Will Cook County News

By Nuha Abdessalam and edited by Claude Martinez. Updated 7/9/24 at 2:29 P.M.

Will County Republican Board Leader Steve Balich calls for a news conference to address the alleged cybercrime involving opposing Democratic Leader Jackie Traynere. 

The alleged cybercrime has not only raised serious concerns but also significantly eroded the trust between board members; Balich said: “If there wasn’t a lack of trust brewing between board members before, there is now; I do not trust Jackie Traynere,”  

The Will County Republican Leader Balich expressed, during the Tuesday, July 9 conference at 8:30 a.m. in front of the Will County office building on 302 North Chicago Street, Joliet, the urgent need for accountability in the alleged cybercrime by Democrat Leader Jackie Traynere. “I’m here today; I want to make sure that there’s some accountability held to the actions of the Democrat leader, Jackie Traynere, for logging into Judy Ogalla’s email and sending the email that I sent to Judy Ogalla county executive about 143rd street.”

Tipped off by an unknown person, Balich shared, “She has already admitted it. I don’t know the timeframe when she admitted it. I don’t know if everyone in her caucus even knows she did it. I never asked anybody.”

Judy Ogalla, a member of the Will County Board and the Executive Committee, has reported the same incident. Balich added, “I just filed my complaints, figuring there would be an investigation. What does accountable mean? I have no clue; we’ll find out more with Judy. She, too, has a case, and I do not want to interfere.” 

Balich first reported the alleged incident to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Will County Sheriff, and Illinois State Police offices on March 6; he said, “I did not go to the executives. First, I went to authorities four months ago to investigate this, and nothing has happened in four months; I’d say nothing is going to happen.” Balich added, “I wanted to bring this out in the open so everyone knows, and without this press conference, no one is going to know; it’s been four long months, and I’m hoping the sheriff, the FBI, somebody investigates this, and she becomes accountable for what she did.” 

Although all the details are unclear, Balich believes or assumes Traynere used her own computer with Ogalla’s login and password. Similarly, the logins given to board members earlier were also given the same password; they may have never been changed. Thus, Balich speculates that Traynere could have accessed several other board member emails. 

“I don’t know if Jackie is going through my stuff. If she used her computer when using Judy’s login account because it was the same as everyone else’s, everyone has the same password,” said Balich. 

“I’m the Republican leader, so why don’t I know everyone has the same password? Because if I knew, I’d be screaming. Any logical person would ask why that happened. Did it happen intentionally, incompetently, or by accident?”

Watch the press conference below.

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