Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced on Saturday, November 14, that a 75-year-old Chicago woman has been charged with stealing more than $100,000 from the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund — pension money that belonged to her late mother, a retired educator who died in October 1991.

Source: Illinois Attorney General's Office via EIN Presswire

The accused is Lynn Stevenson, 75, of Chicago. Raoul's office alleges that over the course of 29 years, Stevenson fraudulently obtained pension payments that were meant for her mother, collected the money the fund kept paying out, and spent it on her own personal expenses.

Stevenson faces 14 counts in total. The most serious are two counts of theft and one count of misappropriation of financial institution property, each a Class 1 felony in Illinois punishable by up to 15 years in prison. She also faces one count of misappropriation of financial institution property as a Class 2 felony, punishable by up to seven years, and 10 counts of forgery, each a Class 3 felony punishable by up to five years. The Attorney General's office noted that sentences are ultimately determined by the court.

How the case reached prosecutors

The Attorney General's office is prosecuting the case after a referral from the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund itself, the fund that pays retirement benefits to Chicago public school teachers and staff. Assistant Attorney General Samantha Cain is prosecuting the case for Raoul's Special Prosecutions Bureau.

Cases of this kind usually turn on a simple failure at the start: when a pensioner dies, the fund has to be told, so payments stop. Prosecutors allege that here the payments kept flowing for nearly three decades after the mother's death in 1991 — and that Stevenson kept collecting and spending them instead of reporting the death. The charges are allegations: Stevenson is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, a reminder the Attorney General's office included in its own announcement.

Not the first case of its kind from this fund

The same prosecutor's office won a conviction in a closely similar Chicago Teachers Pension Fund case earlier this year. In March 2026, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Alfredo Maldonado found Atara Young, 55, of Chicago guilty of misappropriation of financial institution property and forgery after Raoul's office determined the fund was never notified of her mother Shirleen Williams' death in September 2008. More than $100,000 was deposited into Williams' account after her death and had all been spent by July 2018; prosecutors said Young wrote cheques to herself from the account between 2014 and 2016, signing them as Williams. That case, prosecuted by the same Assistant Attorney General, Samantha Cain, also began with a referral from the pension fund.

For Punjabi and other immigrant families in the Chicago area, the case is a practical warning as much as a crime story: pensions, in the United States and back home in India, stop at death, and any payment received afterwards has to be returned. Families who keep receiving — and spending — a deceased parent's pension can face felony charges years later, even when the amounts arrived quietly, month by month.

What happens next

Stevenson's next court date is scheduled for January 28, 2027. Between now and then, the case will move through the early stages of the Cook County court process, where she can enter a plea and the court will set the timetable toward trial or a negotiated outcome. If convicted on the Class 1 felony counts alone, she faces up to 15 years in prison per count, though the final sentence would be set by the court.

Sources: Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul's office, announcement of November 14, 2026 (distributed via EIN Presswire); Illinois Attorney General's office, March 2026 conviction release in the Atara Young case.