A south suburban nonprofit leader who was supposed to be steering money into after-school and anti-poverty programs is instead headed to federal prison. Barbara Harris, former executive director of the Center for Community Academic Success Partnerships in South Holland, was sentenced to one year in federal prison on March 20 after admitting she helped divert roughly $1.9 million in government grant funds that were supposed to benefit local kids and low-income families. According to the Chicago Sun‑Times, prosecutors say Harris and fellow executive Tony Bell of Matteson used falsified grant paperwork, fake subcontractors and sham bank accounts to move public money into their own pockets, in a pattern of misconduct that stretched back more than a decade and later included a separate AmeriCorps-related scheme worth nearly $100,000.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
In a press release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois said Harris pleaded guilty last year to federal wire fraud and admitted that from 2012 through 2017 she and Bell lied their way into federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant money. Prosecutors say the pair repeatedly submitted inflated applications that overstated CCASP’s expected expenses and named subcontractors that never actually did any work. Investigators allege Harris and Bell then opened bogus subcontractor accounts, cut checks into those accounts, and quietly converted the money into cash or money orders to hide that the funds were being siphoned off. Plea paperwork and court filings spell out the transactions in detail and list the shell entities and accounts that prosecutors say were used to pull off the fraud.
Money trail and who benefited
Court records and local reporting indicate that much of the grant money intended for classrooms and community programs instead helped cover personal expenses. As reported by the Chicago Sun‑Times, Harris received a one-year prison term on March 20, and prosecutors say at least $437,000 in grant funds went toward paying off Bell’s credit card balances. Roughly $130,000, according to the same reporting, was funneled into an account that Harris and Bell falsely presented as belonging to a legitimate subcontractor. Harris also admitted to a later scheme, between 2021 and 2023, that diverted nearly $99,000 from the AmeriCorps VISTA program, money that was likewise supposed to support community service and anti-poverty efforts.
Sentencing, charges and legal fallout
Harris pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge and acknowledged in her plea agreement that her conduct caused about $1.8 million in actual loss, a figure prosecutors leaned on when calculating her sentence. The plea paperwork, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, describes how CCASP expense reports were fabricated and how checks tied to entities such as “Community Partners” were cashed or turned into money orders to further obscure where the money was really going. Those details are laid out in documents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. Alongside the prison term, federal prosecutors have sought forfeiture and other remedies, and the government is still working to claw back misappropriated funds.
Local fallout and prior coverage
For schools and community groups that trusted CCASP with after-school programming, the case has been a gut punch. Advocates and local officials say the scandal has shaken confidence in neighborhood providers and could make agencies more cautious the next time a small nonprofit comes looking for grant dollars to support youth programs. Tax filings show CCASP was a registered nonprofit that received federal grants, and the broader investigation drew in federal partners including the FBI and the Department of Education Office of Inspector General. For background on Harris’s original guilty plea and CCASP’s role in area youth programming, see Former Nonprofit Exec Pleads Guilty.
