Bonus: The Hero (Candace Clark)

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Speaker 1 Hello again.

Speaker 2 Yep, we are still on break. Thanks for asking.
Never fear, season six is in the works and will begin airing this spring. We appreciate your patience.
I know you're thirsty.

Speaker 2 That's why I'm dropping in now to wet your whistle.

Speaker 2 I want to play for you a classic bonus episode called The Hero. It's about a serial scam artist in Chicago who uses some unorthodox methods to say the least.

Speaker 2 It's a weird one, but it has a great soundtrack. I think you'll agree.

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Speaker 2 What a bargain. Especially considering there will be new bonus episodes dropping throughout the break.
We already released one about Michael Guglilmucci, an Australian preacher with a porn addiction.

Speaker 2 And there's another coming out soon about Doc Gallagher, the Dallas, Texas muddy doctor convicted of running a Ponzi scheme. Both are worth a listen, and there's only one way how.

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Enjoy the show.

Speaker 3 This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 4 They bribe government officials by accounting to clear violations of that state law and earlier state unethical law.

Speaker 4 Tens of millions of dollars,

Speaker 5 billion dollars, dummied up its books and records to hide that.

Speaker 6 Good afternoon. I'm Michael.

Speaker 6 I'm here today representing the state of Illinois Recruitment Department. but more importantly, I'm here to share a little of who Candace Clark is and acknowledge her stellar accomplishments.

Speaker 6 Candice Clark was born and raised on the south side of Chicago.

Speaker 6 With a double major, she attended the University of Illinois in Chicago, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in criminology and psychology.

Speaker 6 She received her Master's of Business Administration from DePaul University. Throughout her educational years, Candace always focused on criminal justice and public service.

Speaker 2 On February 7th, 2019, Candace Clark made history. She became the first African-American woman to be sworn into office as the new director of special investigations for the state of Illinois.

Speaker 2 The appointment was the culmination of Clark's lifetime of community service and legal advocacy.

Speaker 2 She promised to end the backlog of rape kits, review cases against the Chicago Police Department, and work with the Innocence Project to free the wrongfully convicted.

Speaker 2 Candice Clark could not wait to get started. She was sworn in at a ceremony on May 4th of that year.

Speaker 2 Friends and family of the new director and state representatives gathered in attendance to wish her well on her new journey.

Speaker 6 On behalf of everyone present today, we would all like to congratulate you on your new positions. Congratulations.

Speaker 2 Following the introduction, brief speeches were given by representatives for the state of Illinois' archives and executive divisions, as well as a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Director Clark's former sorority.

Speaker 2 Before Director Clark herself took the stage with Bible in hand, Judge Jamie Newell did the honors.

Speaker 6 And repeat after me,

Speaker 6 I, Candace Clark. I, Candace Clark, do solemnly affirm

Speaker 6 that I will support the Constitution. That I will support the Constitution and the laws of the state of Illinois and the laws of the state of Illinois

Speaker 6 and all local ordinances and all local ordinances

Speaker 6 and that I will faithfully

Speaker 6 and impartially perform and impartially perform and discharge the duties and discharge the duties of the director of special investigation of the

Speaker 6 director of special investigation.

Speaker 6 That's all right.

Speaker 2 As the ceremony came to a close, Director Clark was given the opportunity to speak but did not have much to say for herself. She was almost overwhelmed with emotion.

Speaker 6 Good afternoon.

Speaker 6 I just want to thank everybody for coming and I'm so excited to go on my new journey.

Speaker 6 And I'm really looking forward to working with all the local agencies and hopefully writing a few wrongs along the way.

Speaker 2 Candice Clark was looking forward to spending her time writing a few wrongs in the state of Illinois' criminal justice system. Undoubtedly, a selfless, noble, and admirable endeavor.

Speaker 2 Some might even call Candace Clark a hero.

Speaker 2 There's a hero,

Speaker 2 you don't have to be afraid of what you are.

Speaker 2 There's an answer.

Speaker 2 Oh, you want some more?

Speaker 5 Alright, here you go.

Speaker 5 With the strength to carry on.

Speaker 5 And you've cast your fears aside,

Speaker 5 cause you know you can't survive.

Speaker 5 So when you feel like holding on,

Speaker 5 look inside your eyes.

Speaker 2 It's beautiful, huh?

Speaker 2 Director Candice Clark thought so too. So much so that Candace chose the singer, Suzanne Palmer, to sing that song again at her next swearing-in ceremony a few weeks later.

Speaker 7 And then a hero comes along.

Speaker 2 And then again, a month later.

Speaker 7 And then a hero comes along.

