A federal judge looked at a two-term state senator standing in her courtroom and said the quiet part out loud:
Greed coupled with the abuse of power has become expected of public servants.
She wasn’t being rhetorical. She was reading a verdict.
The Record
William “Sam” McCann represented rural Illinois in the state senate for eight years, 2010 to 2018, before breaking from the Republican Party to run for governor on a third-party ticket. Somewhere in the middle of that career, he decided his campaign account was his personal bank account.
Federal prosecutors in the Central District of Illinois charged McCann with converting more than $600,000 in campaign funds to personal use between 2015 and 2020. He pleaded guilty in February 2024 to seven counts of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of tax evasion. He didn’t wait for a jury to decide. He folded three days into his own trial, after jurors had already heard what the government had on him.
The Receipts
This wasn’t one bad transfer. It was a five-year pattern, and prosecutors laid it out dollar by dollar:
- $60,000+ spent on two personal vehicles, a Ford Expedition and a Ford F-250
- $43,000 combined on a recreational travel trailer and a motor home
- $64,750 paid toward his own personal mortgage
- $187,000 paid directly to himself between 2018 and 2020, on top of everything else
- Fabricated invoices for work that was never performed, and mileage reimbursements claimed twice
Here’s the part that separates a mistake from a scheme: the FBI first questioned McCann about his campaign spending in the summer of 2018. He kept going anyway. For two more years, while the investigation that would eventually indict him was already open.
McCann brazenly betrayed the public trust by engaging in a five-year scheme to defraud and converting more than $600,000 in campaign funds to his personal use.
U.S. Attorney Gregory K. Harris, Central District of Illinois
The Verdict
On July 9, 2024, Judge Colleen Lawless sentenced McCann to 42 months in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. She ordered $683,816.61 in restitution, split between the two organizations his fraud actually victimized: Laborers’ union Local 150 and the Illinois Education Association. The people who funded his campaign, trusting it would be spent on a campaign.
As of this writing, no appeal or clemency action has been reported. He is serving his sentence. We’ve covered cases in this series where that changes fast and quietly: a sentence handed down one month, commuted the next. We’ll update this file if this one moves. That’s the job.
Your Verdict
Full sourcing and the docket are drawn from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois. Is 42 months a real sentence for five years of stealing from your own donors, or a discount for a man who only stopped when a jury forced him to? Tell us your verdict.
This is the Moral Decay Index. We don’t do team jerseys. We read the record.
Get the next case file before anyone else. Subscribe for free.