Columbus woman sentenced for defrauding nonprofits, using money to pay gambling debts
A teacher who took about $240,000 from Columbus nonprofits and a local dentist’s office will serve two years in federal prison.
While sentencing sentenced 59-year-old Trenna Denise Trice, U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land on Wednesday also ordered her to pay $240,259 in restitution.
Trice pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Dec. 20.
Authorities said Trice used the money she took to fund a gambling addiction.
The investigation into her conduct began in May 2019 after agents with the inspector general’s office of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation learned of significant casino losses that had been covered by an “unidentified income stream.”
Trice’s only reported income was working as a teacher for the Muscogee County School District. She also had worked for a dental office and as a volunteer campaign coordinator for the Columbus branch of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) from 2005 to 2017, when she was responsible for organizing the annual Columbus Mayor’s Masked Ball, the nonprofit’s primary fundraiser.
While collecting cash, credit card contributions and check payments for the fund’s donations and ticket sales, Trice diverted smaller contributions for her own personal use.
Investigators later learned that Trice had been fired from her dental office job for similar allegations, and that she also had collected donations for a nonprofit known as SAMARC, run by two former NBA basketball players who had an annual basketball camp for underprivileged kids in Columbus, the feds said.
After agents found 109 checks and 265 credit card transactions Trice fraudulently deposited into her own accounts. Trice told them she had a decade-long “crippling gambling addiction” and needed the money to cover her losses.
Trice stole $162,044 from UNCF; $70,231 from the dentist’s office; $7,784 from SAMARC; and $200 from the Georgia Dental Society, agents said.