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Woman at center of massive child-care fraud to plead guilty

By John Diedrich of the Journal Sentinel
March 21, 2012 5:12 p.m.

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Cashing In On Kids

Ongoing Journal Sentinel investigation details how parents and child-care providers work in cahoots to easily scam the $350 million Wisconsin Shares program.Read the series and ongoing coverage

* Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting

The woman who built a 7,600-square-foot mansion and bought a Jaguar convertible while collecting roughly $3 million in taxpayer subsidies from her Milwaukee child care centers has agreed to plead guilty to fraud, theft and conspiracy.
Latasha Jackson, 34, faces a maximum of 35 years in prison, but she is likely to get far less time under federal sentencing guidelines, according to a plea agreement filed this week in federal court in Milwaukee.
Prosecutors will ask that Jackson be ordered to pay $333,000 in restitution. No sentencing date has been set. Jackson most recently was living in Texas.
Jackson, who also is listed as Latasha Wilder in court documents, was charged with using two centers to defraud state and federal programs designed to help poor mothers go to work. Regulators ignored red flags for 10 years that she could be cheating the system, the Journal Sentinel's " Cashing in on Kids" investigation found.



The case against Jackson is one in a series of federal and state criminal cases brought in the wake of the newspaper's series, which uncovered millions in taxpayer dollars squandered by parents and providers scamming the $350 million Wisconsin Shares program.
The series also discovered hundreds of criminals working in the business, with some of Milwaukee's biggest crime bosses having ties to centers. It sparked taxpayer outrage and led to the closure of more than 170 centers. State officials said the crackdown saved $45 million in 2010 alone.
Jackson was indicted with participating in a fraud with a different center and later with committing fraud through her centers. The defendants in the first case are still set for trial later this year.
Jackson has agreed to plead guilty to three counts from the two cases - conspiracy to defraud the government, theft and fraud.
Her attorney, Rodney Cubbie, noted the plea agreement settles all counts in both cases against Jackson.
"These are always client decisions," Cubbie said of her decision to plead guilty. "I make my recommendation and the client makes the decision."
According the plea agreement, Jackson collected funds for children who did not attend her centers, Latasha's Learning Enterprise and Kiddie Springs Child Development Center, from December 2006 to August 2009.
The Journal Sentinel first wrote about Jackson in August 2009, compiling a paper trail on Jackson tallying more than 1,800 pages, including public records as well as documents obtained from sources that state and county regulators refused to release.
The documents detailed how regulators repeatedly failed to take action or cut off payments despite Jackson's extensive violations, her history of lying and even regulators' own outright proof of fraud. The Journal Sentinel series won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 2010.
Jackson's center, Latasha's Learning Enterprise, was shut down in 2007. She sent authorization information for 45 children to another center, run by Duane and Shontina Gladney, according to the federal case filed in 2011.
The children didn't attend the Gladneys' center, Executive Kids, but the Gladneys billed the state anyway and paid Jackson for the information, according to the first indictment.
Jackson's license was revoked because she beat her nephew with a belt, according to documents obtained by the Journal Sentinel. Jackson applied for public assistance to enroll her own three children and her niece in the Gladneys' center while she reportedly worked for the couple in their real estate office, the indictment stated. But Jackson's children never attended.
Jackson later went before a rehabilitation panel and won her license back. She reopened in December 2008 as Kiddie Springs on W. Lancaster Ave. near N. 38th St. State regulators revoked her license in 2009 after learning the Journal Sentinel was preparing to publish a story.
While Jackson was under investigation, fire destroyed her home in Menomonee Falls in December 2009. Investigators call the fire suspicious. No one was charged.
To read the entire "Cashing in on Kids" series, go to jsonline.com/news/38617217.html.