How Could You? Hall of Shame-Mary Holden of Give Us This Day Foster Services and Lawsuit UPDATED

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Portland, Oregon, “Officials said the head of a local foster care agency misused millions of dollars while needy children went without. Now, the organization has been shut down.

The agency called Give Us This Day has been caring for foster kids in group homes and placing them with foster families in the Portland area for years.

Organizers relied on state funding, but investigators said the money was mishandled and one former employee told FOX 12 she can back that up.

“We had to go on our own to food banks and churches and places that donated food to pick that up on our own time. When we weren’t getting paid. Just to make sure the kids had food to eat, or we’d bring our own lunches and they’d beg us for our own lunches. So it was difficult,” said Rachel Rosas.

Rosas used to work for Give Us This Day, caring for foster kids in group homes. She said not only were the living conditions sub-par, with very little money for groceries, linens and clothes, but she said her paychecks were late on a regular basis.

When she asked managers about it, they told her the state wasn’t giving them their funding.

Mary Holden ran the agency and had several foster parents working for her. Several of them have also complained to FOX 12 that they didn’t get paid on time and are still owed money.

Court documents show thousands of dollars were spent on travel, dining out, Las Vegas Casinos and clothing at Victoria’s Secret and Louis Vuitton.

Rosas testified before a senate committee about the agency and how money was appropriated.

Just this week, the State Department of Justice signed a settlement agreement with Mary Holden, saying she will dissolve the agency, her insurance company will give $500,000 back to the state and she is not allowed to work for a non-profit for 7 years.[Why is her insurance agency giving back the money? Should SHE give back the money? 7 years? That’s it!!!]

Rosas feels that a lot of neglected children are finally getting a voice.

“The foster kids will contact me. They’ve aged out of the program or they’re homeless or they’ve been in jail and they just feel like, what did they do wrong? Or why didn’t they get a chance? And it’s just showing them that it wasn’t their fault. Somewhere the system failed them,” said Rosas.

FOX 12 was not able to locate Mary Holden to get her side of the story.

FOX 12 asked state officials if she could face criminal charges and they said they can’t comment on that at this time.”

Head of foster care agency accused of misusing millions of dollars [KPTV 10/1/15]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“The Oregon Department of Justice has sued a woman whose foster care agency endured withering scrutiny from lawmakers last month, alleging a years-long plot involving three charities and the misspending of at least $2 million in state funds.

In a complaint filed Wednesday in Marion County Circuit Court, state officials accuse Mary Ayala of West Linn of using two nonprofits, the Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers and the Albina Women’s League Foundation, to “facilitate her plundering of assets” from her Northeast Portland foster care provider, Give Us This Day.

Court documents say Ayala, also known as Mary Holden, had “essentially exclusive and unfettered” financial control of the three organizations. Ayala used that power, a state financial investigator alleged, to buy property ($100,000), remodel and furnish her home ($213,000), and pay for trips, meals, clothes and beauty expenses including cosmetic surgery ($249,800).

The state’s financial review found 76 cash transactions worth $257,000 that benefited Ayala. It also found Give Us This Day had passed 450 bad checks from 2010 through 2015. Investigator Kris Kalanges said Give Us This Day failed to keep a ledger and that Ayala “failed to maintain or provide even minimal accounting records” tracking her spending.

The court filings come amid ongoing questions about how well Oregon cares for thousands of foster children and whether the state spends enough to provide adequate oversight.  In the end, the documents allege, the foster children served through Give Us This Day and funded by the Department of Human Services, were left to suffer “severe consequences.”

Ayala’s “excessive and unauthorized personal use” of Give Us This Day’s funds, “coupled with her failure to repay those funds, severely impacted the ability of [Give Us This Day] to carry out fully its mission to care for foster children,” Kalanges wrote.

In testimony last month before the Senate’s human services committee, a former Give Us This Day employee said children at one group home went without groceries, grooming products, clean sheets or mattresses. The employee, Rachel Rosas, also said kids and staffers dealt with mold and rodents.

Justice officials have been investigating Ayala and her organizations since 2012. Willamette Week first reported on Give Us This Day’s troubles in September.

Ayala, contacted Thursday by The Oregonian/OregonLive, said she hadn’t yet read the court documents or consulted an attorney.

