Former Plainfield Township supervisor pleads guilty to stealing nearly $1.4 million from private firm
The former elected supervisor of Plainfield Township pleaded guilty Monday to stealing almost $1.4 million over a six-year period from a private firm where he served as chief financial officer while also holding office.
Anthony Fremarek, 51, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud during a telephone hearing before U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman.
Fremarek resigned from office three months after his indictment in January 2021. He faces up to about four years and three months in prison under guidelines calculated by the U.S. attorney’s office, while his attorney, Vincent Pinelli, said he plans to argue the guidelines are actually substantially lower.
Gettleman set an in-person sentencing hearing for Feb. 23.
Prosecutors alleged Fremarek embezzled about $1.38 million from Company A, a privately held consulting firm based in Schaumburg, from 2013 to 2019, using company funds to make payments on personal credit cards without authorization.
The company was not named in court records, but Fremarek’s bio on the Plainfield Township website as well as his LinkedIn page showed he held a chief financial officer position at PSC Group LLC, a Schaumburg-based company that provides technology consulting services for small to midsize businesses.
According to the plea agreement, as Company A’s CFO, Fremarek tried to hide the fraud by making false entries in the company’s accounting system to make it look like the payments went to legitimate vendors.
He also submitted false paperwork to the banks where Company A held accounts that “falsely inflated Company A’s liquidity” so he could continue the scheme undetected, according to the charges.
Fremarek, a Republican, was elected to the township board in April 2009 and elected supervisor four years later. He holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Illinois.
In a statement on his campaign website from 2020, Fremarek touted his financial prowess, saying he was proud the township was solidly “in the black.”
“I have led a board that believes that running a township is no different than running our homes,” he wrote. “Simply put, you can only spend what you make.”
During Monday’s hearing, Fremarek told the judge he recently had been working “as a CFO for small businesses,” but did not elaborate.
