Founder of LGBTQ nonprofit Casa Ruby accused by DC attorney general of improperly using 'tens of thousands of dollars' of organization's funds, including to flee US

• The DC Attorney General filed a restraining order to freeze the funds of an LGBTQ nonprofit.
• The AG's complaint alleged Casa Ruby's founder, Ruby Corado, misused funds with little oversight.

Washington D.C.'s attorney general Karl A. Racine filed for a temporary restraining order on Monday against Casa Ruby, a nonprofit that provided shelter and transitional housing for LGBTQ youth, accusing the organization's founder and executive director Ruby Corado of misusing "tens of thousands of dollars" of funds.

The restraining order seeks to freeze all bank and PayPal accounts associated with the nonprofit to prevent Corado from making any more withdrawals for her "personal benefit," according to the complaint.

"Today, my office is taking action to address Casa Ruby's failures in their critical mission to help LGBTQ+ youth," Racine said in a tweet on Monday of the nonprofit.

—AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) August 1, 2022

The complaint alleges that Corado withdrew "tens of thousands of dollars" since at least 2021 from her organization and used over $60,000 to pay for credit card bills, meals, and transportation to El Salvador. It's unclear when exactly she fled the country. The order makes claims of her whereabouts based on social media posts and says that the District continues to investigate her location.

It also states that Corado had "exclusive control" over her organization's bank and PayPal accounts and that the nonprofit's board of eight directors never met or have records documenting actions between 2012, the year the organization was founded, and 2020.

"Thus, for more than a decade, the Board ceded full operational and financial control of the organization to a single officer and utterly failed to fulfill its duty of appropriate oversight," the order alleges.

Casa Ruby did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. An automated response said that the organization is "no longer accepting donations."

The Washington Post also previously reported in July that employees have not been paid for weeks as the nonprofit shut down most of its operations. Landlords and vendors have also claimed that Casa Ruby failed to pay its bills on time.

Corado resigned as executive director in October shortly after the D.C. Department of Human Services declined to renew an $850,000 contract with her organization, The Post reported. Yet, Corado maintained sole access to her nonprofit's accounts.

"I stepped down to focus all the attention on the real issue, the clients not having a safe place to go and employees who will soon be homeless," Corado told The Post. "I am done being the center of the story."

Casa Ruby began in 2012 as a small outreach center powered by a few unpaid volunteers and has since grown to a nonprofit with over $3.4 million in annual contributions and grants. It received over $9.6 million in grants in the past five years, the complaint states.

Corado was last publicly heard from in an interview with Telemundo and said that she was in El Salvador, from which the activist fled when she was a teenager, and said she was innocent, according to The Post.