at least 759 hours at a Watseka gambling establishment — an average of almost 38 hours a month — while claiming to be working. Prosecutors said they plan to present as evidence time-stamped 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 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 in a Jan. 24 court filing. “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.”
Meanwhile, a second motion in limine filed by Schippert’s attorneys last December — which sought to bar prosecutors from introducing evidence or testimony at trial indicating that she does not support the “LGBTQIA+ agenda” — was granted earlier this year with no objection from prosecutors, according to court records. Both sides were advised by the judge to “obtain leave from court” if cross-examination may involve such evidence or testimony, court records showed.