A woman who earned a West Michigan Woman of the Year award will serve over five years in federal prison for a $1.4 million fraud scheme that misdirected money meant for preschool services, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Michigan said.
Nkechy Ezeh, 61, of Kent County, was sentenced on Wednesday in U.S. District Court to 70 months on fraud and a concurrent 60 months for evading income taxes, the district attorney's office said. She was ordered to start serving the prison time immediately.
Ezeh was also ordered to pay a total of $1.4 million in restitution to the victims of the scheme, along with $390,174 to the Internal Revenue Service.
Her nonprofit organization, Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, shuttered in 2023, with 35 people laid off as a result, the district attorney's office said.
A million here, a billion there, to paraphrase Sen. Bayh, after a while, it adds up to real money. If all this welfare state funding was making poor people better off, you might excuse the good intentions.
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