Three Lake County correctional officers recently found themselves behind bars after being accused of a scheme to receive childcare assistance through forged paystubs.
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Correctional officers Keonna Phillips, Kyre Rucker and Erin Mack, who all worked the same shift at the Lake County Jail, were taken into custody and booked into the jail after warrants were issued for their arrest Wednesday, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, their employer.
Phillips and Rucker were arrested on charges of social welfare fraud, while Mack was arrested as an accessory to the alleged crime. All three are currently on suspension without pay while termination procedures are underway, the sheriff’s office said in a Thursday news release.
The investigation began after Phillips applied to the Early Learning Coalition of Lake County, an organization that provides financial assistance for childcare costs using federal and state grant funding.
The organization contacted the sheriff’s office after noticing discrepancies in the paystubs Phillips submitted, which led them to review documents given by other sheriff’s office employees who were already receiving their services, including Rucker’s. This led them to notice inconsistencies in the Rucker’s paystubs as well, according to an arrest affidavit.
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Their paystubs, for example, each had different colored backgrounds, and they sometimes showed the same employee ID number for both women. One also indicated one of the women was earning less in 2026 than she did in 2024. The sheriff’s office also noticed some paystubs were from an employee management system the agency no longer used, the affidavit said.
Investigators ultimately compared the submitted paystubs with internal sheriff’s office financial records and determined them to be “obvious forgeries” and that pay rates, take-home pay and ID numbers had been altered, according to the agency’s release.
One of the paystubs submitted by Rucker was a copy of a real paystub that belonged to Mack. When deputies first spoke to Mack, she said she may have sent Rucker a copy. When the investigator left her home, she called him back five minutes later and admitted to forging three paystubs for Rucker, the affidavit said. She said she used her phone, which could edit PDFs, to alter some of the paystubs.
All three were booked into the jail with a $2,500 bond, the sheriff’s office said. None appeared in the jail’s list of current inmates as of Thursday evening.
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