A Colorado couple is accused of creating dozens of fake kids to scam us out of more than $110,000 in ESA funds. What's it going to take to get the GOP-run Legislature to lasso its sacred cow?
Laurie RobertsArizona Republic
A pair of enterprising characters who don’t even live in Arizona have been charged with swindling Arizona taxpayers through the state’s universal school voucher program.
It seems a Colorado couple got the state of Arizona to shell out $110,000 to “educate” 50 children, most of whom don’t exist, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
It’s the second major indictment for ESA fraud this year.
I, for one, am (so not) SHOCKED that the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program is being used to defraud taxpayers.
ESAs already bought ski passes and Lego
It’s bad enough that we’re paying for ski passes and martial arts classes to further the education of select students while children in Arizona’s public schools go wanting.
That $900 Lego sets, trampoline sessions and Broadway tickets are considered acceptable academic expenses under the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program.
To their credit, state education leaders did eventually draw the line at dune buggies, though, alas, not until after actually doling out public funds to buy three of them in the name of “education.”
But now we learn we’ve also been paying to educate fake kids?
Save Our Schools Arizona has been sounding the alarm about the state’s runaway ESA program all year, pointing to more than $100 million in non-educational spending approved without any academic justification.
Curiously, those fiscal hawks over at the Legislature have responded with a collective yawn.
How many other fake kids are we paying for?
We’ll see if last week’s indictments serve as a wake-up call.
According to the indictments, Johnny Lee Bowers and Ashley Meredith Hewitt, aka Ashley Hopkins, stand charged with 60 felonies apiece — conspiracy, fraud and 58 counts of forgery.
They are accused of using fake birth certificates and other phony documents to obtain Arizona ESA accounts for 50 kids — 43 of whom don’t even exist. They collected $110,258.28 over an 18-month period beginning in December 2022, the AG’s Office says.
This money didn’t go for ski lessons and espresso machines for the kiddies, or even pencils and paper. Instead, it went into Bowers’ and Hewitt’s pockets, according to indictment.
It’s unclear how the fraud came to light. State Superintendent of (Supposedly) Public Instruction Tom Horne, himself a former attorney general, says his office flagged the couple and asked the AG’s Office to investigate.
My question: How many other fake kids are out there?
Voucher program is too easy to defraud
This is the second major indictment for ESA fraud this year.
In February, a state grand jury indicted five people, including three former employees of the Department of Education, on charges that they scammed us out of at least $600,000 when they fraudulently obtained ESAs for 17 children, including seven who do not exist.
Then they gave them phony disability diagnoses to up their take, as kids with special needs can collect tens of thousands of dollars a year, as opposed to the average $7,000 annual payouts.
“To put it simply, they created ghost students,” Attorney General Kris Mayes said at the time. “My overarching concern is this is a program that is easy to target for fraud.”
Clearly.
Arizona’s ESA program has exploded since the Legislature expanded it in 2022, making any parent eligible to collect thousands of dollars to spend pretty much as they please to school their children. Horne’s office has been inundated with requests for reimbursement of expenses.
What Horne hasn’t been inundated with is the staff to police the program and ensure the expenses — and the children — are legit.
Long waits for reimbursements, little policing
Since the program, now in its second year, was expanded, it has ballooned to more than 10 times its previous size, when only certain children could qualify.
These days, nearly 83,000 children — or rather, their parents — are getting paid to forgo public schools .... even if their kids never attended public schools.
But the staffing to oversee the ESA program has only doubled, from 21 people to about 40, according to Horne.
The result has been a massive backlog in reimbursements — 90,000, as of mid-November — forcing parents to wait months on end to recoup thousands of dollars in expenses they paid out of pocket.
Opinion: Want to fix vouchers? Then vote GOP lawmakers out
(It is, of course, astonishing that they could afford to front the state so much cash, given GOP leaders’ insistence that the program exists to help poor children flee failing schools.)
The result has been improperly approved reimbursements. (See: The dune buggy debacle, not to mention that $4,000 piano now gracing somebody’s living room and the kayak sitting in some lucky kid’s garage.)
And, obviously, fraud.
Republicans aren't about to put up guardrails
It’s clear the Republicans who control of the House and Senate aren’t going to put any guardrails on Arizona’s ESA program. Cows don’t get any more sacred than this one.
For two years, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has been asking for more controls over how our money is spent, only to get laughed out of the Legislature.
Lawmakers will get a third chance come January, when a new, even more conservative Legislature convenes at the Capitol.
If it wasn’t obvious before we were snookered out of more than $700,000 — with more to come as criminals realize how easily our pockets can be picked — it should be obvious now.
The Republicans who gave us ESAs for all need to find the cash to police their program.
Just how many fake kids are we expected to educate?
Reach Roberts atlaurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at@LaurieRobertsaz, on Threads at@LaurieRobertsaz and on BlueSky at @laurieroberts.bsky.social.
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