Here is a story about a man whose literal job was to watch over people accused of crimes, who then committed a federal crime himself, and walked away with probation and community service. If that sentence made you angry, buckle up. It gets worse.
Bartholomew Ilenikhena, 37, of Cortland, Illinois, was a corrections deputy at the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office. His job, every single day, was to supervise people locked up for breaking the law. And while he was doing that, he was quietly submitting fraudulent applications to the Small Business Administration for pandemic relief money through a business that did not exist.
In June 2021, while small businesses across Illinois were shuttering permanently and restaurant owners were choosing between paying rent and paying employees, Ilenikhena filed for a Paycheck Protection Program loan. The application listed a business under his own name. The business was fake. It had no employees. It had no payroll. It had no revenue. It had nothing, because it was not real.
But it did have something interesting: wildly inconsistent income figures. On one application, Ilenikhena reported $10,482 in gross income for his phantom business. On another application, for the same nonexistent business in the same tax year, he reported $89,195. That is not a rounding error. That is a nearly nine-fold discrepancy for a company that, and I cannot stress this enough, did not exist.
He also scooped up a $10,000 Economic Injury Disaster Loan grant, because why stop at one fraud program when there's a whole buffet of pandemic relief sitting there unguarded? Total haul: $28,580 in taxpayer money meant for legitimate small businesses that were hemorrhaging during COVID.
On February 9, 2026, Ilenikhena stood before Judge Joseph Pedersen and pleaded guilty to one count of theft between $10,000 and $100,000, a Class 2 felony. Three forgery counts were dropped as part of the plea deal, because apparently committing multiple forgeries while employed as a law enforcement officer qualifies you for a bulk discount on charges.
His sentence? 24 months of "second chance" probation. That is a withheld judgment, meaning if he completes the terms, the conviction gets wiped from his record. Like it never happened. He also got 30 hours of community service and was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution to the SBA, which he reportedly paid immediately after the hearing.
Let that sink in. A corrections deputy, a man entrusted with the power of the state to hold people in cages, fabricated a business, stole nearly $29,000 in pandemic relief, and his punishment is: do some community service, pay most of it back, and in two years we will pretend it never happened.
While Ilenikhena was cashing his fraudulent PPP check, real small business owners in DeKalb County were being told their applications were denied. Real restaurants with real employees were closing. Real barbershops, real daycares, real auto repair shops were watching their lifelines evaporate because the fund was running dry, in part because people like this corrections deputy were draining it for personal gain.
The SBA approved approximately 11.8 million PPP loans totaling over $800 billion. The Government Accountability Office has estimated that at least $200 billion was lost to fraud. That is not a typo. Two hundred billion dollars. And when the legitimate borrowers who got screwed over try to get help, the SBA sends them to collections.
Bartholomew did not pull this scheme alone. His wife, Savannah Ilenikhena, was a former DeKalb County Board member. She also faces a felony theft charge connected to the same PPP fraud scheme. Both were originally indicted in July 2025 and pleaded not guilty in October 2025. Bartholomew flipped to guilty in February 2026. Savannah's next court date is March 20, 2026.
So just to paint the full picture: a corrections deputy and a county board member, two people who were supposed to serve the public, conspired to steal pandemic relief money through a fabricated business while real businesses in their own community were fighting to survive. This was not some faceless Wall Street scheme. These were local government officials robbing the system they were supposed to protect.
Unacceptable, sure. But apparently not unacceptable enough for prison time. The AG's office prosecuted the case, and while the statement sounds appropriately outraged, the actual outcome, probation and community service for a law enforcement officer who committed federal fraud, suggests the justice system has a different definition of "unacceptable" than the rest of us.
Ilenikhena resigned from the Sheriff's Office in May 2025, two months before the indictment. He was not fired. He resigned. Which means his personnel file probably says something polite about "pursuing other opportunities" rather than "left because he was about to be indicted for stealing pandemic money through a fake business."
If you are a regular person who accidentally overstated your income on an EIDL application by a few hundred dollars, the SBA will send you to collections, garnish your wages, and potentially refer you for criminal prosecution. If you are a corrections deputy who fabricated an entire business and stole $28,580 through multiple fraudulent applications with a nearly nine-fold income discrepancy, you get probation and the chance to erase it from your record.
This is the system working exactly as designed. Not for you. Not for the small business owner who played by the rules. For the people who already had power and decided they wanted a little more of the pie. The PPP program was the largest wealth transfer in American history, and stories like this one, a cop and a politician stealing relief money while their neighbors' businesses died, are not the exception. They are the pattern.
Savannah Ilenikhena's court date is March 20. We will be watching.