CHICAGO — Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot was indicted late last year over unpaid credit card debt, records show.
Lightfoot was served with a lawsuit filed by JPMorgan Chase Bank at his home in Chicago in October alleging he failed to pay a bill of approximately $11,078, according to a copy of the complaint filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
The lawsuit says Lightfoot did not object to the bank’s last statement before announcing it was writing off her debt in March. The last time she made a payment with the card was in August 2025, for $5,000, and the next court hearing in the case will be in December, according to the complaint.
Lightfoot declined to comment through a spokesman Monday.
Lightfoot failed to advance to the runoff when running for a second term and left office in May 2023. Since then, she has worn many hats as a private citizen, serving as a visiting professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and teaching at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.
Other roles include being appointed as a special investigator in the corruption investigation of embattled former Dalton Mayor Tiffany Henyard and founding a nonprofit called Chicago Vibrant Communities Collective.
Last week, Lightfoot launched the ICE Accountability Project, which was billed as a tool to collect and document alleged crimes or abuses by federal immigration agents during Operation Midway Blitz.
Lightfoot, who grew up in the working-class town of Massillon, Ohio, had an adjusted gross income of $402,414 in 2021, the most recent year the Tribune asked her to file. She reportedly took $210,000 in early distributions from her retirement account that year to supplement her mayoral salary.
Before becoming mayor, Lightfoot was a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown, reporting an average adjusted gross income of $971,626 from 2014 to 2017.
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