EVANSVILLE, Ind. — A southern Indiana woman has been charged with embezzling over $156,000 from a nonprofit which runs a youth mentoring program.
Ellen Corn, 47, was indicted by a federal grand jury on fifteen counts of wire fraud while she worked as the executive director of "Mentors for Youth" in Dubois County.
According to court documents, Corn was responsible for keeping track of all the nonprofit's income and expenses.
Over a five-year period, Corn is accused of stealing several thousand dollars by using the organization's credit card for personal expenses. She attempted to hide this by not entering these purchases into their accounting software.
Some of the places Corn made purchases to include: Amazon, Target, Walmart, and some payments to colleges.
According to an Indiana State Police press release, Corn used the credit card to make electronic payments from the official business PayPal account to her personal PayPal account.
Investigators found that once the funds appeared in her PayPal account, she would transfer them to her personal checking account.
If convicted of wire fraud, Corn faces up to 20 years in prison, according to ISP officials.
Mentors for Youth statement on arrest of former director:
For 35 years, Mentors for Youth, formerly Big Brothers Big Sisters, has served a vital purpose in Dubois County.
Our mission to facilitate relationships between local youth and caring adults has positively impacted innumerable individuals in this community.
As we process the news of the arrest of our former director, we remain focused on this mission.
Though deeply saddened by the actions of this individual, we are grateful for the members of both our local and federal law enforcement for their time and dedication to this investigation.
We are also incredibly thankful for all the local partner organizations and community members that assisted us in becoming a stronger agency.
Since uncovering this issue, we have worked hard to make substantive changes to ensure our policies and procedures will prevent this from occurring in the future.
While our work in serving at-risk children was never compromised, we are genuinely sorry for any distress this may have caused. We will live up to our organization’s mission by ensuring transparency, accountability, and integrity.
As we move forward, we are determined to support more youth in our community. Thank you for your steadfast support of our mission.
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