A nonprofit's own employee named her family as landlords to divert Indiana rental-assistance funds
Valencia Franklin, 52, of Lynwood, Illinois worked for a Merrillville, Indiana nonprofit entrusted with administering federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds for local residents affected by COVID-19. In 2021, she defrauded her own employer by preparing fraudulent ERAP applications that falsely claimed her family members were landlords for certain properties they had no actual connection to, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent payments to be issued to herself and others. She pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced on June 3, 2025 to 24 months in prison and ordered to pay $352,300 in restitution.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $352,300
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-12
The facts, as recorded
- In 2021, a not-for-profit organization located in Merrillville, Indiana, referred to in court documents as 'Company A,' administered and distributed federal Emergency Rental Assistance funds to local residents adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Valencia Franklin worked for Company A and defrauded the company by preparing fraudulent applications for Emergency Rental Assistance that falsely claimed her family members were landlords for certain properties, when in reality they had no connection to those properties.
- As a result of her false representations, Franklin caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent payments to be issued to herself and others.
- United States District Court Judge Philip P. Simon sentenced her in Hammond, Indiana to 24 months in prison followed by 1 year of supervised release, and ordered her to pay $352,300 in restitution, after she pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
- The case was investigated by the United States Secret Service and announced by Acting US Attorney Tina L. Nommay.
Why this case matters
This is the only case on this page where the fraud came from inside the organization Treasury trusted to administer the funds honestly, rather than from an outside applicant. Franklin did not need to fool a stranger’s review process or fabricate a convincing paper trail from scratch; she only had to get her own applications past her own employer’s internal controls, which is a materially different failure than a self-attestation gap in an outside application.
Family members as a borrowed identity
Rather than inventing a landlord from nothing, Franklin’s applications named real people, her own family members, as landlords for properties they had no actual connection to. The scheme did not require forged documents impersonating a stranger; it required only that her employer’s process never cross-checked a named landlord’s identity against actual property or lease records.
Insider access versus outsider fraud
The Justice Department’s release frames this case as Franklin defrauding “Company A,” her own employer, rather than defrauding the federal program directly. That framing matters: the same self-attestation design that let outside applicants like Dora Boyd fabricate a landlord identity also meant an employee with internal access needed even less effort to do the same thing undetected.
The caveat
Franklin pleaded guilty and has been sentenced. The description of her role at the administering nonprofit, the family-member landlord claims, and the dollar figures reflect the Justice Department’s own charging and sentencing announcement; this page does not independently verify the underlying program or employment records.
Sources
- Illinois Woman Sentenced to 24 Months in Prison And Ordered to Repay $352,300 in Restitution. US Department of Justice, US Attorney's Office, Northern District of Indiana. Accessed 2026-10-12. Supports: All facts above: the nonprofit's role administering ERAP funds, Franklin's employment there, the fraudulent applications naming family members as landlords, the dollar figures, the charge, sentence and restitution.