A federal judge has ordered Ruby Corado to be held in custody while she awaits sentencing on a federal wire fraud charge. The founder of the now-shuttered D.C. LGBTQ nonprofit Casa Ruby pleaded guilty in July 2024 and had been under house arrest at her niece’s home in Rockville, Maryland, while awaiting sentencing.
U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden postponed Corado’s October 15 sentencing hearing after Elizabeth Mullin, her court-appointed public defender, withdrew from the case, citing “an irreconcilable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”
McFadden also revoked Corado’s release, citing concerns that — after yet another delay, the seventh in the case — she posed a flight risk and might not return to court if freed.
The sentencing hearing has not yet been rescheduled, as McFadden will allow Corado time to secure new legal representation.
Under the statute to which Corado pleaded guilty, she faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. However, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Borchert, the lead prosecutor in the case, recommended a 33-month sentence in his memorandum to the court.
Corado appears to be seeking to withdraw her guilty plea — a move that may explain her request for new counsel.
In a recent interview with D.C.’s CBS affiliate WUSA9, Corado denied government allegations that she diverted at least $180,000 in COVID-era relief funds meant for her nonprofit — which provided direct services and temporary housing to transgender people, homeless LGBTQ youth, and immigrant communities — into personal bank accounts in El Salvador.
After her 2024 arrest in a Laurel, Maryland, hotel, Corado entered a plea agreement, admitting to wire fraud in exchange for prosecutors dropping several other charges, including bank fraud, money laundering, and failure to report foreign bank accounts.
In the WUSA9 interview, Corado declined to elaborate on why she chose to plead guilty, saying that she is restricted from publicly discussing her case.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. allege that in 2022, Corado sold her Prince George’s County home and “fled” to El Salvador after “financial irregularities at Casa Ruby became public.”
Corado told WUSA9 she had not fled the country and had traveled repeatedly between the United States and El Salvador from 2022 to 2024. She claimed she had been in the process of launching a sister organization to Casa Ruby to help LGBTQ migrants safely leave El Salvador for the U.S., where many sought asylum.
“At the time there was a huge crisis with immigration. We helped them. That was my mission,” she said. Corado also apologized to former Casa Ruby clients, expressing regret for mistakes that jeopardized the nonprofit’s work and saying she was “sorry that I have not been there to support you the way I always have.”
Ruby Corado plans to request a new court-appointed attorney after her current lawyer withdrew from her case.
The transgender advocate and founder of the now-defunct LGBTQ nonprofit Casa Ruby is scheduled to be sentenced on federal wire fraud charges on October 15.
A longtime fixture in D.C.’s transgender community, Corado was arrested in March 2024 and accused of diverting $150,000 from $1.3 million in federal COVID-era relief funds awarded to her nonprofit for her personal use.
Three Florida jurisdictions have rejected proposals to rename streets after conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, whom Republicans have lionized as a martyr since his fatal shooting at Utah Valley University on September 10.
Since Kirk's death, conservatives have blamed left-wing rhetoric for fueling the kind of political violence that claimed his life, and his funeral became a galvanizing moment for conservatives, many of whom vowed to rededicate themselves to right-wing causes.
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have cited Kirk's death as justification for targeting those they claim oppose free speech -- a move critics call a pretext for cracking down on left-wing groups and their allies.
Down in the polls and seeking to drag down rival Zohran Mamdani's favorables, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he will push the Department of Education to roll back the city's policy allowing transgender students to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.
At a campaign stop in Harlem on September 17, standing outside a mosque, Adams launched into a rambling broadside against Mamdani, his Democratic Socialist allies, and left-leaning voters -- whom Adams, echoing House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, derided as gentrifiers and transplants.
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