When they successfully argued for an order freezing Lt. Joe Gliniewicz’s family bank accounts, investigators in Lake County alleged that Gliniewicz intermingled thousands of dollars from the account of the Explorer Post he managed, taking money for personal expenses, and sometimes adding deposits in a confusing array of transactions.
And they suggested his wife may have participated in what they formally branded money laundering.
“The transferring of funds via cash may be indicative of an effort to conceal the activity,” they wrote in an affidavit dated November 6.
But late Tuesday, Gliniewicz’s widow Melodie cried foul, claiming the disputed funds in question were from Gliniewicz himself. And she filed a motion in Lake County court, seeking to have the freeze order lifted.
“Words cannot describe the depth of Melodie’s ongoing pain and hardship,” her attorneys wrote in a press release accompanying their motion. “At this time, Melodie is unable to pay her ongoing mortgage, doctor bills, and other family expenses.”
In their affidavit, Lake County investigators declared that Gliniewicz had withdrawn money from the Explorers’ bank account with abandon, including nearly $10,000 for muscle supplements and adult websites, over $5,600 for a trip to Hawaii, and a controversial $7,000 withdrawal which he deposited into his wife’s account the very next day.”
“Gliniewicz and his wife Melodie Gliniewicz exerted unauthorized control over funds belonging to the Fox Lake Explorer Program,” they stated.. “Between September, 2008, and April, 2015, the account appears to have been used to cover personal expenses on a consistent basis.”
The account was also used to make several loan payments, the largest of which for a $15,234 payment for a student loan, made to the Department of Education.
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Indeed, two weeks ago, when they held a news conference branding Gliniewicz’s death as a “carefully staged suicide”, authorities released text messages from the lieutenant’s phone, suggesting that he feared his superiors were on to his alleged financial misdeeds.
“You are borrowing from that other account,” he warned in a text to someone identified as “individual #2”. “When you get back, you’ll have to start dumping money into that account, or you will be visiting me in JAIL!”
After closing out their death investigation, authorities sought a court order and the Gliniewicz accounts were frozen November 6. But in arguing for that freeze to be lifted, Melodie Gliniewicz declared that all was not what it appeared to be.
“The investigator’s affidavit stated that $26,800 of direct deposits went into the Explorer account from the Village of Fox Lake,” her attorneys stated. “The investigator’s affidavit omitted the fact that this $26,800 amount was paid over a five year period from Melodie’s husband’s net paycheck, and not from the village.”
The attorneys further state that a $32,000 deposit to the Explorer’s account from Nationwide Retirement Solutions in January of 2014, was in fact, deposited by Gliniewicz himself, from a loan he took out from his own retirement plan.
There is no explanation why Gliniewicz would deposit such large amounts of personal funds into the Explorer’s account, when his family controlled accounts of their own. Or why he declared in one text message, “I closed the US Bank and opened BMO acct to keep it from being traced.”
“Melodie respectfully requests that the community, law enforcement, pension board and press refrain from rushing to, or misplacing judgment,” her lawyers declared. “Melodie has faith that the truth will come out in time, and if necessary, in court.”
