Barbara Harris, a former executive director from a Chicago-area non-profit, has pled guilty to wire fraud in a scheme that misappropriated $1.8 million from funds intended for underprivileged youth programs. As reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, Harris was involved in inflating grant applications for the Center for Community Academic Success Partnerships (CCASP) and using nonprofit groups for personal gain, a betrayal of the trust placed in her by the community.
Harris confessed in her plea that from 2012 to 2017, she conspired to defraud the Illinois Department of Education by creating false grant applications for CCASP that claimed expenses and subcontractor services that were never provided. The Executive Director used two other nonprofits, which she and her co-executive Tony Bell also ran, as purported subcontractors in the scheme. Bell himself has pled not guilty and is set to stand trial, while Harris has admitted her involvement in the fraud, which saw funds being siphoned away from programs designed to directly aid the community's youth.
Further details obtained from the plea agreement reveal that Harris also participated in a separate fraudulent activity involving the AmeriCorps VISTA program. Supposedly, grants were to be used to position VISTA members to bring economic opportunities to Chicago's south suburbs via the South Suburban Community Services nonprofit. Instead, Harris used them incorrectly to backfill already-funded programs, bypassing the true intent of the grants and causing a loss of nearly $100,000 to the VISTA program.
Harris is now awaiting her sentencing, scheduled for July 11, 2025.
Her crimes, meticulously detailed by authorities, including the FBI and the IRS Criminal Investigation in Chicago, highlight the vigilance required to maintain the integrity of charitable organizations. The prosecution team, led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kristen Totten and Caitlin Walgamuth, indicates the seriousness with which these matters are addressed in an aim to safeguard public resources and maintain the credibility of social support systems.
