Texas Woman Is Sentenced to 15 Years in Fraud Scheme

A Texas woman who stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families and spent the money to fund a lavish lifestyle was sentenced on Tuesday to federal prison, the authorities said.

The defendant, Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, pleaded guilty in March to five counts of mail fraud and five counts of filing a false tax return, according to a criminal court docket.

Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the Western District of Texas sentenced Ms. Mello on Tuesday to 180 months, or 15 years, in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.

According to federal prosecutors, Ms. Mello was a civilian employee for the U.S. Army and worked as a financial manager for a child and youth grant program at the Fort Sam Houston Base in San Antonio. Part of her job was to determine whether funding was available for various organizations that applied to the grant program, called the 4-H Military Partnership Grant.

Around the end of 2016 through at least August 2023, Ms. Mello formed a fraudulent business called Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, which she used to steal Army funds by falsely claiming it provided services to military members and their families, prosecutors said. In some cases, Ms. Mello forged her supervisor’s digital signature on the paperwork, they said.

Ms. Mello used her “experience, expert knowledge of the grant program, and accumulated trust,” to swindle her colleagues, prosecutors said.