This is a puzzling case. One of the founders of the Starshine Academy in Arizona is being sued to egregious misuse of the school’s money.
The school was closed in 2018 because of misuse of its money.
Now the founder is in court, where she is being sued to replenish the money she misused.
But there are no criminal charges for embezzling taxpayers’ money.
Ryan W. Anderson, an attorney representing the bankruptcy trustee suing McCarty, said this case is “one of the worst” cases of inappropriate use of school funds he’s seen.
“You don’t usually see allegations of misappropriation at this level,” he said.
Bankruptcy court documents detail suspect purchases from 2016 until early 2018, which include $3,500 to a beach hotel in Hawaii and $500 to the “home of the largest quartz crystal in North America, and Master John Douglas, a spiritual healer and clairvoyant…”
This is not a fraud case, Anderson said. Instead, the suit claims McCarty inappropriately spent money for personal use while StarShine Academy plunged further into debt.
When asked if she would pay the funds back, the defendant said the school owed her money.
I am reminded of the case in Pennsylvania where the founder of the state’s first virtual charter school was convicted of not paying taxes on millions of dollars that he embezzled and went to jail for evading taxes. But he never faced criminal charges for embezzlement.
On the other hand, the founder of a charter school in Los Angeles was convicted and sent to prison for 30 months for using her school’s funds for personal expenses.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nobody in Ohio expects redress for charter fraud. Certainly, Ohio Sen. Brown didn’t when he asked DeVos for $71 mil. to create more charter schools, not the Fordham/State Dept. of Ed., not corporate owned media, legislators and judges.
Does Ohio Sen. Brown admit there is a charter corruption problem in His state?
Not yet. No response to my letter. I guess he does not care or he thinks it is a matter that the Senate cannot or will not address.
Brown’s TFA dilettante who advises him on education probably glossed over the hundreds of millions Ohioans have been
fleeced out of. And, the Maserati which was reportedly an expense of a charter school (taxpayer funds) probably didn’t seem out-of-place to her because she graduated from a private college that costs $70,000 a year.
What brands of cars do the Gates-paid staff at Fordham and CAP drive? They can hope their expensive, fast cars can outpace the people with pitch forks. ha ha.
Sherrod Brown is a shill for school privatization. He has never stood for public schools in any substantive way.
This country is so messed up.
That’s probably why that Charter School operator Ms. McCarty had to misuse taxpayer funds to hire that “spiritual healer and clairvoyant,” so that guru-for-hire can help her cope with these troubled, “messed up” times.
Yvonne, it’s the people, and not the politicians, who are messing it up.
If I may correct your statement, Robert:
“Yvonne, it’s the SOME people, and the VAST MAJORITY OF I, ME, MINE politicians, who are messing it up.”
We will get more of the same misconduct unless the feds and states start regulating the charter market. As long as these private entities are funded with little oversight or accountability, the profiteering, waste, fraud, embezzling and money laundering will continue. Privatization is irresponsible public policy.
There is nothing puzzling about the insatiable greed of people who feed at the public trough but curse their benefactors. Only the ridiculous ones make the news. Meanwhile, the purveyors of these outrages pompusly and sanctimoniously declare the woes of the school, where, to hear their tales, rich teachers languish in their ill-gotten millions paid by the corrupt unions.
Why do the politicians not call out these depredations? These people are their friends.
Not their friends, Roy. Their benefactors.
This person describes herself, on her website, as “a metaphysician.” LMAO!!!! Now metaphysics, ofc, is that branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality. And evidently, in the reality that this woman lives in, a compensation package can contain invisible, unwritten elements. She says this outright.
EMPLOYER: Uh, what are you doing, Mr. Fagin?
FAGIN THE METAPHYSICIAN: Oh, nothing. Interesting, concept, nothing. A word is the name of a thing. So, nothing is a thing. If nothing is a thing, then it is something. So, there is never nothing. QED.
EMPLOYER: You are not doing nothing. You are putting a printer in your trunk.
FAGIN: So?
EMPLOYER: Well, that printer belongs to the company. It says so right on the side of it.
FAGIN: You are entirely mistaken.
EMPLOYER: How so?
FAGIN: This printer is part of my invisible, unwritten compensation package. I never take a job without establishing that right up front. It’s unwritten, but it’s not nothing. No thing is nothing. We’ve already established that.
EMPLOYER: That’s preposterous. There is no such thing as an invisible, unwritten compensation package.
FAGIN: Ah ha! See? You wouldn’t know about it because it’s INVISIBLE! It’s the unwritten part of my contract.
EMPLOYER: Ah, I see. OK. Carry on, then.
Minor correction:
“These days metaphysics, ofc, is that branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of irreality.”
In many cases, it always was. LOL.
Another charter operator in Texas spends on private planes, second homes for their Chiefs, box seats at Spurs games, and they claim to use “philanthropic funds”. Charters are such a scam.