Chicago Archdiocese sues over ‘racketeering scheme’ involving false sex abuse claims

Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. / Credit: Edlane De Mattos/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Mar 26, 2025 / 11:20 am (CNA).

The Archdiocese of Chicago this week filed a lawsuit alleging a “racketeering enterprise” among a group of individuals who reportedly filed false abuse claims against a former priest to receive compensation from the Church there. 

The archdiocese said in a Monday statement that it had filed a lawsuit in Cook County circuit court “seeking injunctive relief and damages from participants of a wide-ranging racketeering scheme” that reportedly involved “more than a dozen” fraudulent abuse claims against disgraced former priest Daniel McCormack, who spent more than a decade in prison after pleading guilty to abusing young children.

Lawyers for the diocese did not respond to requests for comment and for a copy of the lawsuit on Wednesday morning. The diocese said in its press release that some of the participants in the alleged scheme are “convicted felons and known gang members,” including allegedly one convicted murderer.

The alleged fraudulent claimants are “associated by gang affiliation, friendship, or family,” the archdiocese said, with the conspirators reportedly working together to determine “what to say, how to pursue a false claim, how to embellish purported injuries, and how to reach attorneys.”

Some of the alleged fraudsters reportedly discussed the scams on prison phone calls. One of the defendants reportedly told a fellow conspirator that he did not go to MCormack’s church and “wasn’t even in” any programs involved with him, and yet he he still received compensation. 

The Cook County circuit court has already ruled on two other fraudulent abuse cases, the archdiocese said. The filing “reflects the breadth of the fraud and seeks to expose the conspiracy that has become a criminal enterprise for those involved,” the statement said. 

“False claims make it necessary to investigate all claims more aggressively, which places a greater burden on true survivors,” archdiocesan attorney James Geoly said. 

“Our attention is directed toward survivors, not fraudsters seeking to gain financially from others’ pain and suffering,” he added. 

McCormack pleaded guilty in 2007 to multiple abuse charges. He served a sentence in prison and was then remanded to a state facility for sex offenders. 

He was released from custody in 2021 and currently lives in Chicago, where he is registered as a sex offender. The Illinois attorney general’s office described him as “one of the most infamous child abusers anywhere in Illinois.”