News
Goldberg Kohn White Collar Crime Litigator Chip Mulaney is quoted in “Back in Business,” published in the March 5, 2026, edition of Illinois Times.
The article concerns an environmental engineer, Michael Keebler, who was sentenced to five years in federal prison for defrauding the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) out of $13 million. Since he entered prison in 2015, one of his companies has been paid nearly $1.5 million by the state, and the government waived a probation requirement that Goldberg Kohn’s Chip Mulaney says in the article would have been an unlikely occurrence had Keebler’s federal probation office known about his return to cleanup work.
Keebler owned Environmental Management, Inc., a Springfield, Ill.-based company that did underground storage tank remediation work statewide. While some of the fraud involved billing for work that hadn’t been performed, Keebler would also create fictitious companies to avoid competitive bidding requirements and inflate invoices, paying subcontractors a lesser amount than what he billed the state.
At the time of his sentencing, the judge in the case said the fraud involving fake invoices for work never performed on leaking underground storage tanks was “breathtaking in scope.”
Keebler and his attorneys managed to negotiate down the final restitution judgment from over $13 million to just more than $7.75 million. That final restitution payment was split among Keebler and his codefendants, largely through assets the federal government seized and subsequently liquidated, including more than two dozen bank accounts. Keebler’s restitution posted with the court neared $3 million in 2016.
Keebler entered federal prison in 2015 and was released in January 2019, although his engineering license remained suspended until April 2021.
In late August 2015, during the weeks between her husband's sentencing and entering prison, Keebler’s wife, Julie, incorporated a new company, Perry Environmental, which has remained active as a business remediating leaking underground storage tanks. Despite the suspension of his license until 2021, Keebler’s name appears as the “authorized representative” of Perry Environmental on two 2020 underground storage tank removal applications that were approved by the Office of the State Fire Marshal.
Another business in Julie Keebler’s name, GBL Properties, was registered with the Illinois Secretary of State in June 2008. The forfeiture action taken by the federal government in 2015 included “any and all assets of GBL Properties,” but the company itself was never dissolved. GBL Properties has been paid nearly $1.5 million by the state since Keebler entered prison in 2015, with the latest reimbursement being sent out in February 2026. The company has also purchased more than 60 leaking underground storage tanks in various parts of the state, beginning in 2008 when it was first incorporated and as recently as 2022.
In January 2018, the federal government filed a motion to vacate against seven different seized properties, including Keebler’s personal residence and parcels of land owned by GBL Properties. The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a motion that explained the government’s reasoning behind the reduced judgment.
“At the suggestion of this court, the victim in this matter, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, has accepted several million dollars’ worth of claims from Michael Keebler and EMI, which had previously been denied or had not yet been submitted,” the motion reads. “When it became clear that the amount of forfeited property… would extinguish the remaining restitution obligation, the government requested that this court vacate the forfeiture judgments regarding certain properties (such as the defendants’ homes) to mitigate any over-collection.”
Another result of the reduced restitution amount meant Keebler was able to get the government to waive a probation requirement.
“Keebler seeks to eliminate the conditions of supervised release requiring him to provide the U.S. Probation office with financial information ‘until restitution and any fines have been paid in full.’ The government affirms that once this court applies the funds with the clerk to the remaining restitution, the restitution and fines will have been paid in full and therefore has no objection to modifying the conditions of supervised release,” the motion reads.
“All this indicates to me that [Keebler’s federal probation office was] not aware that he was going back into doing exactly this kind of work,” Goldberg Kohn’s Chip Mulaney is quoted as saying. “If you’re back in the field that you were originally convicted of fraud in, I think the probation office, and likely the government, would have opposed early termination of supervised release.”
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