Monet Wilson’s Troubling PPP Loan Matter

January 29, 2025

As we reported, Alderwoman Monet Wilson took a total of five PPP loans from the Payroll Protection Program designed to extend income to working people during the covid-19 pandemic. Given this matter is at issue in this election cycle, it is timely to represent the publicly available data for voters in this election.

The amount paid out to Wilson totaled $247,000. In order to receive this significant sum from the program, payroll during the program measurement year of 2019 in the amount of $1,186,390 dollars would had to have been paid out to employees by Wilson.

During 2019, Wilson was employed full time at the Illinois Department of Corrections. It is also 2019 for which Wilson claimed to have five different operational business and non profit entities, purported to have been operated from her single family home in the 2nd ward and had over $1 million in payroll expenses.

On the loan applications according to SBA data, Wilson claimed three sole proprietorships: a graphic design firm, a cosmetics firm and a sports recreation instruction provider. She also claimed to have a non-profit named “1976” and took PPP money based on an known non-profit entity.

There are many conflicts here.

We could not locate a business license for any of the sole proprietorships or a filing with the Illinois Secretary of State for those sole proprietorships. The non-profit named “1976” would have required a publicly filed form 990. A search at GuideStar did not return results for an entity with this name operating in Calumet City. A search of the IRS database yielded similarly empty results.

Wilson is a part operator of a laudable non-profit entity that provides sports and recreation instruction to youth. The PPP loan corresponding to the non-profit extended $30,000 to Wilson based on claimed payroll expenses to two employees in the amount of $144,000. The form 990 for the non-profit in the program year of 2019 did not indicate any paid employees. Donations totaled just $22k for the year and was used for various expenses according to the filing.

The claimed sports and recreation instruction sole proprietorship that paid a computed $290k in payroll expenses per the SBA data, did not appear on Wilson’s statement of economic interest statement, did not have a business license or an IL Secretary of State filing. Per the SBA data, there was a loan granted for both a sports and recreation instruction non-profit as described above and a sports and recreation instruction sole proprietorship.

In a statement, Wilson claims, ”in my basement, there are several rooms. There is door B, where we do graphic design and custom apparel. Half of that room also houses my cosmetics line. Door C is the gym, and we had students come in and train there. The top of our house is really for family. We may utilize our living room to coordinate boxes and things for our non-profit.”

Wilson’s statement did not include the name of anyone who confirmed to have been on the payroll for her purported for profit or non-profit entities. Nor did her statement address why there were no IL SOS filings, business licenses or inclusion on her required candidate statement of economic interest.

If Wilson decides to issue another statement, we hope all of these questions would be adequately addressed and relevant to those years corresponding to the SBA loan applications..

Wilson has also formed a political alliance with Tiffany Henyard and Nyota Figgs, who took 20k from the PPP program even though she is a city employee. In addition, Wilson is on a slate with James Patton, DeJaun Gardner, Michael Navarrette, Aradia Clark, Garnadette Stuckey and Melissa Phillips. They are asking for your vote but first a satisfactory explanation should be provided.

You paid for the PPP Loan program and the money disbursed to Wilson came from your pocket. A blind eye and silence from Pattons’ slate speaks to their lack of ethics and accountability, which is vastly less than what you deserve.

SBA Loan Summary Graph