Indictment accuses 3 more in major fraud scheme at Wisconsin Catholic charity

Several Wisconsin residents have been named in a federal indictment related to an alleged multimillion-dollar fraud scheme involving a Catholic Charities group.

The indictment, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, accuses Brandi Ellis, Jason Flanders, Ramon Hernandez, and Jezlia Barajas of participating in an effort to defraud Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee over the course of several years.

Ellis was already the subject of a May 2025 lawsuit from the archdiocese that accused her of deploying credit card fraud and fake invoices to steal millions of dollars. That lawsuit is still playing out in court.

In the federal indictment, filed on Feb. 3, a grand jury accuses Ellis and the three others of participating in a broad effort to defraud the organization.

Flanders allegedly fraudulently issued checks to himself, while the indictment claims that Ellis issued checks to Barajas and Hernandez “under the false pretenses that [they] performed work” for the charity when they had not.

The alleged scheme partly involved converting fraudulent checks into cash, according to the grand jury. Some of the checks were issued to businesses in order to “conceal and disguise” the fraud.

The money allegedly stolen from the charity was transferred between Wisconsin “and other states,” the indictment alleges.

In addition to fraud charges, the indictment alleges a scheme to lie to law enforcement and federal investigators regarding the payments.

The indictment, signed by U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, identifies hundreds of thousands of dollars it said will be forfeited in the event of convictions.

In addition to suing its ex-accountant, the Catholic charity last year also sued the Madison, Wisconsin-based financial services firm Baker Tilly over allegedly failing to identify the fraudulent activity as part of auditing services it provided to the Catholic organization.

The accounting group “failed to recognize clearly fraudulent purchasing activity,” the suit alleges, and further relied on “internal documents generated by … Brandi Ellis” rather than independently verified third-party data, the suit claimed.

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