A woman who previously worked for a D.C. government program designed to support people returning from incarceration was arrested Tuesday and is facing charges of embezzlement and fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney for D.C.

Prosecutors say Rhayda Barnes Thomas, 51, was indicted by a grand jury last week for a host of violations, including several counts each of wire fraud, bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft, and one count of first-degree fraud. Between May 2015 and April 2018, she is believed to have stolen more than $300,000 and as much as $350,000 from her employer, Project Empowerment, a District initiative to help people with barriers to employment such as felony convictions or a history of incarceration, find and keep a job. Barnes Thomas, who participated in the Project Empowerment program in 2013, was hired as a program assistant in 2014.

Project Empowerment helps about 700 Washingtonians each year, many of whom have long had trouble maintaining stable employment, have experienced homelessness, or have struggled with substance use. It offers training and education opportunities — some participants do not have a high school diploma or GED — and works with other D.C. agencies, businesses, and nonprofits to place people in the program in jobs.

In some cases, Project Empowerment subsidizes the program participant’s salary by receiving records of work hours from the employer and then paying the program participant directly for their work on a pre-paid debit card. Prosecutors believe Barnes Thomas reinstated the profiles of 16 previous program participants in Project Empowerment’s online database, making it appear that they were employed by a nonprofit and working hours which they were not. She is also alleged to have requested and kept debit cards on behalf of the fictional program participants — cards kept full with D.C. government funds.

Barnes Thomas has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

This is not the first time Barnes Thomas has faced fraud charges. In 2011, she was sentenced to 27 months in prison in Maryland for stealing federal funds originally intended to support high poverty schools in Charles County. Barnes Thomas pled guilty to taking over $5,000 in Title I money meant to purchase classroom equipment and instead used it to buy video game consoles, televisions, iPods, iPads, and Macbooks, which she then sold to family and friends. She forged her supervisor’s signature authorizing the purchases.

The latest indictment is the end of a lengthy criminal investigation. Per reporting from The Washington Post at the time, Barnes Thomas was fired by Project Empowerment in 2018, when the District’s inspector general began asking questions about whether she was using her position in the program’s payroll department to commit fraud. At the time, she denied any wrongdoing.

After she was fired from Project Empowerment — and while she was being actively investigated for possible criminal activity — Barnes Thomas was hired by another part of the D.C. government, City Paper reports. District records show that she held assistant positions in the Child and Family Services Agency in 2019 through 2021, when she supported the chief information officer. Over that period, her salary jumped from just over $60,000 to more than $71,000.