SC habitat for humanity worker sentenced to 2 years in prison for nearly $ 500,000 theft – South Carolina Daily Gazette

Columbia – A Federal Judge has condemned a former director of the Humanity Funding Habitat in South Carolina to two years in prison to assign hundreds of thousands of dollars into federal funds to support the non -profit coronavirus.

Without the knowledge of his employer, Ashley Clark Ingram, 34-year-old, from Colombia, applied for an IRS employees tax credit during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the US Law Firm.

Ingram received state checks totaling over $ 388,000. It deposits the funds in the Habitat Account for Humanity in Central South Carolina, which it controls. She then moved that money, along with more than $ 100,000, which belong to the charity, to several personal bank accounts in six separate transactions.

She pleaded guilty last June for a census of theft of state funds, a federal crime.

“There is a terrible irony in this case,” said US assistant lawyer Scott Matthew. “She stole money from an organization that helps people get a home for all things.”

Since then, Ingram has paid the charity back the money it stole by making the final payment of $ 30,000 after its sentence on Tuesday.

But it’s not just about money, said Emily Fernold, the temporary CEO of the charity.

“This is the reputation of our organization,” she said.

Fernold said 16 families in Midlands have slowed their dream of home ownership over the last few years as the charity has been working through the financial turmoil that Ingram’s actions have caused.

The non -profit purpose managed to build homes, but at a lower pace. He also lost the support of some of his donors, Fernold said.

“They have to overcome what you have done,” Judge Mary Geiger Lewis told Ingram before issuing her decision.

It was her financial struggles that made Ingram take the funds.

She had just become a wife and mother when her new husband lost her job, leaving her as the only carrier. The couple also lived in a neighborhood where shooting and breakthroughs were common events. She is worried about her young son’s safety and plans to use the stolen money to buy a new home, according to her lawyer Jim Griffin.

While Ingram, now a mother of two, bought a home, she didn’t spend much of the stolen money to do it, which made her return it, he said.

Fernold said that many of the families who turn to Habitat for Humanity for help face such struggles.

“These are people who have worked extremely hard to get where they are in life,” she said. “But they don’t steal. They don’t lie. “

Habitat for humanity has trusted Ingram with its finances.

“I realize that I violated this confidence,” Ingram said until he apologized to charity officials who were in the courtroom.

She said that her actions are something that will “regret the end of her life” and struggled to find a job, describing how she lost a job assisting the inside of the home after the woman learned of the crime.

Members of the Ingram family, including her mother, husband and a younger cousin, asked the judge to be lenient.

Her cousin, Charles Mayer, Jr., told a story about how Ingram convinced him to give him a second chance to a man who harassed him when he was little. He has recently helped him find a job, Meyer said. He said that Ingram taught him the importance of forgiveness, “because the man they were then is not the person they are now.”

He asked the judge to expand such a grace for his cousin.

Geiger Lewis said he was confident that Ingram would not be repeated, but said he still had to be punished in order to discourage others to commit such crimes in the future.

“When all you have to do is bring back what you take, there is no deterrent,” the judge said.

In addition to the prison time, Ingram has been raised before two years of probation and a $ 10,000 fine.

Ingram and her husband were silently out of the Federal Court of Justice after the decision, his hand attacked over her shoulder, refusing to comment on the decision. She must report to the federal prison at some point in the next 60 days.

Since May 2021, federal prosecutors have blamed more than 3,500 people across the country for crimes, they operate the government’s pandemic response. The government has reimbursed over $ 1.4 billion, winning over 400 civil agreements and decisions.

In South Carolina, which includes over $ 16 million crimes, including nearly $ 50 South Carolini, according to reports made by the US law firm.