COLORADO – Two Coloradans who forged documents to fraudulently enroll more than 40 real and fictitious children in Arizona’s school voucher program have both pleaded guilty to felony charges.

As part of a plea agreement, Johnny Bowers pleaded guilty on Aug. 26 in Maricopa County Superior Court to fraudulent schemes and artifices and forgery, both felonies.

Ashley Hopkins also pleaded guilty to fraudulent schemes and artifices on Aug. 5.

Bowers and Hopkins were indicted by a grand jury in November 2024 on 60 felony counts, including conspiracy and forgery, for defrauding Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program.

Between December 2022 and May 2024, the two submitted forged documents, including birth certificates and utility bills, to the ESA voucher program to fraudulently enroll more than 40 real and fictitious children. In total they received more than $110,000 in illegal school voucher payments, which they used to pay for their living expenses in Colorado.

“Fraud in the ESA program will not be tolerated,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a press statement about the guilty pleas. “Those who exploit government systems for personal gain will be held accountable. My office will continue to aggressively prosecute fraud and protect taxpayer dollars.”

Both Bowers and Hopkins are set to be sentenced on Oct. 24.

The ESA program works by giving the parents of participating students a debit card that can be used to pay for various educational costs, or reimbursing the parents for those costs. The costs can include private or parochial school tuition, homeschooling supplies — and even savings for college tuition.

The program was created in 2012 to serve around 11,000 students with disabilities, but was incrementally expanded to include more kids until 2022 when then-Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican-led Arizona Legislature made it universal, allowing all of the state’s roughly 1 million K-12 students to enroll. This school year, the program is expected to have about 90,000 enrollees, at a cost of around $1 billion.

Public school advocates have been fighting to end or reform the program for years, but it came under increased scrutiny after the Department of Education last November began automatically reimbursing parents for all purchases under $2,000. That practice was implemented due to a huge backlog of reimbursement requests, as student enrollment in the program skyrocketed without a corresponding increase in staffing.

In a recent investigation into those automatically approved purchases, 12 News found that parents used tax dollars to purchase diamond rings, smart TVs, iPhones, household appliances and even lingerie.

In response to that investigation, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne promised that the Arizona Department of Education would claw back the money doled out for those “unallowable” purchases.

In a Wednesday statement, Horne, who is a Republican, attempted to take credit for the prosecution of Bowers and Hopkins.

“(T)he only way today’s conviction of two people on charges of fraud using Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) dollars could happen was because the Department of Education discovered the activity in 2024 and referred it for prosecution,” Horne wrote in the statement.

In the statement, Horne misspelled Mayes’ first name and said she had falsely accused him of permitting the extravagant purchases of jewelry and lingerie.

“To date we have collected or referred for collection more than $622,000 in improper purchases” for under $2,000 that were paid automatically, Horne wrote.

He added that the process of risk-based auditing, or automatically approving purchases and then auditing for fraud and misspending after the fact “is a common practice in many federal and state agencies and is dictated by state law.”

However, the Department of Education ignored part of the risk-based audit law — which required it to work with the Arizona Auditor General to create auditing processes — for nearly a year. The law went into effect last September, but ESA officials repeatedly pushed back meetings with the auditor general and only conferred with that office in July, after state legislators insisted on it.

“Without this (risk based audit) program, reimbursements for expenditures would take over two months, putting a terrible burden on parents who have paid money and are entitled to reimbursements,” Horne wrote.

Horne also blamed Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs for inadequate staffing to deal with the expanded universal voucher program, because she refused in June to endorse a state budget that included funding for 12 additional purchase reviewers.

A spokesman for Hobbs, Christian Slater, previously told the Mirror that the request for additional ESA employees was discussed during budget negotiations between Senate Republicans and Hobbs, but was left out because “Republicans wouldn’t agree to any accountability measures to go along with the increased staff.”

One of those proposed measures included automatic review of all purchases under $2,000, Slater said.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com.

This story was originally published by the Arizona Mirror.