Joseph M. Ferguson, Inspector General
Joseph Ferguson was appointed as Inspector General for the City of Chicago on October 9, 2009 by Mayor Richard M. Daley. The City Council, following on the recommendation of the Council's Committee on Budget and Government, unanimously confirmed the nomination of Ferguson to a four-year term effective November 30, 2009.
Ferguson comes to the Inspector General's Office, following 15 years with the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) for the Northern District of Illinois. He spent his first six years in the USAO in the office's Civil Division, where he litigated cases involving employment discrimination (Title VII), civil rights, environmental law, and government program fraud. Ferguson's work included a landmark environmental case, which was ultimately decided by the United States Supreme Court.
For the last nine years, Ferguson worked in the Criminal Division of the USAO, prosecuting cases that included charges of public corruption, mail/wire fraud, tax fraud, terrorist financing, and labor racketeering. Most recently, Ferguson was the Chief of the Money Laundering and Forfeiture Section, having worked previously in that division as Deputy Chief. He also held positions as Deputy Chief of Financial Crimes & Special Prosecutions and Terrorist Financing Coordinator. He has received the Department of Justice's Director's Award for his work in asset forfeiture. He is also a recipient of the Gaston Gianni Better Government Award from the President's Council on Integrity & Efficiency for his work as part of a team that identified and prosecuted broad scale fraud in the federal food stamp program.
In addition to his work with the USAO, Ferguson has been an adjunct instructor at both the Loyola University and John Marshall Schools of Law in Chicago - teaching, among other things, National Security Law. He has also been an instructor at the Department of Justice's National Advocacy Center, which provides training for federal, state, and local prosecutors and investigative agencies.
Ferguson was a law clerk to the Hon. Myron H. Bright of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the Hon. Suzanne B. Conlon of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He worked for two years as a litigation associate at the law firm of Sidley Austin, where, among other things, he worked on anti-trust and commercial litigation matters, as well as doing pro bono death penalty work before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ferguson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lake Forest College in 1982, and later went on to Northwestern University Law School, earning his JD in 1990.