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said.

Asked about the accusations, though, she said they were “totally not true” and said she had been owed at least $1 million since taking over Give Us This Day in 1999. She said she often worked for free and would go months without being paid, even mortgaging her house to keep Give Us This Day afloat.

Ayala closed Give Us This Day as part of a settlement with the Justice Department. The Department of Human Services stopped referring children to the provider, citing the justice investigation, after Willamette Week finished its reporting.

On its last day of operation, Sept. 30, Give Us This Day received a final check from the Department of Human Services for $5,092. Court papers say Ayala, later that day, wrote herself a $5,000 check and cashed it.

“She left [Give Us This Day] with less than $900 in the bank,” court records say, despite knowing the provider “owed foster parents tens of thousands of dollars for their services.”

Ayala acknowledged the withdrawal but didn’t say what she used the money for. She insisted she did nothing wrong. She accused state officials of targeting her over complaints about racism.

“I’m pretty much a pauper myself,” she said. “Now I’ve been made this scapegoat. That’s just the way it is.”

Justice Department officials declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

Besides Ayala, the complaint filed Wednesday names as defendants the two other nonprofits Ayala ran.

It also names four defendants identified as board members for the Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers: Mercedes Garcia, Delores Moore, Jacqueline Williams and Ayala’s mother, Flora Judon. And it names two members of the Albina Women’s League Foundation: Henry McDowell and Opal Strong.

The complaint says the members “allowed” Ayala to “exploit these charities for personal gain” and operate without any “procedures necessary to ensure that charities operate for the public benefit.”

Ayala, it alleges, ordered the Yaun nonprofit to let Give Us This Day use a house on Northeast Rodney Avenue for $1 a year. Documents say the Yaun center has provided no services to children or other charitable programs since 1997.

The Albina foundation similarly stopped running charity programs since Ayala took over in 2012, court files say. Ayala, acting as head of the foundation, leased office space on Northeast Killingsworth Street to Give Us This Day. But the group “has made no effort to collect rent.” The complaint says Ayala has since moved a restaurant into the space formerly held by Give Us This Day.

Before Ayala agreed to close Give Us This Day, the complaint says, Ayala worked with a woman named Alesha Walker to create a for-profit business, Trinity of Oregon, that would continue serving foster children at the Rodney property. Investigators also accuse Ayala of retaining control of the remaining nonprofits.

Kalanges, the state financial investigator, said Ayala’s associates told foster parents who hadn’t been paid before Give Us This Day’s dissolution to “seek payment elsewhere.” Others told the Justice Department that they’d been told to tell the Department of Human Services they wanted to work with Trinity.

The state is demanding that Ayala and the board members pay damages that amount to what was lost by Give Us This Day and the two other nonprofits. They also want to prevent the defendants from holding jobs or volunteer positions where they handle money or oversee finances.

Attorneys also want both remaining charities to be taken over by receivers and dissolved. The state has asked for a restraining order in the meantime, to keep Ayala “from dissipating charitable assets while this action is pending.””

Oregon accuses foster care provider of ‘plundering’ $2 million in state funds [Oregon Live 10/15/15 by Denis C.  Theriault]

Update 2:“State emails show that top officials in the Oregon Department of Human Services knew about neglected children and serious financial problems at Portland foster care provider Give Us This Day—and did nothing for nearly 19 months.

Emails Show Top State Managers Ignored Serious Warning Signs That a Foster Care Provider Was Neglecting Kids [Williamette Week 11/5/15 by Nigel Jaquiss]

Update 3: “The federal government is investigating Portland foster care agency Give Us This Day.

Feds Open Investigation into Troubled Portland Foster Care Provider [Williamette Week 12/2/15 by Nigel Jaquiss]

Update 4:”A former Give Us This Day employee and his wife sue Give Us This Day executive director for fraud and breach of contract in connection with $155,000 in loans they gave the troubled child care provider.

A former employee and his wife have sued Holden for breach of contract, fraud and abuse of a vulnerable person in connection with $155,000 in loans they gave Holden to keep Give Us This Day and two other charities in operation.

Felix Cabrera La Rosa, 65, and Eva Diaz Palomino claim that when Holden requested the loan, she hid information that she and Give Us This Day were under investigation for allegedly misspending state money allocated for foster kids, according to the complaint.

