The Matthew J. Perry Federal Courthouse in Columbia on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A federal judge sentenced a former Habitat for Humanity finance director in South Carolina to two years in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal coronavirus relief funds from the nonprofit.
Without the knowledge of her employer, Ashley Clark Ingram, 34, of Columbia, applied for an employee retention tax credit from the IRS during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Ingram received government checks totaling more than $388,000. She deposited the funds into a Central South Carolina Habitat for Humanity account that she controlled. She then moved that money, along with more than $100,000 that belonged to the charity, to several personal bank accounts in six separate transactions.
She pleaded guilty last June to one count of theft of government funds, a federal felony.
“There’s a terrible irony in this case,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Matthews. “She stole money from an organization that helps people get housing of all things.”
Ingram has since paid the charity back the money she stole, making the final $30,000 payment after her sentencing Tuesday.
But it’s not just about the money, said Emily Fernald, the charity’s interim executive director.
“It’s the reputation of our organization,” she said.
Fernald said 16 families in the Midlands had their dream of homeownership delayed over the last couple years as the charity worked through the financial turmoil that Ingram’s actions caused.
The nonprofit was able to keep building homes but at a slower pace. It also lost the support of some of its donors, Fernald said.
“They have to overcome what you did,” Judge Mary Geiger Lewis told Ingram before issuing her ruling.
It was financial struggles of her own that led Ingram to take the funds.
She had just become a wife and a mother when her new husband lost his job, leaving her as the sole breadwinner. The couple also was living in a neighborhood where gunfire and break-ins were common occurrences. She worried about the safety of her young son and planned to use the stolen money to buy a new home, according to her lawyer, Jim Griffin.
While Ingram, now a mother of two, did buy a home, she did not spend much of the stolen money to do so, making it possible for her to give it back, he said.
Fernald said many of the families who turn to Habitat for Humanity for help face similar struggles.
“These are folks who worked extremely hard to get where they are in life,” she said. “But they’re not stealing. They’re not lying.”
Habitat for Humanity had trusted Ingram with its finances.
“I realize that I broke that trust,” Ingram said as she apologized to officials from the charity who were in the courtroom.
She said her actions are something she’ll “regret for the rest of her life” and she has struggled to find employment, describing how she lost work aiding an in-home seamstress after the woman learned about the crime.
Members of Ingram’s family, including her mother, husband and younger cousin, asked the judge to be lenient.
Her cousin, Charles Mealer Jr., told a story about how Ingram convinced him to give a second chance to a person who bullied him when they were young. Recently, he helped him get a job, Mealer said. He said Ingram taught him the importance of forgiveness “because the person they were back then is not the person they are now.”
He asked the judge to extend similar grace for his cousin.
Geiger Lewis said she was confident Ingram would not reoffend but stated there still must be punishment to discourage others from committing similar crimes in the future.
“When all you have to do is give back what you take, there is not deterrence,” the judge said.
In addition to prison time, Ingram faces two years of probation and a $10,000 fine.
Ingram and her husband walked silently out of the federal courthouse following the ruling, his arm draped over her shoulder, declining to comment on the ruling. She must report to federal prison at some point in the next 60 days.
Since May 2021, federal prosecutors have charged more than 3,500 people nationwide for crimes they exploited the government’s pandemic response. The government has recovered more than $1.4 billion, winning more than 400 civil settlements and judgments.
In South Carolina, that includes more than $16 million worth of crimes involving nearly 50 South Carolinians, according to announcements made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.