A sergeant with the Illinois State Police testified Wednesday in the fraud trial of the founder of the Will County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving that he never gave permission to use his photocopied signature on forms recording the amount of money taken in at meetings.
Antoinette Wilda, who founded the chapter after her son was killed by a drunken driver, faces a charge of theft and 13 charges of forgery for allegedly stealing about $45,000 from the organization over a three-year period.
She was in charge of victim-impact panels, in which relatives of drunken driving victims describe their ordeals to convicted DUI offenders in the hopes that they will change.
The fee for all participants was $20. Wilda submitted some forms required by the national MADD organization that state police Sgt. Jeff Hanford, who helped run the meetings, said underreported the number of attendees and money collected.
Witnesses, including Hanford, testified in Will County Circuit Court that those sheets showed a photocopy of Hanford’s signature on the line where a second party was to record that he or she verified the counting of the money. Wilda counted the money, prosecutors have said.
Hanford said he signed only one form that he believed accurately reported that 90 people had attended a session and that $1,800 had been collected. Even then, he said he did not count the money.
Hanford testified he would never have signed the other sheets or authorized the use of his signature because the forms reported only about 30 people at each meeting, when he said most monthly meetings at Silver Cross Hospital drew between 80 and 100 people.