“They have known Mary for years,” said James Tschudy, an attorney with Portland law firm Eblen Freed representing the couple. “They thought they were helping to further the mission of the charities and like many others were deceived and are trying to recover as best they can.”

Holden approached Cabrera and his wife in March 2014 to request an initial loan of $120,000, the complaint indicates.

“They were told it was needed to keep the charities going,” Tschudy said. “Knowing Mary for so long, they didn’t ask too many questions. They didn’t demand financials.”

According to the complaint, Holden told them that the sale of another property on Alberta Street in north Portland was pending and offered to pay the couple back the loan principal, plus 10 percent, when the sale was finalized. In fact, the north Portland property was sold at a tax auction in May 2014. Holden made only three payments on the loan, equaling $30,000, in April, May and June of 2015, the lawsuit states.

Give Us This Day shut down in September under a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice in which Holden also was barred from holding any fiduciary positions in Oregon nonprofits. She refused to sign an agreement that also would have shuttered another nonprofit she controls – Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers, according to the complaint.

That same month, she worked with associates to try to establish a for-profit corporation, Trinity of Oregon, based out of a property owned by the Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers. The house on Northeast Rodney Avenue in Portland had previously served as a group home for foster kids placed with Give Us This Day.

That month, Holden also asked Cabrera for another loan of $35,000 to help avoid a tax foreclosure on the Rodney property scheduled for the next day, according to the complaint.

A promissory note between Cabrera and Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers granted power of sale over the Rodney property to Cabrera if the loan was not repaid by Oct. 30, 2016, the lawsuit states.

The second loan went toward paying off about $50,000 in delinquent taxes on the Rodney house, according to the lawsuit.

Cabrera was 65 at the time of the second loan and therefore, is considered a vulnerable adult under Oregon statute, Tschudy said.

The Department of Justice began investigating allegations of child neglect and misuse of funds at Give Us This Day in 2012, according to a report by The Oregonian. The foster care provider is accused of spending $2 million in state money on travel, luxury items and services, paying off debt on Holden’s personal home and other items, Willamette Week reported.

Emails released by the Oregon Department of Human Services Dec. 30 show top department officials knew about problems at Give Us This Day as early as 2009. DHS released the emails in response to a public records request by Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General is investigating whether the Oregon DHS submitted false or improper claims for payment under a federal grant in connection with Give Us This Day.”

Former employee sues embattled foster care provider [Daily Astorian 1/8/16 by Paris Achen]

“Back in February 2009, the head of Oregon’s child welfare programs emailed her boss with worries about Portland foster care provider Give Us This Day.

“At a site visit last week, numerous concerns arose (on top of the fact that they aren’t licensed) — the most serious of which is that every single staff person has a criminal record,” Erinn Kelley-Siel wrote to the Department of Human Services’ director, Bruce Goldberg.

“I know you’ve had extensive involvement in the past with issues concerning [Give Us This Day] — are you currently in discussions with them?” continued Kelley-Siel, who later led the department from 2011 to 2015. “I want to make sure our activities support yours. Thoughts or suggestions on how to proceed?”

The department eventually stopped placing children at Give Us This Day — but not until almost seven years later, after allegations emerged that the provider hadmisspent nearly $2 million in state funding.

Sen. Sara Gelser, who’s pushing for tougher oversight of Oregon’s child welfare system, released Kelley-Siel’s email amid hundreds of pages of records in advance of a key legislative hearing next week on her proposals.

The details revealed in those records show senior officials knew of significant troubles at Give Us This Day years earlier than previously reported. And they knew of problems in time to have avoided the money issues and allegations of abuse that arose later.

The records also add to disturbing questions about state officials’ willingness and ability to crack down on troubled providers.

Just months after the 2009 discussions about Give Us This Day, department leaders announced a review of their handling of abuse cases — following high-profile allegations that caseworkers in Washington County had ignored reports of abuse allegations for more than a decade. Oregon has paid millions of dollars in settlements involving abuse, in some cases fatal, over the past several years.

“We need a very significant culture change,” said Gelser, D-Corvallis, who’s working up bills that would give officials more power to investigate abuse claims and close providers accused of neglect.