Speaker 2 This woman knows how to party. Multiple swearing-in ceremonies for the same person, for the same position.

Speaker 2 And besides a few minor edits to the order, the processions were almost identical. This guy would speak.
My name is Aaron, and I am representing the state of Illinois Special Services Department.

Speaker 2 And then this guy would speak.

Speaker 5 I'm Carmen.

Speaker 8 I'm here representing the Illinois Executive Branches and Judicial Committee, as well as the Secretary of State.

Speaker 2 Sometimes a sorority sister would show up.

Speaker 6 My name is Faith, and I'm here on behalf of the AKA sorority.

Speaker 2 And then Judge Jamie Newell would arrive, and Candace, again, would swear in on the Bible, just in case God didn't hear her the first time.

Speaker 2 To close the ceremony, Candace would stand behind the podium and feign surprise at the amount of support and festivities.

Speaker 6 I was not expecting all of this today.

Speaker 6 I wasn't prepared.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 I'm not going to speak very long because all of the people that came up today really said the words that I wanted to say.

Speaker 2 But the truth was that there was no director of special investigations position at the state of Illinois. The ceremonies were an elaborate hoax produced by Clark herself.

Speaker 2 The presenters were actors, the audience extras. Everything was scripted and make-believe, including Candace Clark's background story that was oft repeated.

Speaker 2 Candace was not an accomplished double major in psychology and criminology.

Speaker 2 There was no record of her attendance at the University of Illinois at Chicago, nor had she actually received received a master's degree from DePaul University.

Speaker 2 She was also never a United Nations attaché, a position for which she had also sworn in at a bogus ceremony and repeatedly promoted on her resume.

Speaker 2 And none of the volunteer organizations where she claimed to have served had even heard of her.

Speaker 2 But the lies were perpetuated, ceremony after ceremony, for reasons that are not entirely clear, by actors and actresses who were never paid for their roles.

Speaker 2 Because Candace Clark never paid anybody, she was a lifelong con artist and liar.

Speaker 2 But true to her public claims, the future fake director of special investigations had grown up on the south side of Chicago, where she had attended Percy Julian High School.

Speaker 2 As a student, then Candace Dixon was very involved. She has featured prominently in the school's 1987 yearbook.
as part of the fashion club and the math busters team.

Speaker 2 But most of Candace Clark's classmates remember her as 1987's Miss Teen Illinois. Candace made sure to let everybody know.

Speaker 2 Her yearbook portrait in which she's wearing a crown and a sash proclaiming that fact are proof. However,

Speaker 10 the 51 candidates for the title of Miss Teen USA 1987.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, there are those who combine working out with fun on the trampoline, like Danielle Reese, Miss Illinois.

Speaker 2 Never happened. The real 1987 Miss Teen Illinois was Danielle Reese, who was introduced to the world jumping on a trampoline and into the hearts of the creepy viewers at home.

Speaker 2 But this was the pre-internet Stone Age, so Candace's classmates had no easily accessible way of disproving her story.

Speaker 2 It would be years later before those that remembered her would finally see the truth. One of those people was Stanita Ware.

Speaker 2 In the late 90s, Miss Ware was a college student with a two-year-old son, trying to balance competing priorities while securing a future for herself.

Speaker 2 Then she met Candace Clark, an employee at a non-profit organization that was dedicated to helping young mothers purchase their first homes. She seemed caring, outgoing.

Speaker 2 It was awesome, Stanita told CBS Chicago. She seemed like she really cared about my life.

Speaker 2 Stanita Ware and two friends eventually gave Clark a total of $5,000 in exchange for helping them secure housing.

Speaker 2 Ware also gave Candice Clark a speech of praise at a forensics department appreciation brunch in October 2000 that was being held in her honor, of course.

Speaker 2 But the days passed and neither Stanita nor her friends received any assistance from Candace Clark. In fact, she disappeared.

Speaker 2 So Stanita Ware and two other women filed a report with the Hazelcrest Police Department, but nothing ever came of it.

Speaker 2 Another police report was filed on Candice Clark by a different woman in 2007.

Speaker 2 Candace told the woman that she was a law enforcement officer and that she was selling goods and merchandise that she had confiscated and seized from drug dealers.

Speaker 2 The woman told the real police that she had given Candace six grand, but received nothing in return.

Speaker 2 Candace was arrested and charged with felonies related to theft and impersonating a police officer, but was released on probation, ordered to pay restitution and fines, and to perform community service.

Speaker 2 She was released back onto the streets of Chicago, having served no significant time behind bars.

Speaker 2 And that trend would continue when in 2010, she was arrested for buying a $6,000 used car with a bad check.

