On the eve of his high-profile corruption trial, former Chicago police Sgt. Eddie Hicks vanished.
Federal authorities had charged Hicks with running a crew of rogue cops who robbed drug dealers, pocketing the illicit cash and selling the stolen dope to other pushers.
Eight years after Hicks disappeared in 2003, a federal manhunt has crisscrossed the globe. “Hicks has been known to travel to Brazil … (and) should be considered armed and dangerous,” the FBI wanted poster says.
But while Hicks stayed on the lam, he repeatedly surfaced in broad daylight to conduct public Chicago-area financial transactions that would enrich him and his family, a Tribune investigation found.
Hicks signed paperwork directing the Chicago police pension fund to deposit more than $300,000 into a credit union account he controlled, government records examined by the Tribune show.
Hicks’ signature also appears on 23 monthly police pension checks totaling $79,000 that were deposited into a bank account controlled by Hicks’ longtime companion, the government records show.
And the wanted fugitive also executed a substantial Chicago land deal. Federal court officials had allowed Hicks to secure his $150,000 bond by posting as collateral the three-story walk-up apartment building at 7840 S. Phillips Ave. that Hicks owned with a son.
But in 2005, two years after Hicks became a fugitive, he signed legal papers transferring that property solely to the son, Anthony Hicks, a Chicago police officer then assigned to the Area 4 gun team division, land and court records examined by the Tribune show.
Anthony Hicks used the building to secure a $217,500 mortgage that he did not repay, land and court records show.
— David Jackson and Gary Marx, Tribune reporters
