The founder of a Washington D.C. non-profit organization that served homeless LGBTQ+ youth has been arrested on fraud and money laundering charges two years after she left the US.
Ruby Corado, 53, is alleged to have received more than $1.3 million over two years from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
Instead of using the funds as she had promised, she stole at least $150,000 by transferring the money to bank accounts in El Salvador under her birth name, keeping the funds hidden from the IRS, court documents allege.
After it was publicly revealed that Corado was under investigation in 2022, she sold her property in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and left for El Salvador.
Casa Ruby closed its doors in July 2022, when it failed to pay its employees, shuttered its transitional housing, and faced eviction from multiple properties for failure to pay rent.
Ruby Corado, 53, is alleged to have taken more than $1.3 million over two years from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program (File Photo)
The organization used charitable donations from the public and grants from the District government to fund its services.
It employed almost 50 people prior to closing and provided more than 30,000 social and human services to more than 6,000 people each year.
The D.C. attorney general’s office asked a D.C. Superior Court judge to freeze Corado’s bank accounts and stop her from withdrawing any more funds.
Until that point, Corado was still taking funds from the organization’s accounts, which she kept control of after she resigned, the District alleged.
Corado was arrested by the FBI at a hotel in Laurel, Maryland on Tuesday.
She faces federal charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, monetary transactions in criminally derived proceeds, laundering of monetary instruments, and failure to file a report of foreign bank account.
‘There is probable cause to believe that CORADO, former Executive Director of a non-profit organization named Casa Ruby, fraudulently obtained funds from government-supported loan programs and diverted those funds to her bank account(s) located outside of the United States,’ an FBI agent swore in an arrest affidavit.
‘And CORADO, who is a lawful permanent resident of the United States, has never reported her foreign bank account(s) to the Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, as required by law.’
After it was publicly revealed that Corado was under investigation in 2022, she sold her property in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and left for El Salvador (File Photo)
In November 2022, the D.C. Attorney General’s Office filed a complaint stating Corado transferred more than $400,000 from the organization to her personal accounts between April 2021 and September 2021.
She was also accused of contravening District laws by paying workers less than the minimum wage and not paying them all of the wages for the hours worked. The suit is still pending.
Corado denied the allegations when she spoke to News4 from El Salvador and said that she was singled out for speaking out against Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration and a discrimination complaint she made against the D.C. Department of Human Services.
Bank fraud carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail and wire fraud carries up to 20 years. The money laundering charges carry up to 20 years.