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A former Muncie woman has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for her part in defrauding the U.S. Department of Education out of nearly $1 million in financial aid.
Reina Isom, 47, was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Senior Judge Jane Magus-Stinson after pleading guilty to one court of wire fraud and two counts of federal financial aid fraud.
She also was ordered to pay $348,148 in restitution. That’s the amount of fraudulent financial aid that was actually deposited into her personal bank accounts or loaded onto debit cards she controlled.
But federal authorities say Isom submitted more than 50 fraudulent financial aid applications over a decade for more than a dozen different individuals, causing over $930,000 in federal financial aid to be fraudulently dispersed.
All of the offenses occurred while Isom was living in Muncie. At the time of her sentencing she was living in Gainesville, Florida.
To carry out her scheme, authorities say, Isom enrolled accomplices in low-cost, online colleges using their dates of birth, social security numbers, and other personal information.
She then filed financial aid applications online and lied about the income levels of the “students” and their parents to purposely inflate the amount of financial aid that would be awarded, according to court documents.
“When someone abuses these programs, they don’t just break the law—they potentially steal a life-changing opportunity from a first-generation student or someone from an underserved community,” Tom Wheeler, interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said in a news release. “We will not hesitate to pursue and prosecute those who shamelessly exploit public resources for personal profit.”
The Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adam Eakman and Meredith Wood prosecuted it.
According to the Department of Justice, Isom has a history of fraud, being convicted in 2004 of arson with intent to defraud and in 2011 for enrolling fake students in the University of Phoenix online school and submitting fraudulent financial aid forms.
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