“All of the right things were being said in public. But behind the curtain, decisions were being made to sacrifice the safety of kids,” Gelser said. “That’s not a red flag. That’s a giant neon sign.”

Give Us This Day’s financial troubles were first reported by Willamette Week in September. Later that month, a former Give Us This Day employee sat before the Senate’s human services committee and said the provider failed to provide food and clean bedding, rewrote reports, tolerated mold and rodents, and let workers use improper force.

Gov. Kate Brown ousted the Department of Human Services’ interim director in November and announced a review of Oregon’s foster care system.

Brown later told lawmakers her review would focus on abuse investigations, licensing practices and how the department shares warning signs. An advisory group, including lawmakers and advocates, is set to meet for the second time this month, a spokeswoman for Brown’s office said.

Last month, after changes by Brown’s handpicked human services director , officials pulled kids from a Clackamas County provider, Youth Villages, amid complaints of supervision so poor that teenagers were allowed to engage in sexual contact. Youth Villages announced last month it was closing the residential program in question.

Another provider, the Scotts Valley School south of Eugene, received a letter from the state that mentioned children enduring hunger, bedbug bites, vulgar nicknames such as “orphan whore” and punishment that involved silently facing a wall for 12 hours a day.

Gelser said the latest documents on Give Us This Day, which she obtained in a public records request, put an exclamation point on her argument that state law must change to help stop further abuse.

One of Gelser’s bills would tighten licensing requirements and financial rules, and give regulators the power to suspend a provider’s license over abuse claims and other safety violations. Now, providers can keep their license if they’re “substantially” in compliance, even if regulators have repeatedly confirmed abuse and neglect.

For example, messages sent between 2009 and 2014 show back-and-forth discussions over licensing, abuse complaints, worries about poor care and supervision, problems with cleanliness and hunger, and “concerns about financial management and cash flow.”

Despite those concerns, officials in June 2013 recommended keeping the state’s contract with Give Us This Day — swayed by the provider’s “willingness to take almost any child any time” and its “experience with children and families of color.” Officials have repeatedly said they turned to Give Us This Day because it accepted troubled children other providers turned away.

“That is not an acceptable reason,” Gelser said Thursday. “Those decisions impacted the safety of every other licensed provider. It gutted the power and the authority of the licensing agency to actually hold providers accountable.”

Gelser warned of another possible hit from Give Us This Day: penalties over Medicaid fraud.

On Nov. 13, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a subpoena for all state records dealing with Give Us This Day since 2007. Gelser said officials may have broken the law by paying Give Us This Day despite knowing “on multiple occasions” that it lacked a license.

She said the inquiry could come with “a big bill” and, potentially, federal criminal charges.

“I hope people are held accountable,” she said. “Kids were hurt.””

Foster care scandal deepens: ‘Every single staff person has a criminal record’ [Oregon Live 1/9/16 by Denis C. Theriault ]

Update 5: “A troubled Portland foster care provider has faced dozens of abuse and neglect reports since 2001, newly released complaint logs show — with serious accusations, including rape and sexual assault, allowed to pass without full investigations.

Senior officials at the Department of Human Services compiled a 40-plus page “chronology” of reports after learning Give Us This Day was enduring serious tax and cash flow problems in 2014. Fifty of those complaints, officials note, landed between 2012 and 2014.

The new documents join hundreds of records showing officials knew of Give Us This Day’s problems for years longer than previously reported — capping months of worsening revelations that included allegations of $2 million in misspent money and children forced to endure mold, hunger, inappropriate force and a lack of bedding.

The complaint log also makes clear, for the first time, that many of the most serious complaints leveled against Give Us This Day and its employees never went beyond an initial screening.

The words “no investigation” appear next to reports on allegations including anal rape, sexual fondling, children accused of having sex after being found in the same bed, a lack of supervision from foster parents, bruises and death threats.

And yet in some of those cases, investigators made notes about increasing supervision or taking some other kind of responsive action. In the complaint about anal rape, in which a child reported an attack by a roommate in 2012, the report says “the alleged offender was moved to another program.”

The timeline doesn’t say which program the accused roommate was moved to or whether that child ever faced additional abuse allegations.

