Feb. 11--A Cook County Circuit Court judge has been removed from the bench after being accused of providing false information while refinancing a mortgage for a home she owned.
On Tuesday, Judge Beatriz Santiago was reassigned from hearing traffic cases to perform administrative duties in the office of another judge until she appears before the Illinois Courts Commission, the Circuit Court said in a news release.
A circuit court panel of 17 judges ordered her reassignment after reviewing a complaint filed against her last week by the Judiciary Inquiry Board.
According to the complaint, Santiago deceived her mortgage lender while refinancing in 2013, causing the lender to believe she lived at the property she owned on North Spaulding Avenue in Chicago when she actually lived in a home owned by her parents.
Her parents' home is in the Sixth Judicial Subcircuit, and Santiago could not establish residency at the other property while maintaining her eligibility to sit as a judge in that circuit.
An attorney representing Santiago over the complaint said Santiago is an honest person and a good judge.
"The complaint does not say that she was a bad judge, that she decided any case wrongly, that she did not work hard," attorney George Collins said. "It has nothing to do with her performance as a judge."
Santiago, who also served as an assistant public defender in Cook County for 14 years, was elected as judge in 2012. Her term is set to expire in late 2018.
Prior to the primary election for her seat, an objector challenged Santiago's eligibility, partially on allegations that she did not live within the Sixth Subcircuit. At a hearing over the objection, she acknowledged having lived for a few years at the property she bought but said she moved into her parents' home in 2011.
Two years later, according to last week's complaint, she applied to refinance her 2007 mortgage on the property on Spaulding and in the process suggested in several sections of the paperwork that it was her primary residence.
She also told brokers at the company, American Equity Mortgage, that the home where she was in fact living was her former address, which she sometimes used for work-related bills, according to the complaint.
In doing so, she was trying to persuade the mortgage company to give her an interest rate in keeping with a primary-residence mortgage, according to the complaint.
mmrodriguez@tribune.com
