PHOENIX — Five people are being accused of fraudulently receiving money from the Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account program.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the charges Thursday.
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Dolores Sweet, Dorrian Jones, Jennifer Lopez, Jadakah Johnson, and Raymond Johnson, Jr. are accused of multiple felonies in the scheme.
Sweet, Jones, and Lopez are all former employees of the Arizona Department of Education, according to Mayes.
The group is accused of creating "ghost students" through fake birth certificates. While some of the students were not real, others were real but were admitted to the ESA program through forged or fraudulent documentation.
These students were then awarded ESA funds, and the group is accused of using those funds meant for students for their own benefit.
Mayes stated that there were five "ghost students" who all had the same birthday listed.
"All five children had the same birth dates and apparently, none of this raised any red flags at the Arizona Department of Education," Mayes stated.
Mayes also said that the Department of Education did not alert the AG's office about the fraud, but was instead alerted by a credit union that noticed an unusually large amount of money being taken out of an account.
Following the announcement by Mayes, State Superintendent Tom Horne held a press conference and emphasized that Mayes was incorrect in her claims against the department.
"The Attorney General is not telling the truth when she states that the alleged criminal activities of former ADE employees did not raise flags in the department. In fact, the opposite is true," said Horne in a statement. "Our office did alert the Attorney General's Office to concerns we discovered regarding Dorrian Jones and Jennifer Lopez. A credit union became suspicious of efforts of a third former employee, Dolores Sweet, and they also reached out to the Attorney General's Office."
Horne also discussed that when he took office in 2023, he took steps to discover potential fraud and abuse, including hiring a 19-year veteran of the Auditor General's Office to "oversee the financial structure of the Empowerment Scholarship Account Program." He adds that in 2024, the department has referred seven instances of suspected fraud to the AG's office.
Horne pointed out that the Department of Education is not the only department in Arizona that has been victimized by fraud over the past 30 years. He referred to reports by the Auditor General's Office.
The Arizona Education Association, following the indictments, sent the following statement:
"As every new headline makes clear, Arizona's ESA voucher program has been a complete disaster. The utter lack of accountability and transparency makes this program ripe for fraud and abuse. And yet ESA voucher proponents have blocked even the most basic, common-sense safeguards. It's time to rein in the ESA voucher program before it spins even further out of control."
Late last year, ABC15 learned that Arizona’s ESA program had grown to more than 72,000 students.
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The program is expected to continue growing in the next few years as well.
The Arizona Department of Education previously projected that universal empowerment scholarships would cost Arizona taxpayers $900 million in 2024.
