Milwaukee Catholic Charities suit: Finance director stole ‘millions,’ Charities charges

The finance director's alleged fraud went unnoticed for years.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee alleged this month that its former finance director stole millions of dollars via a number of false accounting schemes and misuse of company credit cards.

The allegations were presented in a lawsuit filed May 9 against Brandi Ellis, who worked at the organization for 10 years.

According to the suit, Ellis served in a variety of accounting and finance roles in Milwaukee Catholic Charities from 2014 until 2024, effectively functioning as director of finance from 2019.

In her roles as accounting manager and later finance manager, the charity says Ellis was responsible for paying and booking the plaintiff’s financial transactions. In those roles, she used a variety of schemes to defraud her employer, each for hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the lawsuit.

Ellis is accused of using the charity’s money for various personal expenses, including “Amazon Prime video rentals, Uber rides, Ticketmaster purchases, and casino purchases from MGM Grand,” instead of for the charity’s mission in the greater Milwaukee “to help reduce poverty, improve the lives of those in need, and empower the most vulnerable.”

“In all of her positions with the plaintiff, Brandi Ellis abused her authority and misappropriated millions of dollars belonging to [Catholic Charities] using two primary schemes,” lawyers for the charity allege.

Although the suit alleges Ellis stole “millions of dollars” over a period of years, Catholic Charities say that the total amount is unknown.

Ellis allegedly used her position overseeing expenditures and payments to funnel “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to herself by generating false invoices from vendors to which she had personal connections. Catholic Charities say that the invoices were for fictitious goods and services never ordered or delivered.

“Concerns of possible fraud were first raised [in 2024] when [Catholic Charities] Executive Director was internally informed of substantial vendor payments to individuals associated with Ellis,” the lawsuit says.

Further investigation led to the discovery of Ellis having also made “hundreds of thousands of dollars” worth of personal purchases and payments using company credit cards under her control, including one issued to her for use in her role.

“Other corporate credit cards [used by Ellis] were in the name of others, including a prior employee and CFO of [Catholic Charities], who was terminated on January 19, 2019,” the lawsuit says. “Upon the prior employee’s termination, Brandi Ellis assumed control over those cards and continued making purchases on them for her own personal use. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of the plaintiff’s funds were stolen under this scheme as well.”

Ellis’s alleged fraud went undetected for years, according to the lawsuit in part because she was able to use her role to generate false internal documentation showing that the expenditures were made and allocated to various internal programs.

In the same lawsuit, Catholic Charities is also suing its auditing firm, Baker Tilley, for failing to detect Ellis’ alleged theft and for “failing to maintain professional skepticism, exercise professional judgment, obtain reasonable assurance about whether [Catholic Charities’] financial statements as a whole were free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.”

According to lawyers for the organization, in its annual auditing process Baker Tilley relied on internal documents generated by Ellis regarding expenditures. Although the company made selections from the Catholic Charities’ financial statements to test whether the expenditures were legitimate, the lawsuit alleges that the company did not receive or review source evidence from third parties showing the details for the underlying expenditures.

Even when reviewing only the internal documents generated by Ellis, Baker Tilly’s audits failed to recognize increases in credit card expenditures and the frequency of payments towards credit card bills, both of which showed significant transactions that are outside the normal course of business and were otherwise unusual due to their timing, size or nature, the lawsuit alleges.

When auditors did receive and review evidence from third parties showing the precise and complete details for the underlying fraudulent expenditures, they “failed to recognize clearly fraudulent purchasing activity, as these purchases were made on the plaintiff’s corporate credit cards issued in the name of a person who was no longer an employee… and were for goods and services that could not reasonably be in support of the plaintiff’s charitable mission,” lawyers argue.

Among the obviously suspect expenses the auditors should have questioned, Catholic Charities say, were sizable expenses at a casino and on Amazon.

Catholic Charities is seeking compensatory damages against both Ellis and Baker Tilley for a total amount to be determined at trial, and to cover the costs of investigating the alleged fraud and bringing legal action.

The organization is also seeking “treble exemplary damages” against Ellis.