A federal judge on Monday sentenced a Burr Ridge, Illinois, businessman to nearly five years in federal prison for swindling $2.6 million from hospitals seeking coveted protective gear in the traumatic early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and blowing much of it on credit cards and luxury cars.
The 57-month term handed to Dennis Haggerty marked the stiffest punishment so far in Chicago’s federal court in a fraud case arising from the pandemic.
U.S. District Judge John Kness said he found Haggerty’s behavior, which included the creation of phony billing records and repeated attempts to try to pin the fraud on his two unsuspecting business partners, “really nothing short of contemptible.”
