Stealing from poor children? She sure did — now she’s going to federal prison for $4 million theft

A Texas fraudster who stole millions from a Pennsylvania meal program for poor children through a bogus nonprofit and used it to buy a fleet of ritzy cars, among other lavish purchases, is headed to federal prison for three years, joining her criminal boyfriend already there.

A federal judge in Pittsburgh, Arthur Schwab, imposed that term on her Tuesday and ordered her to pay $1.5 million in restitution and forfeit another $427,791.

“This was a crime born of nothing more than greed — the desire to make a quick buck at the expense of critical government programs,” federal prosecutors said. “Tanisha Jackson played the most central role in the fraud scheme, bringing her boyfriend, Charles Simpson, and her own daughter, Paige Jackson, into the fold as co-conspirators.”

Jackson and Simpson live in suburban Dallas.

But both are calling U.S. prison home for a while. Simpson was previously sentenced to 30 months and got the same restitution order as his girlfriend.

Paige, who lives in Memphis, received probation and a $190,767 restitution order.

The trio all pleaded guilty to a massive fraud scheme that preyed on low-income children in Pennsylvania through an operation set up in Sharpsburg.

They had been barred before from running food programs in other states because of their misdeeds.

But they did it again, this time creating a fake nonprofit called Helping Others in Need. They didn’t help anyone in need — they helped themselves.

They established an office in Sharpsburg and took in U.S. Department of Agriculture dollars meant for distributing meals in Pennsylvania.

Among the purchases were a Bentley, two Land Rovers, two Maseratis, two Mercedes, a Hummer and a Porsche.

And that wasn’t all.

Jackson and her criminal family also used the stolen money to buy luxury goods at outlets such as Gucci, spending $7,967 on March 24, 2018; Christian Louboutin, dropping $3,242 on July 2, 2018; and Louis Vuitton, shelling out $11,897 from Dec. 4 to Dec. 7, 2018.

HOIN also paid for vacations to Cancun and the Dominican Republic, where the couple spent another $19,000 on dental work. The trio also withdrew some $265,000 from HOIN bank accounts for their own use.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Olshan said such profligate spending is in sharp contrast to the low-income circumstances of the children HOIN was supposed to be feeding through the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

But the government will recoup at least some of the money. In addition to the restitution, all of the luxury cars are now the property of the U.S. government.

Jackson, Simpson and Paige were indicted in 2021 on a smorgasbord of fraud charges following an investigation by the FBI, IRS and Department of Agriculture.

The three established HOIN in Texas and enrolled it as a sponsor in the Child and Adult Care Feeding Program and the Summer Food Service Program.

Paige was the point person in Pittsburgh, traveling here to set up her office. Her mom and Simpson stayed back in Dallas to orchestrate the fraud and spend the stolen money.

They submitted fake enrollment data for HOIN from 2015 to 2019. Simpson and Jackson used fake names because they’d been kicked out of similar programs in Arkansas and Texas. The trio submitted fake claims for reimbursement and inflated the number of meals served or in many cases didn’t serve any at all.

To cover their tracks, they submitted false documents to fool program reviewers. Occasionally, Tanisha even pretended to be her daughter in dealing with the state.

The original indictment said they pilfered some $4 million in all.

“Every dollar that Tanisha Jackson and her co-conspirators stole through fraud,” Olshan said, “was a dollar that was not available to pay for actual meals served to actual children.”