In one of the most serious substantiated complaints, abuse investigators “issued a finding of neglect” against Give Us This Day after a child in one of the provider’s foster homes had sex “on more than one occasion with an adult male visiting the home.”

In others, a child who was supposed to receive one-on-one supervision during daylight hours “was often left alone” and was allowed to have unapproved contact with her mother. And in 2013, staffers at one Give Us This Day site were found to have mistreated a boy by twisting his wrist in a takedown and then pushing him into a closet door hard enough to leave a hole.

The revelations add to longstanding questions about child welfare officials’ ability to regulate foster care providers.

In 2005, the records show, Portland police officials sent over a liaison to meet after calls from the provider reached a “public nuisance level.”

Those records, along with emails that showed top officials worried about allegations of racial bias in their dealings with Give Us This Day, were released by Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, ahead of a hearing Thursday on proposed child welfare reforms.

“It’s a continuing barrage year after year,” Gelser said of Give Us This Day in an interview last week. “It’s not like it ever appeared to get better.”

The foster care system has earned the attention of lawmakers such as Gelser and also Gov. Kate Brown, who has shaken up the management of the Department of Human Services and ordered an external review of Oregon’s child welfare systems.

One of Gelser’s reform proposals, which will be aired during a hearing Thursday, would make abuse and neglect investigation reports a public record, provided they involved a state-funded program. That bill would also give regulators new power to quickly revoke a provider’s license if it faced serious abuse allegations.

Another would change how abuse and neglect investigations are processed. Overall in 2014, more than half of complaints fielded by the Department of Human Services were closed during an initial screening. That’s because state law strictly limits investigations in child welfare cases, usually to incidents involving near-death and other serious injuries or an ongoing threat.

Gelser has repeatedly argued that standard often excludes credible allegations involving real harm. Gelser wants to set a lower threshold that would include threats, neglect through the denial of food or medicine, financial fraud and lesser injuries that don’t leave a child near death.

Senior Department of Human Services officials, according to emails shared by Gelser, knew about Give Us This Day’s problems for years but continued sending children there. In several emails, they noted Give Us This Day’s willingness to work with troubled children other providers might refuse.

And they fretted over how to maintain a working relationship with the provider and its owner, Mary Holden, in light of those concerns.

In one 2011 run-in, Holden accused officials of trying to shut down Give Us This Day over its long history of licensing lapses and other concerns. Holden is an African American and had positioned Give Us This Day as a haven for foster children of color.

“She didn’t state it was racism but made it clear that is her belief,” Jerry Burns, a top child welfare official, wrote in an email to Donna Keddy, the department’s licensing director.

Two days later, another child welfare official, Lois Day, said department managers had “a conversation related to wanting some consultation on inherent bias and whether it was reflected in our process and product.”

Give Us This Day closed down last fall.”

Foster care scandal: Oregon releases years of shocking abuse complaints [Oregon Live 1/12/16 by Denis C. Theriault ]

Update 6:“A federal grand jury has charged a Portland woman with theft of more than $800,000 from a foster care agency where she had served as president and executive director.

An indictment charges Mary Holden Ayala, 56, with theft, money laundering and filing false personal tax returns.

Ayala served as president and executive director of the state licensed private foster care agency called, Give Us This Day, until its closing in September 2015.

Ayala is accused of embezzling at least $800,000 of the foster care agency’s money between 2009 and 2015.

She spent the money that was intended to support foster care services, children and families on her own luxury retail purchases, trips and vacations to casinos, on mortgage loan payments and remodeling projects for her home in West Linn and to support independent business ventures, the indictment alleges.

Gives Us This Day, which received state and federal funding, was an agency that hired and screened foster parents and paid community-based foster parents for services. It also placed foster children in residential care or group homes, hiring and training residential counselors and managers who worked at the group foster homes.

The troubled Portland foster care provider also has faced dozens of abuse and neglect reports since 2001, with serious accusations, including rape and sexual assault, allowed to pass without full investigations, according to the state Department of Human Services.

At least $25,000 of the agency’s funds, which was intended to support foster care services, children and families, at luxury retail stores, including Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Coach and Nordstrom, according to the indictment. She spent at least $20,000 of the agency funds at nail salons, beauty supply stores and at a cosmetic surgery clinic, the indictment says.

