“My bosses aren’t interested in tackling the story.”  That’s what a top investigative reporter at a major Chicago newspaper said when I asked why the story of Annabel Melongo – former Save A Life Foundation employee turned whistleblower – wasn’t being covered. “We’d have to spend a lot of time to get it right.” The reporter explained how, with a limited staff of investigative reporters tasked to write one “investigative story” each week, there aren’t enough resources to focus on the Melongo case.


And besides, it’d be “covering ground on someone else’s story.” In other words, bloggers have already told the what of Melongo’s incarceration in the Cook County Jail – a nasty place – under a $300,000 bond for “eavesdropping.” The reporter was right about that. But ferreting out the why of her imprisonment as she awaits trial is a different task.

If the Chicago print reporters were interested, they’d follow the money. If resources are so tight, here’s an economical way to do it:

First, add up all the government grants listed by the Chicago suburb-based Save A Life Foundation (SALF) in their Form 990s. That’s the yearly paperwork that 501(c)(3) nonprofits submit to the Illinois Attorney General (AG) and to the IRS. A simple email FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the AG for SALF’s 990’s from its birth in 1993 until it folded last year takes a minute, and the information is free. Their reported government grants total $7,850,777.

Next, add up the dollar amounts of state and federal grants obtained via FOIA requests and email exchanges with agency officials. That number is considerably more than $7,850,777.

So what’s up with the discrepancy?

Combing through the SALF 990s yields interesting results. For example, here are just two reporting errors from SALF Form 990s. Each set contains two pages that should be identical, but they’re not. (CDC/HHS refers to the federal grant source: Centers for Disease Control/Health & Human Services.) Here’s the first one:


2001 comparison –

And here’s the second:
01-02 comparison-pages-restrictions_HL[1] –

The discrepancies may help explain why a young, female immigrant from Cameroon, whose third language is English, and who is unfamiliar with the U.S. legal system, is now sitting in the Cook County Jail.

Annabel Melongo worked as a computer temp at SALF from December 2005 to April 2006. After a dispute with SALF founder/president Carol Spizzirri, Melongo resigned. According to case records, days later from a remote location, Melongo allegedly hacked the foundation’s computer network resulting in the destruction of all of SALF’s financial records and Spizzirri’s e-mails.

Shortly before his death in October 2009, respected education critic Gerald Bracey was about to submit a Huffington Post column concerning the close relationship between SALF and former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan (now U.S. Secretary of Education). When HuffPo passed on running it, three of Bracey’s colleagues published it on their blogs. Here’s what Bracey reported about Melongo’s accuser:

Spizzirri is a convicted shoplifter. According to a sworn affidavit by her ex-husband, a court ordered psychological evaluation diagnosed her as a paranoid schizophrenic and pathological liar. Spizzirri claimed to be a registered nurse and a renal specialist. Her alma mater, now defunct, denied giving her an RN and reportedly she has never been a registered nurse in either Wisconsin or Illinois, as she had claimed.

Melongo was indicted for “computer tampering.” She dismissed her attorney and opted to be her own lawyer.  That’s a naïve move in a transparent judicial system; in courts controlled by the Chicago Machine, it’s a huge mistake, particularly since SALF was close to numerous powerful pols. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Melongo eventually went to jail, where she now awaits trial.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez is prosecuting the case. The Illinois Attorney General’s office also pitched in, providing the expertise of Kyle French of the AG’s High Tech Crimes Bureau.  (French now works for the U.S. Attorney in Alaska and won’t discuss Melongo’s case because it is ongoing.)

Oh, almost forgoT: according to SALF, one of the Illinois state agencies that funded them was the same agency that’s charged to monitor charitable organizations in Illinois: the Office of the Attorney General. SALF claimed the Illinois AG gave them $25,000 in 2002.  But the AG recently stated they can’t locate any records. Go figure.

If you’re wondering how Melongo’s alleged cybercrimes were discovered, here’s what’s in the case records.

When SALF’s computer crashed the morning of April 23, 2006, the local Schiller Park Police were summoned to the scene. SALF soon hired a computer forensics company to investigate at a cost of over $200,000; that’s the figure Spizzirri claimed in a recent letter to the AG’s office.

In testimony before a May 2008 Special Grand Jury of Cook County, these two exchanges came in the Q&A. between Schiller Park Police Detective William Martin and Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Podlasek.

Podlasek:  Following [Melongo’s] termination, as part of your investigation did you meet with experts hired by Save A Life after they realized their computers had been accessed by the outside or intruded upon from the outside?

Det. Martin:  Yes…

Podlasek: These experts that were hired by Save A Life, did your investigation reveal that they were able to trace the individual responsible for intruding on the system?

Det. Martin:  Yes.

So Detective Martin relied on evidence provided by a computer forensics team hired by SALF? Can you say tainted evidence? Are these “experts” the ones who early on expressed concern over the chain of evidence in the Schiller Park Police Department Investigation Follow-Up Report?

R/I returned to SPPD and called Critical Technology Solutions and spoke with Don Peters, the president of the company. Mr. Peters stated that on 1 May 06, he was contracted by SALF to attempt to perform data recovery procedures on SALF’s two computer servers. Mr. Peters advised R/I that he was told by Ms. Spizzirri that multiple personnel attempted recovery on the drives prior to him being contacted. Mr. Peters advised her that any evidence discovery would be questionable due to there being no clear chain of custody.

Today Annabel Melongo sits in jail, the latest chapter in four years of relentless prosecution by the State of Illinois in service to a defunct nonprofit that apparently never backed up its computer files.

madigan & alvarez

Meanwhile Spizzirri says she’s working on cyber crime legislation with the support of…wait for it Ill. Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.