Casa Ruby founder pleads guilty to wire fraud

July 08, 2024

Ruby Corado, whose D.C. nonprofit focusing on homeless LGBTQ youths once served as many as 6,000 people a year, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of wire fraud after admitting that she diverted at least $150,000 of pandemic relief funds meant to support indigent clients to her private offshore bank accounts in El Salvador for her personal use.

Corado, 54, the founder of Casa Ruby, entered a plea deal in which she agreed to give up all proceeds traceable to her offense, and the government dropped a six-count complaint that led to her arrest in March. The wire fraud offense is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. But Corado would face far less time under advisory federal sentencing guidelines, which prosecutors estimated would fall between 33 to 41 months behind bars, and her defense placed at 15 to 21 months.

U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden eased Corado’s home detention to a nightly curfew with GPS monitoring pending sentencing Jan. 10.

Asked by McFadden whether she was guilty, Corado replied yes, but added, “I just want the opportunity with my attorneys to show you, judge, what the funds were used for.”

Corado said the diverted money was only about “15 percent” of the aid she got, adding, “85 percent were used for the intended purpose.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Madhu Chugh disagreed, saying the $150,000 was a floor and that prosecutors would argue the difference at sentencing. In plea papers, Corado agreed that the money is spent or not otherwise recoverable.

“It was the purpose of the scheme and artifice that [Corado] would obtain money and other property from government-supported pandemic relief programs on behalf of Casa Ruby and misappropriate those funds for her own personal benefit,” prosecutors said in charging papers.

Corado’s plea to reduced charges marked the fall of a local charitable figure whose nonprofit once drew millions of dollars in grants a year and employed about 50 people. Casa Ruby was founded in 2004, and shut its doors in July 2022 after a Washington Post report raised questions about possible financial mismanagement.

In a lawsuit filed in November 2022 that is still pending, the D.C. attorney general’s office formally accused Corado of diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars and violating District laws by paying workers less than the minimum wage and not paying workers all of the wages they earned. A court-appointed receiver sued the group’s board, alleging that its lack of oversight enabled Corado to embezzle more than $800,000, increase her own salary and open an office in El Salvador, all without board approval. The case is pending.

Corado allegedly fled the country after the allegations but was arrested March 6 at a hotel in Laurel, Md. The FBI accused her of bank fraud, wire fraud, laundering of monetary instruments, monetary transactions in criminally derived proceeds and failure to file a report of a foreign bank account.

In plea papers, the government agreed to drop the other counts after Corado pleaded guilty to the wire fraud, admitting that she “knowingly devised a scheme to obtain money by false pretenses” and acted with intent to defraud.

Corado admitted that she received $956,215 in two pandemic relief loans in 2020 and 2021 from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, and transferred $180,000 of the money to bank accounts held in El Salvador under her birth name that were hidden from the IRS.

She acknowledged promising to use the money under program rules and not to transfer it to others or to use any portion to relocate outside of the United States, but that she instead transferred sums for “her personal benefit.” Corado passed the money through her consulting company, TIGlobal, prosecutors said.

In earlier hearings, federal defender Diane Shrewsbury argued that Corado’s move was part of a years-long plan to open an international branch of Casa Ruby. When that failed, Shrewsbury said, Corado returned to the United States looking for work and intending to stay in the country where she has lived for 35 years and is a legal permanent resident. Her father and sisters are in the D.C. area, as is the family of her husband, a U.S. citizen who grew up in the area.

“Although the defendant was once a leading charitable figure in our community, she betrayed the trust of the donors who supported her, the District, and federal government that funded her, and the very community she claimed to serve,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Borchert wrote in a March court filing.

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