A once-revered transgender activist whose D.C. nonprofit housed and aided homeless LGBTQ+ immigrants and youths was sentenced Tuesday to serve 33 months in federal prison and pay more than $900,000 in restitution — a sentence that is likely to trigger deportation proceedings — after she pleaded guilty to diverting federal pandemic relief funds meant to support her clients to offshore personal bank accounts in El Salvador.
“You came to this country hiding under the floorboards of a vegetable truck and this country gave you refuge,” Judge Trevor N. McFadden told Ruby Corado as he handed down the sentence at the Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse. “You betrayed this country.”
Standing at the center of the courtroom Tuesday in an orange jumpsuit, her long hair unstyled and streaked with gray, Corado, 54, wept as she pleaded with the court for leniency. She mishandled the money, she confessed, and tried to invest the U.S. taxpayer dollars she received as loans into a nascent shelter for transgender women in El Salvador that she hoped would mirror her D.C. nonprofit, Casa Ruby. But, Corado said, she has regretted her choices every day since. She did not understand at the time the kind of harm she was causing, she said.
“I wish I could’ve done things differently, but it is already done,” Corado said, pausing to weep, before she was sentenced Tuesday. “I got caught up in my mission to help others. But I am the first one to hold myself accountable.”
Her attorney had argued that ordering incarceration for Corado — a trans woman who had been sexually assaulted multiple times in her life — would put her in harm’s way by forcing her into a men’s prison under new rules by the Trump administration that call for moving inmates into prisons that align with their sex assigned at birth rather than their gender, as she awaits deportation proceedings from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“It would be cruel and unusual punishment in her unique circumstances,” said attorney Pleasant S. Brodnax, who had asked the judge to impose a more lenient sentence of time served — about 18 months of home confinement — and repayment of the money in question. “The size of what [Casa Ruby] was trying to do may have exceeded the capacity of the person running the organization. Sometimes, you’re just in over your head.”
Prosecutors had urged the judge to sentence Corado to 33 months in prison, punishment for what the U.S. attorney’s office said was “dishonest and disgusting” conduct that involved moving “almost $300,000 offshore into bank accounts that were beyond the reach of law enforcement,” according to court filings.
McFadden argued that if he offered Corado a more lenient sentence out of fear of mistreatment in prison it would amount to sex discrimination. “People should be treated equally,” he said, adding that he did not want to treat Corado “more favorably because you are transgender.”
McFadden further ordered Corado, who is a legal permanent resident of the U.S., to “immediately” report to ICE for immigration enforcement proceedings. He acknowledged that “deportation is likely, if not certain” in her case.
“It’s important that people know there are significant consequences for defrauding the government,” McFadden said. “I hope you will use this time as a chastening period.”
Tuesday’s sentencing is the latest development in Corado’s dramatic fall from grace after the safe house she founded for unhoused LGBTQ+ youths in D.C. closed amid swirling allegations of fraud, abuse and financial mismanagement. In 2022, Corado fled to El Salvador amid intensifying public scrutiny of her nonprofit. She was arrested two years later and charged with financial crimes upon her return to the United States.
Casa Ruby, one of the few homeless shelters in the District to specifically cater to LGBTQ+ clients, brought in millions of dollars in grants annually. It employed dozens of people, most of whom were trans and formerly homeless. And for a decade, the nonprofit shelter offered services and a place to stay to the District’s most vulnerable: homeless LGBTQ+ young people, sex workers, trans women of color and immigrants who arrived in the United States with little more than what they could carry.
Over the years, Corado’s story was heralded as one of triumph over adversity: She fled El Salvador as a teenager in the 1980s, and by the early 1990s, she was sleeping on the streets in D.C. As a trans woman who was living as a gay man at the time, Corado found that the shelters in D.C. were not safe for people like her.
One night in 1992, Corado dared to imagine a different kind of refuge — one built for LGBTQ+ people. A place where their needs could be met. A place of chosen family with the comforts of a home: real beds, real mattresses and sheets, Corado dreamed, made of satin. More than 20 years later, Corado opened Casa Ruby as a small drop-in shelter with a staff of volunteers. Eventually, the operation grew to encompass multiple sites around the city and served as many as 6,000 people a year.
As the nonprofit grew, so, too, did Corado’s prominence and name recognition.
She flanked Mayor Muriel E. Bowser at ribbon cuttings and events, and joined the mayor on a trip to El Salvador in 2018 to sign a sister-city agreement with San Salvador. Corado became a go-to source for journalists, activists and politicians looking to engage the trans community. But in its final years, Casa Ruby employees said, the woman who had launched a new kind of shelter and inspired a city had changed. Allegations that the facilities were neglected, rents left unpaid and employees mistreated dogged the nonprofit.
In 2023, a court-appointed receiver sued the group’s board, alleging that its lack of oversight enabled Corado to embezzle more than $800,000, increase her own salary and open an office in El Salvador, all without board approval.
Corado pleaded guilty in July 2024 to one count of wire fraud after admitting that she had diverted more than $150,000 in pandemic relief funds.
In court on Tuesday, prosecutors asked the judge to hold Corado to account for the full amount Casa Ruby was awarded in pandemic relief funds: $956,215. The government argued that had Corado not misrepresented what she was going to do with that money on her loan applications, she never would have received that amount — ultimately leaving more available for other, more legitimate endeavors.
The judge ultimately agreed, despite the defense’s insistence that nearly 80 percent of the loan money received was, indeed, spent appropriately on Corado’s U.S. operations. McFadden ordered Corado to repay all the loan money in restitution to the Small Business Administration.
Corado’s attorney had argued that Corado “fully intended to use the funds for Casa Ruby’s purposes” and that the money she sent to El Salvador was meant to fund similar efforts in the Central American country that Corado saw as an extension of her mission.
As the judge read out Corado’s sentence, the Rev. Danielle Dufoe shook her head in disbelief.
Dufoe has known Corado for decades — through her years as a volunteer and activist, and as she worked to get Casa Ruby off the ground using her own money to fund the nonprofit. Dufoe, a minister to homeless youth and the first transgender woman to graduate from a historically Black theological institution, said Tuesday was “a very sad day.”
“She was out of her depth at the end, that’s for sure,” Dufoe said. “But the court is very distant from the people Ruby served. And its disproportionate assessment of the harm caused dismissed her many, many years of service to her community.”
Corado’s attorney asked the judge to that the Federal Bureau of Prisons allow Corado to serve her time in a facility close to the District. The judge agreed, though he declined to “second guess” the bureau’s decisions regarding whether Corado should be placed in a men’s or women’s facility.
Casey Parks and Salvador Rizzo contributed to this report.
The post Once-revered trans activist Ruby Corado gets prison time in fraud case appeared first on Washington Post.
