Last week, she pleaded guilty to stealing more than USD350,000 from the Project Empowerment Program between May 2015 and April 2018. As part of her plea agreement, she agreed to pay restitution of at least USD354,000, and to be liable for a forfeiture money judgment totalling USD318,413.

In 2011, Barnes was sentenced to 27 months on federal charges that she stole money from a federal funding scheme for personal expenditure. When she was released in 2013, she joined Washington's scheme for people having trouble finding work. The scheme has laudable objectives: "The Project Empowerment Program provides employment services to D.C. residents who have multiple barriers to employment, such as a history of substance abuse, a history of not maintaining steady employment and either a felony conviction or previous jail term" (edited).

The scheme found her work and later they engaged her as a Program Support Assistant in February 2014.

And then things went bad. According to the US Department of Justice "From May 2015 through April 2018, she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the program by reviving 16 former Project Empowerment participants’ profiles and modifying entries in a database to falsely show them as working for a non-profit organisation, which was not true. She also used the name of a former employee from the non‑profit organisation to enter and approve time in the database showing individuals as working when they were not. In addition, she ordered or caused to be ordered replacement and new prepaid debit cards on behalf of the former Project Empowerment participants whose profiles she fraudulently revived. As a result of her conduct, she caused the D.C. government to request that Wells Fargo Bank load funds onto those prepaid debit cards, which she controlled."

This was a complex fraud over a long period of time and yet the D.C. Government did not closely monitor the activities of a person that it was clear could not be trusted.