Ruth Gayle Cunningham, Theft from Government Program, Alabama 2023

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Former JCCEO Executive Director Ruth Gayle Cunningham, 64, was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing close to $500,000 from the non-profit organization, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard D. Schwein Jr.

Cunningham pleaded guilty in September to theft from a government program that received more than $10,000 in federal funding or assistance. Her daughter, Kelli E. Caulfield, 31, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with her mother to defraud JCCEO. Cunningham paid $492,195 in restitution to JCCEO, which was part of her plea agreement with the government, before today’s sentencing.

She must report to prison April 28. JCCEO is a community action agency that administers programs, including Head Start, for low-income and disadvantaged residents. Between late 2008 and April 2010, while Cunningham and her daughter were running fake invoices through the agency and using agency funds to pay mortgages on personal investment properties, JCCEO was paying Cunningham a salary of as much as $150,000, plus bonuses, benefits and retirement contributions.

‘At the same time Cunningham was being showered with accolades, benefits, and praise for her work at the JCCEO, she was stealing funds which could have been used for community programs,’ the government said in its sentencing memorandum.

Cunningham was able to steal money intended to help some of the most vulnerable members of our community because she traded on her long tenure at JCCEO to receive broad discretionary powers from its board,’ Vance said. ‘She and her daughter exploited that authority to steal nearly a half million dollars from the agency. As a result, training programs lagged, Head Start buses were not replaced, and classroom computers were running on obsolete, unsupported operating systems.’

According to court records, Cunningham used JCCEO funds in 2009 and 2010 to make monthly mortgage payments on at least three residential properties she owned, and at least five residential properties her daughter owned, in Jefferson and Shelby counties. Cunningham also used JCCEO funds to pay property taxes on one of those properties, a house in Chelsea that she bought in 2007 with a mortgage loan of more than $1 million.

Cunningham also paid $293,413 in JCCEO funds to companies her daughter owned, and to other contractors, for claimed repairs or renovations to the women’s properties. Caulfield crafted the invoices for repair services that never were performed, and she disguised her ownership in many of the companies, according to the government’s sentencing memorandum. The checks were drawn from the JCCEO operating account and allocated to the agency’s Housing Revitalization Program.

The FBI discovered the fraud at JCCEO while investigating allegations of a mortgage fraud scheme. That investigation led to federal prosecutors’ charges against Cunningham and Caulfield, as well as to charges against a real estate investor and a mortgage broker of conspiracy to defraud federally insured financial institutions. Cunningham and Caulfield bought most of the properties that later became part of the alleged mortgage fraud scheme, the government said.

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