State Rep. Carol Ammons indicted in scheme to receive kickbacks, misusing campaign funds

CHICAGO — State Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, an 11-year veteran of the Illinois House, has been charged with orchestrating an alleged scheme to receive illegal cash kickbacks from her own campaign account and from local nonprofits for which she helped secure state grant funding.

The indictment, brought by a federal grand jury late Tuesday, outline an alleged conspiracy involving both Ammons’ husband, Champaign County Clerk Aaron Ammons, and her daughter, who last month was indicted on separate federal charges alleging she fraudulently collected expanded COVID-era unemployment benefits.

While the daughter, Titianna Ammons, was not charged in Tuesday’s indictment, prosecutors allege she was the conduit for some of the kickbacks, including overpayments from her mother’s “Friends of Carol Ammons” campaign account for work she didn’t do.

The indictment also alleges the lawmaker used her official position to direct state grant money to three separate nonprofits that paid her daughter, one of which made Titianna Ammons a program director after the state representative helped draft her employment contract.

In all, prosecutors allege Ammons and her daughter “received financial benefits in excess of $100,000” beginning in 2017 through roughly 2023. But Ammons’ legal issues deepened in May 2024 when she allegedly lied to an FBI agent about her daughter being paid out of state grant funds through one of the nonprofits Titianna Ammons was affiliated with.

In the year after the FBI approached the lawmaker, prosecutors allege that she and her husband engaged in obstruction of justice with at least one “potential witness.” According to the indictment, Aaron Ammons took the lead on buffering his family from the ongoing federal investigation, including instructing one potential witness to “muddy the waters” with the FBI “to obstruct its ability to trace the illegal cash payments to Carol Ammons.”

On Wednesday, Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch stopped short of calling on Ammons to resign from her seat but said he is temporarily removing her from “any and all House Democratic Caucus meetings, from all House committees, and from accessing Speaker’s Office staff and resources.” Welch also said he’s directed staff to “review the budget to determine whether any funds need to be paused or reconsidered.”

“The allegations in this indictment are extremely serious,” Welch said in a statement. “Every person under our system of justice is entitled to the presumption of innocence and due process. The U.S. Attorney will lay out evidence in court, where Representative Ammons will have the chance to defend herself against the allegations.”

House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, however, called on Ammons to “resign immediately” and criticized Welch for not doing the same.

“Leadership means holding your own members accountable, not waiting until political pressure becomes unavoidable,” she said in a statement.

The Ammons indictment follows last week’s pressure campaign on now-former State Rep. Harry Benton, D-Plainfield, to resign after an internal ethics investigation into undisclosed behavior. Benton resigned late Friday.

Read more: Rep. Harry Benton resigns, withdraws name from ballot amid ethics investigation | Speaker Welch to Rep. Harry Benton: Resign or be expelled | Will the report of ex-Rep. Harry Benton’s alleged misconduct be made public? That’s up to lawmakers

Cash kickbacks

In three separate occasions in 2025, Aaron Ammons allegedly attempted to influence at least one potential witness in the investigation, beginning with a paper note saying there was “‘nothing illegal’ about friends giving friends money regarding illegal cash kickbacks paid to Carol Ammons from the Friends of Carol Ammons political committee.”

According to the indictment, which pegged the interaction to February 2025, Aaron Ammons showed the note to the potential witness and then destroyed it.

Two months later, with his wife present, Aaron Ammons allegedly advised a potential witness “that they should communicate in code words about the ongoing federal investigation” and said he would “look into” the cash deposits the lawmaker made to her account around the dates she received illegal cash kickbacks.

And then in June 2025, again with his wife present, Aaron Ammons allegedly asked a potential witness about cash payments to the lawmaker before directing the person to “muddy the waters” with the FBI.

Those interactions form the basis of the obstruction of justice charges against the couple.

The indictment mentions other “individuals” who paid cash kickbacks to Ammons, but only identifies her daughter as one of the conduits. According to prosecutors, the Friends of Carol Ammons campaign fund paid her daughter “approximately $600 per month … totaling approximately $15,585, not in proportion with services actually rendered.”

An unknown number of other individuals were paid through checks “in excess of the amount for services actually rendered,” including to family members, including over $25,000 between January 2019 and November of 2020 — none of which were disclosed as required in state campaign finance records. According to the indictment, some of that money was paid back to Ammons in cash kickbacks.

Additionally, between March 2021 and August 2022, prosecutors allege campaign finance records falsely reported paying more than $15,000 to a consulting firm “when in fact, they were paid to an individual who paid a portion back to Ammons in cash.”

Ammons also allegedly “falsely classified certain expenditures as mileage reimbursements” that she also later recouped in cash.

