A Milwaukee woman will go to jail for defrauding Wisconsin Shares. Beatrice Johnson is ordered to serve six months in jail as part of a three-year probation sentence for allegedly stealing money from state taxpayers, through the Wisconsin Shares child care program.
The 29-year-old woman must also repay $13,000 she stole, otherwise she’ll go to jail for an entire year. State officials had suspended Johnson in 2009 for the suspected fraud against the state’s day care subsidy program. That’s after investigators found that she billed the program for kids who never attended and discontinued attending the center, and for days when the facility was closed, including all Saturdays.
A jury recently found Johnson guilty of theft by fraud. She’s one of about two dozen people who’ve been charged in state and federal courts for bilking a total of $2 million from the tax-funded child care program for the working poor. Lawmakers approved a crackdown on that fraud in 2010.