Employees worry about checks bouncing at Orland Park fitness club tied to convicted scammer

Lee Anglin. | Sun-Times file

Eighteen-year-old Alex Hickman was a custodian at an Orland Park health club this summer, trying to raise money to cover his expenses at the University of Alabama where he plans to study chemical engineering.

But Hickman’s paychecks kept bouncing and other employees of the Riviera Country Club say theirs did, too.

Hickman suspected something was fishy. Then he learned that 50-year-old Lee Anglin, one of his bosses, had served about a dozen years in prison for a $10 million real-estate scam.

So on July 21, after more than six weeks of working for Anglin and his wife, Hickman filed a report with the Orland Park Police Department about his missing pay.

Alex Hickman

Anglin, it turns out, was a fugitive. A federal judge had decided he violated his parole by not disclosing his new business ventures in Utah to his parole agent. Anglin also got in trouble for failing to tell the judge that he was providing paid legal advice to inmates — even though he didn’t have a law license. The judge ordered Anglin to report to prison on June 29 to serve a six-month prison sentence, but he didn’t show up.

On Wednesday, deputy U.S. marshals and Orland Park police officers arrested Anglin at the health club. He’s being held in the federal jail downtown. Employees say he and his wife, Jenni, were living at Riviera Country Club in a banquet hall that was being renovated.

Some of the bounced checks were from Z-One Hospitality, Inc. and signed by Jenni Anglin. She’s listed as the president of the company, which was incorporated last year, according to the Illinois Secretary of State’s office. She couldn’t be reached for comment.

Orland Park police officials say they’re investigating Hickman’s complaint against the Anglins and village officials are reviewing “all potential code, business and/or liquor license violations.”

The club wasn’t mentioned in the federal court records involving the new businesses her husband failed to disclose to his parole officer.

Alex Hickman worked this summer as a janitor at Riviera Country Club in Orland Park, but when he got this check, it bounced.

Hickman’s mother, Mary Anne Beckwith, says she’s worried her son won’t get paid for his work between mid-June and July 21. Several paychecks have bounced, she said.

Beckwith, a single mother, said she was counting on her son to earn a few thousand dollars this summer to help pay for his lodging and books at the University of Alabama, which he plans to enter as a freshman.

“We need him to get the money for school. The best outcome would be for him to get the pay he deserves. But I don’t know if we will ever see the money,” she said.

Beckwith is angry.

“It’s unreal this could happen, given his history,” she said of Anglin.

Beckwith said she’s been told that at least 30 people were working at the club, which opened in mid-June after being closed under previous ownership during the coronavirus pandemic.

Martin Danaher, 20, of Oak Lawn, said Riviera Country Club owes him more than $820 for lifeguarding at the facility’s swimming pool between June 22 and Wednesday.

Danaher is a junior at the University of Illinois in Champaign, where he’s studying financial planning.

“That’s not just a little money,” he said. “Everyone’s waiting for their check.”