A convicted scam artist and wannabe rapper has been sentenced to probation for allegedly threatening public officials in YouTube posts and emails, including a top aide to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
Eric “Chicago Blaxican” Jaglicic was initially held on $1 million bail when prosecutors filed charges of threatening a public official, intimidation, and electronic harassment last July.
Now, Jaglicic is serving two years of mental health probation, the first six months on electronic monitoring, after he pleaded guilty to a single count of intimidation, court records show. Prosecutors dropped all other charges in the plea deal.
Judge Diana Kenworthy also ordered Jaglicic not to possess any weapons or leave the state without permission.
Prosecutors last summer said Jaglicic sent multiple emails to Raoul’s chief deputy asking for his office to launch a wrongful prosecution investigation to clear his name in connection with a fraud scheme that earned Jaglicic a six-year prison term in 2008.
The content of Jaglicic’s emails “went from desperate and disgruntled to angry and threatening,” Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said.
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Jaglicic’s emails included name-calling and contained links to threatening videos, Murphy said. One allegedly threatening video included a photo of a building that appears to be the deputy chief’s residence, according to Murphy.
Jaglicic allegedly gave the deputy chief until noon on Wednesday, July 22, to resolve the situation, or he’d go “directly to [former Illinois Attorney General] Lisa Madigan’s house with my people. If I die, it is OK. I died for a good cause.” Jaglicic’s email “mentions dangerous people he works for and says they will go to great lengths to harm Lisa Madigan’s family,” Murphy said.
During an interview with detectives, he admitted to sending emails to the deputy chief. Still, he claimed that someone hacked into the messages after they were sent to add threatening content, according to Murphy.
Scott Finger, a public defender who represented Jaglicic in court Friday, said Jaglicic claims to have a personal relationship with Chicago Police Supt. David Brown. Finger pointed to Brown’s appearance in Jaglicic’s recent music videos as “proof” of the relationship.
CWBChicago previously reported that Brown’s appearance in the video amounted to nothing more than surveillance camera footage of the superintendent arriving at Jaglicic’s home and sitting in his recording studio where Jaglicic had recorded interviews with an alderman, a judge, and a community activist.
The Chicago Police Department declined to comment when CWBChicago asked why Brown was at Jaglicic’s home. A department spokesperson said markings on police equipment that Jaglicic used in his music videos “do not look authentic.” A source said Jaglicic filmed the video on a lot where the “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago PD” television shows store props.
Those videos have been removed from Jaglicic’s YouTube channel.
Jaglicic pleaded guilty in 2008 to swindling $1.6 million from people who thought they were investing in an Adam Sandler movie called “The Record Deal.” During the earlier case, prosecutors said was no such movie project existed, and Jaglicic used the money for his own purposes.
He also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in connection with the case, resulting in an additional two-year sentence that was served concurrently with the six-year term he received for the securities fraud case.
The movie scam was the focus of a 2014 installment of CNBC’s “American Greed” crime series.
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