Speaker 2 She was convicted and fined $730 and 30 months of probation, which Candace would violate within a year for bouncing another check, this time for $2,040 to pay rent.

Speaker 2 something she swore to never do again.

Speaker 2 Soon after, Candace Clark hatched a new scheme. She created fake pay stubs, fake background checks, and fake credit reports to apply for rental leases at luxury properties in various Chicago suburbs.

Speaker 2 Thanks to her phony documentation, Candace Clark was almost always accepted as a tenant, but Candace Clark almost never paid.

Speaker 2 And if you've ever met a blood-sucking parasite known as a landlord, then you've probably heard them complain through their fangs about how the process to evict a tenant moves at a glacial pace.

Speaker 2 Candace was aware of this too. She would stay in their residences for as long as possible while the property owner gathered the legal resources to remove her.

Speaker 2 And right as the heat in the metaphorical kitchen became too much to bear, Candace would pack up her kitchen and a living room and whatever else and move into the next place she had been accepted into on false grounds.

Speaker 2 Candace Clark must have been so pleased with herself. Her success in real estate must have sparked an idea.

Speaker 2 In 2014, Candace befriended a woman named Darlene Simmons, who confided that she was struggling to raise her children alone in a bad neighborhood while her husband was overseas serving in the military.

Speaker 2 Darlene's car tires had been slashed and its windows smashed. Her son's life had been threatened, and there was no way out.
Not with the credit score she had.

Speaker 2 Darlene Simmons was unworthy of trust in the eyes of America's favorite social credit system. But then, just when she felt like hope was gone, a hero came along.

Speaker 2 Candace Clark, the self-proclaimed budding restaurateur, owner of several rental properties in the greater Chicago metropolitan area, and possessor of excellent credit, was here to help.

Speaker 2 Candace Clark promised to find a new place for the Simmons family.

Speaker 2 Darlene told CBS2 Chicago, quote, My credit was bad, and so she was going to purchase the property with my money, and then the following year, she'll have it turned over in my name.

Speaker 2 I felt she was on the up and up

Speaker 2 but as Darlene would soon find out over the next year and a half after draining every penny from her 401k Candace Clark was not on the up and up.

Speaker 2 Darlene Simmons gave Candace $65,000 to purchase a new home. She also gave Clark another $8,000 to secure a wedding venue for her daughter.
Neither ever happened.

Speaker 11 She's a devil. That 401k, I worked 40 years at the Tribune 4.

Speaker 11 40 years to have it taken from me. How could you do that?

Speaker 2 In 2016, Darlene Simmons filed a consumer complaint against Candace Clark to the Illinois Attorney General.

Speaker 2 The following year, she filed a consumer fraud lawsuit, but that case was dismissed when Candace Clark could not be served a notice to appear.

Speaker 2 Her habitual house swapping made it difficult to track her down, but someone eventually did.

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Speaker 9 I went undercover at one of the ceremonies looking for answers. My iPhone video is a little shaky because I'm nervous as Clark is walking toward me.
I think I've been made.

Speaker 9 I'm sorry, but this is supposed to be an invitation on me. She couldn't figure out how she knew me, but she knew she didn't hire me.
She politely asked me to leave.

Speaker 9 And we don't even know who invited you.

Speaker 9 I was kicked out.

Speaker 2 As part of a CBS2 investigation, in January 2020, veteran reporter Dorothy Tucker found Candace Clark manufacturing praise for herself at one of her phony ceremonies.

Speaker 2 Knowing that everyone in the audience was someone whom she had hired, Candace quickly identified Dorothy as an unwanted guest and had her removed.

Speaker 2 But when the ceremony came to a close and Candace Clark headed for the exits, Dorothy Tucker cast her fears aside and waited to confront the con woman in the lobby.

Speaker 9 are accused of stealing $65,000 to $70,000 from Darlene Simmons. What?

Speaker 9 Yeah. Yeah, she says that you were a fraud, that you were also here trying to defraud these people who are a member of this religious organization.

Speaker 9 Can you tell me what's going on?

Speaker 9 All of these people in here, we understand, are actors. We know that the last ones you've had in the past have all been actors.

Speaker 7 You've paid the pay to show up.

Speaker 9 So what are you doing?

Speaker 7 What are you doing?

Speaker 9 What are you doing here?

Speaker 9 You took advantage of Ms. Semit.
You was a senior citizen. There's a civil suit against you.
People were trying to find you. Out of my face.

Speaker 2 Can you guys stop?

Speaker 9 No, I'd like her to answer some questions.

Speaker 7 I'm going to ask you for the last time that please stop. Go ahead.

