White County Purchases Under Scrutiny

Monster News is investigating a suspected pattern of questionable purchases involving White County Ambulance funds. The boat motor and professional drone are the starting points. We want to know whether other purchases raise the same questions about approval, ownership, inventory and accountability.

To follow that trail, Monster News sent State’s Attorney Chris Neal a five-year records request for the account commonly called the “Square account” on October 31, 2026, at 10:27 a.m.

We want the full ledger. Every receipt, deposit, payment, transfer, refund and adjustment. A single receipt cannot show a spending pattern. Five years of transactions can show which vendors were paid repeatedly, how purchases were described, whether payments were reimbursed and which transactions need closer examination.

The central question is simple: are these isolated spending disputes, or part of a wider problem with how county funds are being used and accounted for?

The request covers October 31, 2021, through the date the county receives it. It includes records identifying the real businesses behind payments, even when a receipt uses a different trade name.

The related Spotlight report examines the hallway confrontation and the reported dispute over making spending records public:

• White County’s Hallway Confrontation — watch Uncle Bob’s video

Start with the boat motor. Follow the rest.

The request identifies check 2038, a reported $11,900 payment for a boat motor, to help the county locate the account. Earlier correspondence supplied to Monster News by sources describes a Suzuki 140-horsepower motor and installation charges onto a privately owned boat. Monster News has recovered that correspondence; it has not recovered the original invoice image from the material reviewed so far.

A real motor and a real rescue purpose do not answer every spending question. Who authorized payment? Who received the money? What agreement covered the county’s use of his personally owned boat? What happened to any repayment? The account records should help answer those questions.

What we requested

• The complete ledger: transaction dates, payees, amounts, descriptions, check numbers, accounting classifications and balances.
• Statements and reconciliations: bank statements, Square reports, settlement reports and records matching account activity to the county’s books.
• Supporting documents: invoices, receipts, check images, vouchers, purchase orders and authorization records.
• Account authority: authorized users and signers, changes to their authority and the dates those changes took effect.
• Vendor identities: vendor files, registration forms and W-9 forms where maintained, showing legal business names, trade names, business addresses and county vendor numbers. Exempt private information may be redacted.

Monster News requested an existing CSV or Excel export of the ledger where feasible. That allows the transactions to be checked and compared without retyping a stack of statements.

The drone is another records trail

We are also pursuing questions about a professional drone associated with the ambulance service. That will be the subject of a separate records request covering its purchase, funding, ownership, inventory and custody.

An April 18, 2024 report was forwarded to Monster News that said the service had received a drone and that donations paid almost all its cost. That funding detail matters. We will examine the records rather than assume the entire purchase came from tax revenue. The present ledger request will also capture any drone-related transactions that passed through this account.

Look for the pattern

We will compare the ledger with invoices, approvals and vendor records to track purchases that lack a clear public purpose or a documented explanation. We will look for equipment paid for through county accounts and examine who owns it, where it is kept and whether it appears in the county’s inventory. Those are questions for the records—not conclusions we can draw from a ledger we have not yet received.

This investigation concerns suspected misuse and weak spending controls. A fraud finding requires evidence; a FOIA request is how we obtain and test that evidence.

The request is newly submitted. This report does not claim that the county has missed its response deadline. Monster News will report on the response and the records it receives.

Follow the related reporting

• Uncle Bob’s White County Forum report and hallway video
• White County’s FOIA information
• Illinois FOIA: response requirements
• Illinois FOIA: electronic records and fees

Illustration: AI-generated editorial illustration by Monster News. The motor, drone, payment terminal and clippings are illustrative, not photographs of the purchased equipment or copies of county records. Square’s appearance identifies the subject of the account inquiry; it does not allege wrongdoing by Square.