Former HUD Site Manager Sentenced to Five Years for Embezzlement

A former site manager for a HUD-funded apartment complex was recently sentenced in U.S. District Court in Portland, Maine for embezzling from an organization receiving federal funds and conspiring to alter money orders. She was sentenced 60 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution totaling approximately $1 million. 

According to court records, from about October 2015 to June 2021, the manager stole rent payments made by Housing Choice Voucher tenants. She’d direct the tenants to pay their rent with a blank postal money order and then would place her name on the payee line, adding information such as “groceries” on the memo line to suggest the payments were reimbursements. In some instances, she would deflate the tenants’ income to as low as $0 so that HUD would pay a larger share of the rent to disguise shortfalls.

The judge said the manager was “able to concoct a scheme that avoided detection for years” and described her embezzlement as “calculated, deliberate, and devious.”

The HUD Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case. OIG’s Special Agent in Charge said the manager and her co-conspirator “preyed on the vulnerability of elderly and disabled individuals and altered income and expense documents to falsely increase HUD rental subsidies, which she then funneled to her personal bank account. HUD OIG will continue to work with its law enforcement partners to diligently pursue and hold accountable bad actors who willfully misuse federal assets.”