She spent at least $100,000 on her own travel and vacations, including trips to casinos in Louisiana, Las Vegas and Spirit Mountain Lodge in Oregon. The money also supported vacations at the Westin Maui Resort and Spa in Hawaii and resorts in Texas and Alabama, the indictment alleges.

She fraudulently used the agency’s bank accounts and debit cards to pay for her personal expenses, federal officials allege.

She’s also accused of filing false personal income tax returns from 2009 through 2014, and failing to file a return in 2015.

FBI agents arrested Ayala on Tuesday in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She appeared before a federal magistrate judge on Wednesday in Oxford, Mississippi.

The FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General and the Internal Revenue Service conducted the criminal investigation.

Federal prosecutors will seek to keep Ayala in custody at a detention hearing later this week, concerned she might not voluntarily return to Oregon to face the indictment.

In 2015, the Oregon Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Ayala in Marion County Circuit Court, alleging a yearslong plot involving three charities and the misspending of at least $2 million in state funds.

At that time, Ayala told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the allegations were “totally not true” and said she had been owed at least $1 million since taking over Give Us This Day in 1999. She said she often worked for free and would go months without being paid, even mortgaging her house to keep Give Us This Day afloat.”

Former head of foster care agency accused of embezzling agency money for luxury purchases, trips

[Oregon Live 5/11/17 by Maxine Bernstein]

Update 7:“A judge Friday sentenced a Portland woman to two years and nine months in federal prison for stealing more than $1 million from an Oregon foster agency that she had led as president and executive director.

Mary Ayala, 59, who ran the private foster care agency Give Us This Day from 2008 through 2015, was found guilty of multiple counts of theft, money laundering and filing false personal income tax returns after an eight-day trial in February.

The agency primarily received funding from Oregon and the federal government to hire and screen foster parents for community placements, pay foster parents for services and place foster children in residential or group homes. The federal funding came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and was administrated by the state.

With no internal controls in place, Ayala wrote checks, used the foster care agency’s debit card and withdrew cash at will, using the organization’s bank accounts as her own, prosecutors said.

Ayala used the money to pay her mortgage, remodel her home and fund other retail, travel and transportation expenses, and to support other unrelated business ventures, including a media company and Big Mary’s, a fish and ribs restaurant in Portland.

“Ayala’s brazen and willful conduct – all while purporting to provide social services to the most vulnerable children in our society – makes this case particularly notable and highlights the gravity of defendant Ayala’s offense,’’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Donna Maddux wrote in her sentencing memo. “She did not simply steal $1 million from investors, like so many other federal fraud cases. She stole $1 million of public funds intended to assist the most vulnerable members of society.’’

In 2015, the day after Ayala resigned her position, she filed five false federal income tax returns for tax years 2009 through 2013. Shortly thereafter, she filed a sixth false return for tax year 2014. Ayala failed to file a tax return in 2015.

At trial, Ayala denied the allegations and maintained that the government didn’t have the evidence to support its allegations, according to defense lawyer Whitney Boise. If there was any underpayment of taxes, Ayala didn’t do so knowingly, he argued.

On Friday, Boise urged the court to sentence Ayala to probation with home detention, based on her past good actions and her medical condition, having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996. She taught English at three different schools in Portland for a total of 15 years and became a foster parent to two children herself before she worked to manage the foster care agency, according to her lawyer.

“She has lost her home, her job and her sense of self-worth due to her convictions. She has no money or companionship,’’ Boise wrote in his sentencing memo. “Over the last four to five years she has been humiliated in the press and shunned by many friends. Enough to say she has been severely punished and defeated. She has no prior record and is not a danger to the public in any way. Putting her behind bars would serve no purpose but to further punish her.’’

U.S. District Court Judge Marco A. Hernandez also ordered Ayala to pay $239,192 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and forfeit to the government $1,025,235, representing the money obtained from her crimes.

The court also ordered more than $451,000 in net proceeds from the sale of a commercial property on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, which Ayala purchased with stolen funds, be forfeited to the government.

The FBI, along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Inspector General and the IRS investigated the case.”

Former head of foster care agency sent to federal prison for nearly 3 years for embezzling more than $1 million
[Oregon Live 6/21/19 by Maxine Bernstein]