Brazen 8 Million Dollars Fraud: Ohio School Cash Funneled to Miami Luxury

In the last few months, it seems like federal fraud indictments are flying faster and thicker than a big, fat flock of summer starlings. In the latest, two accused fraudsters stand charged with diverting money intended for Ohio charter schools and spending it instead on luxury Miami lodgings, to the tune of $8 million.

Yes, you read that right. They are ripping off money meant for kids’ education.

Taxpayer dollars intended for a public charter school in Ohio instead were instead spent on $30,000 per month in rent on a luxury vacation property near Miami, according to a new federal indictment.

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“This indictment alleges a brazen scheme that stole from both taxpayers and students,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald said in a statement. “Education dollars exist to support the learning and development of American children – not to fund the lifestyles of unscrupulous school officials.”

Somehow, “brazen” seems like something of an understatement. Not only is this a callous and deliberate scheme to defraud the taxpayers, but this is money that was supposed to go to schools, and given that it was reportedly to have gone not just to education in general but to an addiction recovery program for high school-age youths, that makes it especially egregious. The silver lining is that the accused apparently weren’t quite smart enough to hide what they were up to. Renting luxury beachfront property in Florida that one could never afford on one’s salary is usually a dead giveaway.

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Worse still, they used the school as an unwitting means of laundering money.

There are a couple of problems with this and all the other fraud schemes we’ve seen lately, which include welfare fraud around the SNAP program and other food programs, in addition to Medicare and Medicaid fraud; namely, that these programs and others like them seem to have been set up to make fraud just a little too easy. Probably not by intent, perhaps. It’s more likely this was just incompetence, along with a sad disregard for administrators of these programs who never looked up when a daycare center in a small office building billed for 75 children daily.

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In this particular fraud case, there’s just one more interesting tidbit:

Attorney Adam Brown, who has previously represented Davenport, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

You don’t say.

(*) Full article: https://redstate.com/wardclark/2026/09/07/brazen-8-million-fraud-ohio-school-cash-funneled-to-miami-luxury-n2206627