Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was indicted Thursday for allegedly structuring cash bank withdrawals of funds he used to “conceal his prior misconduct” against an unnamed individual and for lying to the FBI about the arrangement.

A federal grand jury in Chicago charged Hastert, 73, with withdrawing $1.7 million in cash from several banks over four years — with many of those withdrawals in amounts designed to avoid triggering federal reporting rules.


Rumors that Hastert had serious legal problems were bouncing around the Capitol in recent weeks. In an interview with POLITICO last week, Hastert, the longest-serving Republican House speaker in U.S. history, denied that he had problems with the IRS and denied that he was about to be indicted.

“I read what you heard, but that’s not correct,” Hastert told POLITICO when asked about problems with the IRS. “I’m not going to talk to you.”

When a POLITICO reporter told Hastert in a phone interview that he was about to be indicted, he said, “Well, it’s not true.”

“I’m not speaking to you right now, thanks,” Hastert said, before hanging up.

The indictment, based on an investigation that began in 2013, does not specify the nature of the prior misconduct but alleged it involved activities from “years earlier.”

The individual who received the payments has been a resident of Yorkville, Ill., and has known Hastert for most of that person’s life, the indictment says.

The indictment begins by noting that Hastert worked as a high school teacher and coach in Yorkville before he was elected to the Illinois House and then the U.S. House. The charges don’t say how — or whether — Hastert’s work at the Yorkville school is related to the alleged payment scheme.

Prosecutors charge that Hastert struck a deal with someone referred to as “Individual A” in 2010, agreeing to pay “$3.5 million in order to compensate for and conceal [Hastert’s] prior misconduct against Individual A.”

From 2010 to 2012, the former speaker made 15 withdrawals of $50,000 in cash from accounts at several banks and paid the cash to the individual every six weeks, the charges allege.

In 2012, bank representatives “questioned” Hastert about the withdrawals, according to the indictment. Shortly thereafter, the former speaker began withdrawing cash in increments of less than $10,000.

“He had been withdrawing cash in increments of less than $10,000 to evade currency transaction reporting requirements because he wanted his agreement to compensate Individual A to remain secret so as to cover up his past misconduct,” the indictment says.

And in December 2014, the indictment says, Hastert lied about the payments to the FBI.

“Specifically, in response to the agents’ question confirming whether the purpose of the withdrawals was to store cash because he did not feel safe with the banking system, as he previously indicated, [Hastert] stated: ‘Yeah … I kept the cash. That’s what I’m doing,’” the indictment alleges.

Each of the two felony counts in the indictment carries a potential 5-year prison term and a $250,000 fine. If convicted, defendants usually get lighter sentences, particularly when they have no prior criminal record.

Hastert’s case was assigned Thursday to U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Durkin, an appointee of President Barack Obama. The former speaker was apparently not arrested. A statement from the U.S. attorney’s office said he would be arraigned at a later date.

Hastert was elected to the House in 1986 and served as speaker from 1999 to 2007. He lost the speaker’s post when Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006. That loss was partly blamed on perceptions that Hastert failed to respond aggressively enough to inappropriate text messages Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) exchanged with an intern.

Hastert resigned from Congress in 2007 and opened a lobbying firm, Hastert & Associates. While not a lawyer, he also signed on with a Washington-based law and lobbying firm, Dickstein Shapiro.

Hastert’s biography was removed from the firm’s website Thursday. In a statement issued late Thursday, a Dickstein Shapiro spokesman said only that “Dennis Hastert has resigned from the firm.” Hastert also resigned Thursday from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange board, according to reports.

Structuring is a crime involving efforts to avoid the Bank Secrecy Act’s reporting requirements. The law says that when taxpayers withdraw or deposit cash in amounts of $10,000 or more, they must file a Currency Transaction Report with the IRS. Those trying to skirt the reporting rules often withdraw or deposit sums under $10,000.

But deliberately evading reporting on cash transactions can trigger probes by the Department of Justice, which can freeze and seize the taxpayer’s assets.

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors could only get a conviction in a structuring case if they proved a defendant knew his or her conduct was illegal. Congress acted that same year to reverse the decision, passing a law that said prosecutors need only show an intent to evade the reporting requirements.

The indictment against Hastert suggests that he was put on notice about the reporting requirements by bank officials in 2012 and took his subsequent actions in a deliberate effort to avoid them.

Structuring, or concerns about the practice have been the downfall of powerful political figures before, including former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Reports on some of Spitzer’s cash withdrawals caught the attention of authorities. Investigators were concerned that an extortion scheme might be underway, but eventually concluded Spitzer was using the cash he withdrew to pay for prostitutes.

Spitzer was never charged, but resigned from office.

While structuring charges are routinely used in cases involving drug proceeds and tax evasion, federal prosecutors have come under fire in recent years for pursuing structuring cases where no charges of other criminal conduct are leveled.

In a court ruling last year, the Chicago-based 7 th Circuit raised questions about federal authorities’ aggressive use of the structuring law in a case involving a Russian immigrant who made a series of deposits of less than $10,000 in connection with purchase of a new home. The deposits drew suspicion at a bank because the money smelled “musty.”

“On the present record…this case shows every sign of being an overzealous prosecution for a technical violation of a criminal regulatory statute—the kind of rigid and severe exercise of law-enforcement discretion that would make Inspector Javert proud,” Judge Diane Sykes wrote.

Jake Sherman contributed to this report.