Former Executive of Chicago-Area Non-Profit Sentenced to Prison for $1.9 Million Fraud Schemes

CHICAGO — A former executive of a Chicago-area non-profit organization has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for misappropriating nearly $1.9 million through a pair of fraud schemes. BARBARA HARRIS served as the Executive Director of the Center for Community Academic Success Partnerships (CCASP), which received government grants to provide after-school programs to schools in the Chicago area. From 2012 to 2017, Harris 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. 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 scheme resulted in approximately $1.8 million in losses to the Illinois Department of Education. Harris also engaged in a separate fraud scheme before and after she was indicted in the CCASP fraud case. From 2021 to 2023, while serving as Co-Executive Director of another non-profit, specifically, the South Suburban Community Services (SSCS), Harris bilked the federally funded AmeriCorps VISTA program, which awards grants to non-profits working to bring communities out of poverty. Harris submitted grant applications falsely representing that VISTA members would work for SSCS programs in the south suburbs of Chicago. Harris knew, however, that those SSCS programs had already been funded. Harris nonetheless obtained approval for eleven VISTA members to work at SSCS, and none of them performed services in accordance with their assignment descriptions, causing a loss to the VISTA program of $98,699. Harris, 55, of South Holland, Ill., pleaded guilty last year to a federal wire fraud charge and admitted her criminal conduct in both schemes. Bell, 65, of Matteson, Ill., pleaded guilty last year to a federal wire fraud charge.