Celebrated Nigerian scholar Nkechy Ezeh has been sentenced to 70 months in U.S. prison for orchestrating a fraud scheme that stole $1.4 million in taxpayer and donor money intended for vulnerable preschool children.

Ms Ezeh was the founder of Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative.

The U.S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan Timothy VerHey announced the sentencing on Wednesday.

The U.S.-based Nigerian professor, 61, of Kent County, Michigan, was also sentenced to a concurrent prison term of 60 months for evading income taxes.

Chief U.S. district judge Hala Y. Jarbou, who handed down the sentence, described Ms Ezeh as “a fraud and a thief” and her fraudulent scheme as “brazen and widespread”.

The judge also noted that Ms Ezeh stole money intended for some of West Michigan’s most vulnerable children.  

Additionally, the judge ordered Ms Ezeh to pay $1.4 million in restitution to the victims of the fraud and $390,174 to the IRS and also remanded Ms Ezeh directly to prison to begin serving her sentence immediately.

“Nkechy Ezeh’s greed is beyond reprehensible,” Mr VerHey said. “She stole taxpayer and private-donor dollars meant for low-income children in our community. Instead of helping kids, she spent that money on herself.  The stolen money could have supported hundreds of West Michigan children and their families.  Judge Jarbou’s sentence was perfectly appropriate.”

Ms Ezeh, the 2018 West Michigan Woman of the Year, a two-time appointee to the State of Michigan’s Early Childhood Investment Corporation’s Executive Committee, and a tenured professor of education—founded Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, a West Michigan nonprofit funded by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Early Head Start programme, the U.S. Department of Education, and private donors. It provided meals, transportation, funding, advocacy, and other services to children in preschools located in underserved communities.

As a result of Ms Ezeh’s fraud, ELNC was shuttered in 2023, many West Michigan preschools lost funding, and needy children lost valuable resources.  ELNC also had to lay off its 35 employees without any notice.  

Sharon Killebrew, ELNC’s former bookkeeper and Ms Ezeh’s co-conspirator, was sentenced in November 2025 to 54 months in prison for her role in the fraudulent scheme.  

“This case underscores the seriousness of misusing federal grant funds for personal gain,” said special agent in charge Thomas Ethridge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. “Our commitment to protecting the integrity of HHS programs remains steadfast, and we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to uphold these standards and ensure that violators are held accountable.”

In a sentencing memorandum, the U.S. attorney’s office disclosed that Ms Ezeh used the stolen money to fund her lifestyle, pay for a family member’s wedding, and to travel to Hawaii, Europe, and Africa.  

Additionally, she placed her family members on a ghost payroll that caused ELNC to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars for little or no work, and she used money mules to wire hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen money to her family in Nigeria.

The sentencing memorandum also stated that, although the direct victims of the fraud were ELNC’s donors—the federal government’s Early Head Start Programme, the U.S. Department of Education, and three of Michigan’s largest, most generous, and most well-known charities—the people most affected were the children and their families who lost the support ELNC once provided.  

These were mostly children of colour under the age of five years old, 72 per cent of whom lived below the federal poverty level in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Kent County, Kalamazoo, and Battle Creek, according to the memorandum.