Conflict of interest

Democrats who lead the General Assembly have empowered their members to wield wide authority over state grant money to be spent in their districts. As part of her legislative duties, Ammons directed state funding to three separate nonprofits based in the Champaign-Urbana area, beginning in the fiscal year that began July 1, 2019.

The first nonprofit that benefitted from Ammons’ grant funding prowess was the Hood Vote Neighborhood Transformation, a nonprofit focused on prison reform and services for those reentering the community after serving time in the correctional system. According to the indictment, Ammons diverted funding from the Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center, which served children from impoverished areas, to Hood Vote, which received a $605,431 in state grant money.

Titianna Ammons was already associated with Hood Vote, and eventually became program director at the nonprofit. According to the indictment, Titianna Ammons’ April 2, 2021, paycheck for $3,326 was paid out of the state grant appropriation, which prompted state officials to inform both Ammons and Hood vote that paying her daughter out of state funds “was an impermissible conflict of interest” and violated state law. Prosecutors cite statute prohibiting state officials from benefitting financially “from a decision she could make in her official capacity, including through indirect benefits to family members.”

Read more here: Ammons Indictment 07/07/26

After Hood Vote stopped paying Titianna Ammons a salary, Ammons didn’t assist the nonprofit in renewing its state grant for the next fiscal year, according to the indictment. Instead, for the fiscal year that began on July 1, 2020, Ammons helped the Bridgewater Sullivan Community Life Center, a community development and community organizing nonprofit associated with Bethel AME Church in Champaign, obtain a $612,000 state grant.

Ammons then “recommended individuals for employment with Bridgewater,” including her daughter. She allegedly assisted the nonprofit with “drafting her daughter’s employment contract,” which netted Titianna Ammons more than $60,000 annually as program director between August 2021 and May 2023. That salary was also paid out of the state grant, even though Ammons “knew full well it was a conflict of interest for her daughter to be paid out of state grants that she had initiated and facilitated,” according to the indictment.

That language was echoed in the false statement charge against Ammons outlined in the indictment. When the FBI approached Ammons in May 2024, the lawmaker allegedly lied to the agent, claiming she had no knowledge regarding the conflict of interest stemming from Hood Vote paying her daughter from state grant funding, despite Ammons knowing “full well that individuals from the State of Illinois and Hood Vote Neighborhood Transition had previously discussed the conflict of interest” with her.

Code word ‘gift’

In an effort to “avoid detection” of payments to herself, prosecutors allege Ammons required “an individual” associated with Bridgewater “to provide cash kickbacks” to her — which were sometimes referred to as “gifts” — all paid out of the state grant to Bridgewater.

The indictment cites three text messages from Ammons to the Bridgewater-associated individual that allegedly correspond to direct deposits made to that person’s credit union account, “from which a portion was withdrawn in cash and transferred to Ammons.”

For example, on June 18, 2022, Ammons sent a text asking simply, “What’s up? Gift” — allegedly a signal for the individual to drop off some of the $500 that had been deposited into their credit union account the previous day. On Oct. 20, 2022, $700 was deposited in the credit union account, and Ammons directed the individual that she could catch up before that evening’s Champaign County Board meeting “to grab the gift.” On Dec. 2, 2022, the same day another $500 deposit hit the credit union account, Ammons was more blunt:

“Hey you dropping my gift off today?”

Both the text messages and money transfers serve as the basis of some of the wire fraud counts against the lawmaker.

The indictment names one final nonprofit that benefited from Ammons’ help directing state grant funding. The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, which happened to employ Ammons before she was elected to the Illinois House, received more than $1 million in state grants in 2021 and 2022, “including a $700,000 member initiative funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act,” according to the charging document.

Titianna Ammons again received payments directly funded by the state grant facilitated by her mother — this time as a “digital marketing coordinator” for the IMC. From July to October 2022, while she was also working full-time at Bridgewater and as an “intermittent public service representative” with the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, the IMC paid Titianna Ammons approximately $9,990.

The state budget for the fiscal that began last week includes a $750,000 reappropriation to the IMC for violence prevention programs and operational expenses, which may be flagged in the review Welch ordered for the state budget after Ammons’ indictment Wednesday.

Ammons has previously faced legal trouble in early 2020 after her alleged theft of a Coach purse at a secondhand store, though a special prosecutor ultimately declined to press charges against her. In 2015, Aaron Ammons was granted a pardon from departing Gov. Pat Quinn for a 1990s-era drug-related conviction, clearing the way for him to run for office. One of the couple’s sons also lobbies for the education-focused nonprofit Advance Illinois.

Additional reporting by Ben Szalinski.

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