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SYCAMORE - Businessman Ryan Weckerly of MorningStar Media is scheduled to be sentenced Friday by a federal Wisconsin judge after he pleaded guilty in November to charges related a $3 million tax evasion and fraud scheme with a former Wisconsin hospital executive.
Weckerly, a Sycamore resident who’s president and CEO of MorningStar Media Group in Sycamore, is expected to go before U.S. District Judge William Conley for a sentencing hearing at 1 p.m. at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin in the federal courthouse in Madison, Wisconsin.
Weckerly, 47, faces up to 23 years in jail since federal wire fraud charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. Aiding and abetting a false income tax return could bring three years in prison.
At the sentencing, Weckerly will be required to pay the IRS back taxes, including through asset seizure, immediately, records show. Weckerly’s sentencing hearing initially was scheduled for May 17. However, a continuance was approved by Conley at the request of Weckerly’s lawyer and federal prosecutors to allow for more time to determine how much restitution Weckerly will be required to pay.
Weckerly pleaded guilty Nov. 4 to charges of wire fraud and aiding and abetting a false income tax return. Federal prosecutors said Weckerly took part in a five-year scheme dating back to 2015 with former Mercyhealth vice president of marketing and communications Barbara Bortner, 57, to defraud Janesville, Wisconsin-based health system Mercyhealth out of $3 million.
Prosecutors alleged that Weckerly and Bortner falsified tax documents and sent inflated invoices, shuffling large sums of money throughout multiple bank accounts for years. Weckerly would submit inflated invoices for marketing work at Mercyhealth, and Bortner would receive kickbacks in return through MorningStar Media Group, which served as the health systems’ primary ad agency.
During his plea hearing, Weckerly, who has been free on supervised release throughout the case proceedings, also was ordered to provide a DNA sample to the U.S. Marshals office and forfeit his passport.
Weckerly is represented by Chicago-based attorney Steven Greenberg.
Former Wisconsin hospital exec to serve time in same prison as ‘Orange is the New Black’ author
Bortner of Milton, Wisconsin, was sentenced by Conley on May 5 to 3½ years in federal prison for her role in the kickback scheme, according to federal court documents. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud and tax invasion charges in front of Conley on Oct. 14, records show.
Mercyhealth is a regional health care provider based in Janesville, Wisconsin, that has hospitals in Rockford and Harvard and another in the works in Crystal Lake.
She will voluntarily surrender herself to begin her prison sentence at a Connecticut federal corrections institution between noon and 2 p.m. Aug. 2, records show.
A request by Bortner’s lawyers to serve her sentence at FCI-Danbury in Connecticut instead of the initially assigned FCI-Pekin in Pekin, Illinois, was granted by Conley on June 6, records show. Piper Kerman, author of “Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison”, also served her sentence at FCI-Danbury. The Netflix television show “Orange is the New Black” was based on Kerman’s book.
Bortner’s desire to serve her sentence at the Danbury minimum corrections facility was so she can receive substance abuse counseling, according to a motion filed May 31 by her Milwaukee-based lawyers Thomas Brown and Kisten Nelsen. While in prison, Bortner will participate in the Residential Drug Abuse program made available to federal prisoners at the Connecticut facility.
[Feds charge Sycamore-based MorningStar Media owner in $3M kickback scheme with ex-hospital executive]
Bortner was fired from the health system before the charges were announced Sept. 1, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Chronicle sent by Mercyhealth President and CEO Javon Bea. According to records from the Illinois Secretary of State’s Office, Weckerly was listed as the president of MorningStar as of 2021 for the corporation.
According to the proposed plea agreements outlined in federal court documents, Bortner agreed that she owes the Internal Service Revenue more than $777,000 in restitution. Weckerly has agreed he owes the IRS $30,419 in restitution, according to court records. They both agreed that the total amount of the scheme came out to about $3.14 million from February 2015 to mid-2020.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated as of Monday, June 20, 2022 to correct a previous version that reported Ryan Weckerly was a co-owner of his wife’s coffee business.