April 29, 2022
Top Whitmer Donor Pleads Guilty to Tax Evasion
Lansing, Mich., April 29, 2022 – Earlier this week, East Lansing developer Scott Chappelle plead guilty to tax evasion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. The Lansing State Journal reports:
“Judge Jane Beckering of the U.S. District Court Western District of Michigan issued a hearing notice Tuesday, setting Chappelle’s sentencing on Aug. 2. His guilty plea relates to a June 3, 2020 indictment in which federal authorities accused him of evading payment of $830,000 in taxes and committing mortgage fraud.”
Scott Chappelle, a well-known local businessman, is also a top donor to Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other Democratic candidates. Since 2003, Chappelle has donated $18,450 to Whitmer’s candidate committees, including a $10,000 contribution in 2021 that exceeded Michigan campaign contribution limits. In the last four years alone, Chappelle donated over $10,000 to national organizations including Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign.
“Despite Chappelle’s claims of struggling during an economic downturn, he had plenty of resources to ingratiate himself with state and federal powerbrokers,” said Eric Ventimiglia, Executive Director for Michigan Rising Action. Ventimiglia continued, “You are the friends you keep, and in Gretchen Whitmer’s case, it’s a tax cheat who owes almost a million dollars to the IRS.”