A U.S. Army veteran will serve a yr behind bars for wire fraud and stolen valor expenses.
Sharon Toney-Finch, 43, of Newburgh, New York, beforehand made false public claims about aiding homeless veterans. On Tuesday, U.S. District Decide Vincent L. Briccetti sentenced her to 12 months and someday in jail for claims of being a Purple Coronary heart recipient in addition to for a years-long scheme to defraud army veterans’ charities.
She was indicted by the federal authorities in April 2024 on 4 expenses: wire fraud, stolen valor, theft of presidency funds, and forging a army discharge certificates.
In March 2025 she pleaded responsible to the fees, which Briccetti at sentencing within the Southern District of New York (SDNY) known as “appalling” and “disrespectful to [her] fellow veterans.”
“Sharon Toney-Finch falsely claimed to be a Purple Coronary heart recipient and used her basis to defraud donors and others induced by that lie,” stated U.S. Lawyer Jay Clayton of SDNY in a press release. “Let right this moment’s sentence reaffirm that fraud constructed on lies about service and sacrifice will carry a heavy worth.”
Along with the jail time period, Toney-Finch was sentenced to a few years of supervised launch and ordered to pay $84,000 in restitution and $85,000 in forfeiture.
Perpetuating ‘Fraud’
The honorably discharged Army vet based the nonprofit charity Yerik Israel Toney Basis in New York’s Sullivan County.
The muse, in keeping with SDNY, supposed to lift consciousness of untimely births, supply help to untimely infants and their households, and supply a spot to remain or transportation whereas infants have been within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
It additionally claimed to assist homeless and low-income army service veterans in want of dwelling help.
“In actual fact, the YIT Basis was largely a fraud” that led her to acquire roughly $85,000 as a part of a broader scheme, SDNY stated in a press launch following Toney-Hinch’s sentencing.
They stated she “helped nearly no army veterans” and as an alternative used raised funds donated by charities to the YIT Basis to spend on her personal luxuries—together with paying for her BMW, a fitness center membership, journey, meals, and different private bills.
She garnered nationwide consideration in 2023 after claiming that veterans her basis had assisted have been being evicted from a motel in Newburgh to make room for migrants who have been being bussed to the mid-Hudson Valley from New York Metropolis, in keeping with the Instances-Herald Report. One donor reportedly wired her basis $25,000 because of the declare later discovered to be pretend.
Additionally whereas fundraising, authorities grew to become conscious that she “lied extensively” about her army service. That included false claims that she had been injured in an improvised explosive machine assault in Iraq, in addition to doctoring her army discharge paperwork to mirror that she had obtained a Purple Coronary heart.
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