South Holland Woman Bilked $1.8M From IL Dept. Of Education: Courts

CHICAGO — A South Holland woman and former executive of a Chicago-area non-profit organization has pleaded guilty to a federal fraud charge for her role in misappropriating $1.8 million intended to support the charity’s work with underprivileged youth, the United States Attorney's Office said Wednesday.

Barbara Harris served as the Executive Director of the Center for Community Academic Success Partnerships (CCASP), which received government grants and other funds to provide after-school programs to schools in the Chicago area. The grants included funds from the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program, a federal program offering financial support for academic enrichment opportunities. The 21st Century program issued grants to its local administrator, the Illinois State Board of Education, which in turn disbursed the funds to CCASP.

Harris stated in a plea agreement that from 2012 to 2017, she schemed with another CCASP executive, Tony Bell to submit grant applications that inflated CCASP’s projected annual expenses and falsely claimed that the organization would receive services from five subcontractors, the U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Illinois said in a release. In reality, Harris knew that the subcontractors, two of which were other non-profit groups run by Harris and Bell, provided no actual services to CCASP. The fraud scheme resulted in approximately $1.8 million in actual loss to the Illinois Department of Education.

Harris further admitted in the plea agreement that from 2021 to 2023, she participated in a separate fraud scheme that bilked the federally funded AmeriCorps VISTA program, which awarded grants to non-profit organizations working to bring communities out of poverty. Harris, who at the time of this scheme was serving as Co-Executive Director of the non-profit South Suburban Community Services, submitted grant applications falsely representing that VISTA members would work for SSCS developing programs aimed at bringing economic opportunities to the south suburbs of Chicago. Harris knew that the VISTA members would actually be used at SSCS to support already-funded job training and afterschool violence prevention programs. Harris fraudulently obtained approval for 11 VISTA members to work at SSCS, none of whom performed services in accordance with their VISTA assignment descriptions, causing a loss to the VISTA program of $98,699.

Harris, 55, pleaded guilty on Feb. 27, to a wire fraud charge. U.S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood set sentencing for July 11, at 10:30 a.m.

Bell, 64, of Matteson, has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, money laundering, and wire fraud. He is awaiting trial.