Incident Reports Appear to Show Alleged Embezzlement Occurring While Alderman was Still Mayor
An investigation of the Willard alderman is ongoing
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You may remember from reading about it here that I had visited the Springfield Police Department on December 6th, 2022, and submitted a request to see if there had been an incident report filed that involved current Alderman Corey Hendrickson and his former employer, Prime. Inc. I specifically requested any report in which he had been accused of theft or embezzlement, was informed that there were two reports, and eventually received digital copies of both on Thursday, January 5th.
Along with the reports, the SPD also sent a digital letter confirming what I had been told while submitting the request: under Missouri Sunshine Law, I would be allowed copies of the incident reports, but since this is an active investigation, the actual investigative report cannot be released until the case becomes inactive.
More below.
Both incident reports list the incident type as “stealing”, and each report lists only one victim. On the first report, dated July 19th, 2021, the victim is listed as an individual (I have redacted the person’s name); on the second report, dated September 14th, 2021, the victim is listed as Prime.
But there is another key difference between the two reports.
Under incident time, the second report, where the victim is listed as Prime, shows the incident time as a single day — September 14th, 2021; while the first report, where the victim is listed as an individual, shows the alleged theft as having occurred from October 2020 to June 2021 — a period of almost eight months.
Current Alderman Hendrickson was still mayor of Willard during much of that time, until he lost his mayoral reelection bid in April 2021.
The reasons behind there being two incident reports, and the reasons behind the eight-month-long span of time listed on the first report aren’t known. But I would speculate (and that’s all it is) that the first alleged victim — an individual — reported some type of incident of theft to Prime, Inc. who then notified police in July of 2021 and launched their own internal investigation, discovered other alleged incidents, and then reported those other incidents to police as the second victim — the company itself — in September of 2021.
But I have no way to confirm this. Again, it is just an attempt to explain what may have been the sequence of events, not an explanation of what actually occurred.
All I can confirm are that two incident reports of theft were filed with the Springfield Police Department and that there is still an ongoing investigation by the SPD’s Financial Crimes Unit over a year later.
More below.
As I stated in my initial article, the incident reports and ongoing investigation do not mean that Alderman Hendrickson is guilty of having done what he is being investigated for.
But a related item at the top of his YouTube favorites, that he saved sometime prior to early October, may or may not offer some insight into his mindset over the past year:
An interview between two convicted and formerly imprisoned white collar criminals named Walt Pavlo and Matthew Cox, uploaded to YouTube by Mr. Cox in November 2021, a couple of months after the last incident report against Mr. Hendrickson was filed with police.
I watched the interview in full, and found it to be both interesting and enjoyable.
And with the True crime genre in documentaries, podcasts, and literature having reached the status of being nearly an American pastime, perhaps Mr. Hendrickson simply enjoyed the interview, too, and then decided to save it for later. In his defense, please bear in mind that he stated as recently as one week ago that he had no knowledge of any active embezzlement investigation at all.
The Board of Aldermen meets again tomorrow, Monday the 9th, at 7 p.m.
I am not, however, expecting a warm reception.
And under the circumstances, I probably shouldn’t be.
SPD’s full letter is below: