Former head of East St. Louis charity sentenced to federal prison for embezzlement
Christopher K.Coleman, the former executive director of Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House in East St. Louis, was sentenced in a federal court to an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than a quarter million dollars from an agency he said once aided his own family.
The sentence was handed down Monday by U.S. District Judge Staci Yandle of the Southern District of Illinois in Benton. Coleman will surrender to prison when notified by federal authorities.
Coleman also must pay nearly $270,655 in restitution and serve two years of supervised release.
Coleman became executive director of Lessie Bates Neighborhood House in July 2016 with an annual salary of $102,000, according to tax records. He told the Belleville News-Democrat at the time it was his dream job to head up the agency that once helped his family when he was a child.
From July of 2016 through December of 2017, Coleman embezzled more than $250,000 from the Lessie Bates Neighborhood House by generating false invoices and receiving cash kickbacks.
In August of last year, he pleaded guilty to creating invoices to CIG, a company he owned, and to taking cash kickbacks from payments made by the Lessie Bates House to “JCS Consulting” and “Teach Me Technology LLC,” both Dallas-based companies.
Leonard Johnson, 33, of St. Louis, and Jeremy Turner, 31, of Dallas, Texas, also have been indicted on federal charges of aiding and abetting Coleman’s scheme by making false statements to law enforcement officials, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Tiffany Taylor, 37, of Maryville, Illinois, was charged separately with making false statements to a federal agent.
According to the indictment, Lessie Bates Neighborhood House helped administer a federal grant to a Cahokia School District 187 after-school program between 2015 and 2018. A “significant number” of Apple products that included Apple watches, iPads and laptop computers were purchased by the Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House and provided to people associated with the after-school program.
Taylor, a grant manager and writer for District 187, lied to a federal agent when she denied that she had requested the Apple watches, the indictment alleges.
The Lessie Bates Davis Neighborhood House is a nonprofit, faith-based organization in East St. Louis, whose mission states, “to improve the quality of life for residents of all ages by providing quality early childhood development services, comprehensive youth services, individual and family support services, services to older adults and housing economic development services, which will help move individuals and families out of poverty.”
The tax records show that Lessie Bates had $9 million in revenue in 2016, when contributions and grants totaled $7.6 million.
Coleman was investigated by the Southern Illinois Public Corruption Task Force, which consists of the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation and Illinois State Police. Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Smith was the federal prosecutor.
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 5:09 PM.
