Former BR nonprofit worker charged with embezzlement
Prosecutors allege Kiamani A. Beasley took money intended to provide computer training to community action agencies for the benefit of low-income Louisiana residents.
A former finance director for a Baton Rouge nonprofit aiding the poor was charged Wednesday for her alleged embezzlement of more than $50,857 from the agency.
Kiamani A. Beasley is accused of taking that money from more than $10.8 million provided by federal agencies to the Louisiana Association of Community Action Partners Inc., or LACAP, between April 2009 and November 2011.
Beasley could not be located for comment Wednesday.
She is charged with one count of embezzlement from a federally-funded entity. That charge is contained in a bill of information that was filed by U.S. Attorney Donald J. Cazayoux Jr. and Assistant U.S. Attorney Reginald E. Jones.
LACAP “was established to organize and strengthen the … 42 private and public Community Action Agencies (CAAs) in Louisiana,” according to the prosecutors’ charge against Beasley.
The prosecutors alleged in that filing that Beasley took money “for her personal entertainment” from federal funds intended to help low-income people weatherize their homes.
Cazayoux and Jones also alleged Beasley took money intended to provide computer training to Louisiana’s community action agencies for the benefit of low-income Louisiana residents.
The money Beasley allegedly embezzled had been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to the bill of information, which was filed in lieu of a grand jury indictment.
Beasley was charged after an investigation by the FBI, court records show.
The $50,857 was embezzled between Sept. 5, 2011, and Nov. 2, 2011, according to the charge. In some cases, the charge alleges, Beasley stole federal funds simply “by writing checks to herself from LACAP accounts.”