Ryan Weckerly, 48, Sycamore, Illinois, was sentenced to 12 months and 1 day in federal prison for wire fraud and aiding in the preparation of a false tax return. The prison sentence will be followed by 6 months of home confinement and 2 ½ years of supervised release. Weckerly is the owner of two marketing agencies based in Sycamore, Illinois — Morningstar Media Group, and Morningstar Interactive, which did business as Invironments Magazine.
The government’s investigation revealed that between 2015 and 2020, Weckerly and co-defendant Barbara Bortner engaged in a kickback scheme in which Weckerly submitted inflated invoices to Bortner for his marketing work for Mercyhealth. During the scheme, Bortner was the Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations at Mercyhealth in Janesville. Once Bortner approved his marketing invoices, Weckerly received payments from Mercyhealth and provided money to Bortner using either cash or checks. In return for the payments, Bortner agreed to use Weckerly’s business, Morningstar Media Group, as the primary marketing agency for Mercyhealth. In order to disguise the true nature of the kickback payments, Bortner created a fictitious company named WeInspire LLC.
During the timeframe of the kickback scheme, Weckerly wrote over 103 checks to WeInspire LLC from one of his business accounts. The cumulative total of these checks was $2,051,975. In addition, bank records show that Weckerly provided Bortner with over $1,000,000 in cash kickback payments. At the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, Judge Conley ordered Weckerly and Bortner to pay $2,428,275 in restitution to Mercyhealth. Bortner was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison for her role in the offense by Judge Conley on May 2, 2022.
