A former Springfield school district president, one time Congressional candidate, and area financial adviser had his appeal rejected for a reduced sentence on a fraud conviction.
Adam Lopez, who ran for Congress in the 2015 special election to fill the 15th District Seat vacated by the resignation of Aaron Schock, was arrested in early 2019 during a fraud investigation. According to the State Journal-Register in 2019, Lopez defrauded several clients, some of his own family members, out of more than $1.5 million dollars between April 2014 to September 2018. In June 2021, Lopez was sentenced to 11 years in prison, 3 years of mandatory supervised release, and ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution to Country Financial.
Due to credit for time served as well as good-time credit in the Illinois Department of Corrections, Lopez was released from prison in October after serving less than a year and a half in prison. Two days after Lopez’s sentencing a portion of the Illinois SAFE-T Act took effect, reducing mandatory supervised release times going forward. Lopez said the reduced time for supervised release should also apply to his case.
WMAY reports that an Illinois appeals court said that Lopez was properly sentenced under the law at that time and denied his appeal.