EVANSVILLE, Ind. – A former Dubois County Nonprofit Director, Ellen L. Corn, 50, of Petersburg, Indiana, has been sentenced to one year and nine months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, after pleading guilty to five counts of wire fraud. Corn has also been ordered to pay $121,439.72 in restitution.
According to court documents, from March 2017 to August 2022, Ellen Corn served as the executive director for a Dubois County nonprofit that facilitates a youth mentoring program and provides college scholarships for local high school students. During her employment, Corn had various financial responsibilities, including entering all income and expenses into the organization’s accounting software and having access to the organization’s credit card.
Over those five years, Corn embezzled a total of $161,344.85 through several methods, including using the organization’s credit card to pay for personal expenses at various businesses and restaurants, such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart, as well as to make tuition payments to colleges for her children. She made approximately 1,226 unauthorized transactions with the credit card. Corn also stole funds by making unauthorized transfers from the organization’s PayPal account to her personal PayPal account and purchasing unauthorized items directly from the nonprofit’s checking account via debit card and check.
Corn ensured that the organization’s accounts had sufficient funds to cover her unauthorized expenses by reallocating funding from certain departments and programs. In 2022, she also failed to notify a first-generation college student that the student had been selected to receive a scholarship.
To conceal her fraud, Corn deliberately omitted the unauthorized transactions from the nonprofit’s accounting records, which she regularly presented to the Board of Directors and the organization’s tax preparer.
