A Marion County woman, Danielle Liles, 41, has been sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison for wire fraud, after being accused of stealing over $600,000 from a local alternative school, as announced by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Liles worked as the business manager for Silver River Mentoring & Instruction, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mentoring and providing education services to at-risk youth in Marion and Citrus counties since 2002. According to court records, she had been embezzling funds from the nonprofit since 2016.
The investigation began when detectives contacted the nonprofit’s director regarding a potential organized fraud case involving Liles. During discussions about an upcoming financial audit, Liles confessed to stealing money, admitting that she had been giving herself extra paychecks while presenting falsified records as proof.
Liles later described her actions as an addiction to stealing payroll funds. Investigators found that she had issued 137 fraudulent checks to herself, amounting to over $616,000, which included either inflated wages or entirely separate payments outside her normal salary.
After the fraudulent activities were uncovered, Liles voluntarily turned herself in and pleaded guilty to the charges. In addition to her prison sentence, a U.S. district judge ordered her to pay restitution of $766,553 to the nonprofit organization.