GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — More than $1 million disappeared from a nonprofit charged with helping at-risk preschool kids in West Michigan, and now the woman who helped orchestrate the theft is heading to prison for more than four years.
Bookkeeper Sharon Kay Killebrew and a cohort embezzled from the Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative for several years, forcing the organization to close, records show.
“They left almost no stone unturned in their quest to siphon money,” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Grand Rapids nonprofit closes, citing ‘brazen’ embezzlement
Some of the funds they pocketed “paid for children to have breakfast, lunch, and transportation to and from preschool,” officials contend.
At-risk kids in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek were harmed by the fraud, which was called “as widespread as it was brazen.”…