TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Hilda Hall-Dennis was no stranger to nonprofit community work.
Over the course of 11 years, she managed three nonprofits in South Florida. In February 2006, she launched her own nonprofit — the Business Technology Development Corp., a business incubator subsisting on government grants.
The venture purportedly provided business development classes, technical assistance, mentoring and reduced-rent space to new small businesses.
But by September 2012, the state of Florida shut it down.
Hall-Dennis submitted “fraudulent, phony and fake documents to obtain funds,” according to a Miami-Dade County Inspector General’s statement.
For years, she obtained hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, much of it going to bank accounts only she controlled. Last week, Hall-Dennis pleaded guilty to organizing a scheme to defraud the government and three counts of identity theft, all felonies.
Hall-Dennis took in $1,341,628 in total nonprofit grants over six years. Had any of the government benefactors bothered to check, they would’ve found Hall-Dennis failed to file tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of the Business Technology Development Corp. for 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
In May 2010, the IRS finally revoked its nonprofit status, but the grant money kept rolling in for more than two years.
According to a 40-page arrest affidavit, Hall-Dennis received another $460,000 in government grants after the IRS pulled the plug. She applied for $530,000 more but was finally caught before getting it. She will serve 4 ½ months in jail.
The grant agencies appear to have not fully verified her grant applications.
The main funding sources were Community Block Redevelopment Grants, a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development intended in part to create jobs, the City of Homestead and Florida’s Community Redevelopment Agency — an organization with its own troubled past.
Hall-Dennis received $948,353 in total CBRG funding, which passed through a local government agency called the Miami-Dade County Department of Public Housing and Community Development.
Another $234,500 came from the Homestead CRA, which also subsidized the Business Technology Development Corporation’s office rent to the tune of $158,775. Officially, BTDC paid $1 a year in rent.