The north side of Downers Grove was buzzing with fuzz yesterday, causing some in the neighborhood to speculate that fugitive and alleged Ponzi-schemer David Hernandez had been discovered.
Hernandez is the Downers Grove resident who went missing Monday after the Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of breaking federal securities laws by lying about his background and his businesses.
Hernandez is accused of redirecting $11 million raised from his NextStep Financial Services investors into an internet radio station, other business ventures and personal expenditures. He told investors the money was being invested in consumer payday loans.
Federal mail fraud charges followed on Wednesday, and the FBI has been looking for Hernandez. But yesterday’s dragnet had nothing to do with the homegrown fugitive, said Sgt. David Bormann of the Downers Grove Police Dept.
“Ever since the federal warrant, we’ve taken a back seat,” he said. “The FBI is pursing him as a fugitive. We assisted with the information we had. Now it’s their investigation.”
The force was out in force Thursday after a resident reported an attempted burglary, Bormann said. No one has been apprehended in that case.
In other news, the DGPD made the lead of a June 14 Chicago Tribune story investigation into the reasons suburban police agencies decline to submit rape kits for DNA testing.
Information obtained by the paper through the Freedom of Information Act indicated rape kits went untested following nearly 100 sexual assault allegations over the past two years.
“As was reported, we look at each individual case and make a determination on each case,” Bormann said. “We don’t have a blanket policy and send all kits in.”
While the DGPD takes sexual assault very seriously and looks at all evidence, in most cases the victim refuses to press charges, he said.
“Why would you tie up resources by sending in a kit if there is no reason to do so?”
In the case reported by the Tribune, DG police never even spoke to the victim, Bormann said. “It was a third-party complaint. The victim made it clear that even if the offender was located she didn’t want to pursue anything. We attempted to speak to her. She did not want to.”
The vast majority of local rape cases involve a known person and a question of consent, he said. Rapes by unknown persons are “an extreme rarity” in Downers Grove. “An unknown person who comes out of the shadows is extremely rare.”
In one recent such case, the police identified a suspect jailed in southern Illinois and tested his toothbrush for a DNA match. The case is still in the courts.
Downers Grove sends its rape kits to the DuPage County Crime Lab, Bormann said. There is no cost to the department for processing the kits.
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