Speaker 9 Candace?

Speaker 7 She's in downstairs.

Speaker 2 Dorothy Tucker had uncovered everything and broadcasted it on the local news. She knew that Candace's ceremonies were a hoax.
She knew about Darlene Simmons and Stanita Ware.

Speaker 2 She knew about the prior felonies and bouncing checks and impersonating law enforcement. And Dorothy Tucker knew about the property squatting.

Speaker 2 In fact, Tucker had tracked down Candace Clark's current landlord, who was not being paid.

Speaker 2 Fiori Hedera claimed that in the fall of 2019, Clark had signed a lease to pay $9,000 a month to live in her $2.5 million five-bedroom Lincoln Park home.

Speaker 2 Hadera told Tucker that by the time it was discovered that the documentation Candace had submitted was phony, including a stolen social security number, she had already been handed the keys.

Speaker 2 And of course, Candace never paid a dime. And in early 2020, she was still living there while owing 30 grand in back rent.

Speaker 2 But Fiori Hedera found the strength to carry on and finally obtained a legal authority to reclaim her property. Dorothy Tucker rode along as the authorities moved to evict.

Speaker 2 But Candace Clark was gone. The place reeked of cigarette smoke, rotten food, and dog shit.

Speaker 2 There were dirty mattresses and liquor bottles on the floor, and a printer in the garage with more than 20 fake checks from Bank of America. Candace Clark must have left in a hurry.

Speaker 2 CBS2 and Dorothy Tucker's investigation revealed that since 2008, Candace Clark had been evicted from 23 different locations. She had cheated landlords out of more than $200,000.

Speaker 2 They also identified 86 people and companies that she had scammed. All told, more than $469,000 had been lost to Candace Clark.
And she wasn't done there.

Speaker 2 Investigators had learned that Candace was in the process of securing another home, but someone else already had a room waiting for her.

Speaker 12 Clark is the closest thing we have seen to a real life catch-me if you can, conning senior citizens out of cash, landlords out of housing and rent money, and posing as a high-ranking state official.

Speaker 12 She went to great extremes to pull off remarkable stunts. She was arrested at 10.20 this morning at a Starbucks in the Gold Coast.

Speaker 2 Candace Clark was arrested on January 17th, 2020. The U.S.
Marshals and Chicago Financial Crimes Unit tracked her to a Starbucks by calling her phone.

Speaker 2 Candace had several fake IDs in her possession at the time of her arrest.

Speaker 9 Candice, don't you want to say something to all of those people who are accusing you of ripping them off? You know, you can have evidence to say that you're wrong.

Speaker 2 Candice Clark faces five felony charges, four counts of theft by deception, and one charge of false representation of a government employee.

Speaker 2 She faces a potential prison sentence ranging from one to ten years.

Speaker 2 In November 2020, Candice Clark had posted Bond and fired her attorney. She awaits trial at home, wherever that may be.

Speaker 2 Candace was last seen in virtual court over Zoom, broadcasting from her unkempt bed. Sometimes a hero lies in you.
Sometimes a hero just lies.

Speaker 2 Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka DeFormer.

Speaker 2 For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at SwindledPodcast. Or you can send us a postcard at P.O.

Speaker 2 Box6044, Austin, Texas, 78762. But please, no packages.
We do not trust you.

Speaker 2 Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy moneymen, no heroes, and we plan to keep it that way. But we need your support.

Speaker 2 Become a valued listener at patreon.com slash swindled or on Apple Podcast.

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That's it.

Speaker 2 Thanks for listening. Season six, coming soon.

Speaker 2 And then a hero runs along

Speaker 2 with the strength of carry on.

Speaker 2 And you cast your fear aside.

Speaker 2 And you know you can't survive.

Speaker 2 But when you feel and hope is long,

Speaker 2 there's love inside your head.

Speaker 13 My name is Amanda from Colorado Springs, Colorado. My name is Dawan, and I'm from Houston, Texas.
My name is Jofflin from Carson, California.

Speaker 13 That's Carson with a C because I'm a concerned citizen and a valued listener.

Speaker 14 What do you think makes the perfect snack?

Speaker 15 Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

Speaker 14 Could you be more specific? When it's convenient. Okay.

Speaker 14 Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right now in the street at AM PM, or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at AM PM. I'm seeing a pattern here.

Speaker 14 Well, yeah, we're talking about what I crave.

Speaker 9 Which is anything from AM PM?

Speaker 14 What more could you want?

Speaker 15 Stop by AMPM, where the snacks and drinks are perfectly cravable and convenient. That's cravenience.
AMPM, too much good stuff.