Charmaine Gatlin’s job was all about the money.
As the chief operating officer for the Jackson Health Foundation, Gatlin had easy access to millions of donated dollars meant for Miami-Dade County’s only public hospital system — with practically no bosses checking her spending sprees.
In November, Jackson terminated Gatlin for swindling millions of dollars from the Foundation as executives privately reeled over her betrayal of the hospital system’s fundraising arm, which raises tens of millions to benefit Jackson’s patients. In an audit, Jackson executives discovered the extent of her brazen thievery, including spending tens of thousands of dollars on high-fashion handbags, a membership at a tony golf club for her and her husband she disguised as being for board members, a website, video and brochures to promote her daughter’s Broward traveling softball team, even paying thousands to a barbecue joint in her Georgia hometown for meals the Foundation never got.
And as the case closed in around her, she forged an email from the Foundation’s board chair to pay a Miami vendor listed as a “co-conspirator” in court records more than $70,000, according to Jackson records and her Miami federal court indictment.
The Miami Herald reviewed thousands of pages of documents in this case, from federal court records to public records the Herald obtained through the Foundation and Jackson Health System, including hundreds of Gatlin’s invoices and emails.
Jackson officials alerted federal law enforcement that Gatlin was routinely tapping into Foundation funds to pay vendors from South Florida to Georgia for completely fabricated services. Gatlin paid an Atlanta audiovisual contractor $2 million, who then kicked back $1 million to her, according to court records. The contractor did not do any work for the Foundation or Jackson.
Conspicuous among the suspicious transactions: Gatlin approved about $2.9 million in payments for more than a dozen Georgia vendors with no apparent connections to the Foundation – including the Atlanta company that paid her bribes.
Small businesses in her hometown of Riceboro, Georgia – population 935 in 2023, according to the Census – also benefitted from Gatlin’s largesse. A Riceboro barbecue spot billed the Foundation $86,070 between 2018 and mid-2020, bills that Gatlin approved, Jackson records show. The meals were invoiced as food for wellness fairs, family fun days and other Foundation events. The Foundation paid the bills; no one at the Foundation got any barbecue.
Gatlin also used Foundation funds to pay for Apple AirPods, laptops and backpacks for back-to-school events hosted by a Riceboro religious group, which had no links to the Foundation, except Gatlin.
Millions paid to Georgia-based vendors
The Jackson Health Foundation paid about $2.9 million to more than a dozen Georgia-based vendors from 2019-2024. Some of the businesses are registered with the State of Georgia, others are not. Many had home addresses while others used P.O. boxes.
Map: Michelle Marchante
“We strongly believe we have a duty to safeguard our resources and ensure accountability for the misuse of public funds. Jackson Health Foundation is pursuing all legal options against those involved in this carefully orchestrated embezzlement scheme,” Jackson Health CEO Carlos Migoya told the Miami Herald in an emailed statement sent Friday.
Pleads guilty to embezzling millions
Under the Foundation’s bylaws, Gatlin, hired in 2014, had nearly complete authority to approve bills of up to $100,000 without any oversight, allowing her for years to pay an inner circle of vendors for fictitious event services that were never provided to the taxpayer-subsidized Jackson Health System.
Members of the Foundation’s executive committee were so unaware of her fraudulent billing schemes that they complimented Gatlin and her team for their “great work” – eight months before she was fired.
Last November, the month she was fired, the Foundation turned over its analysis of her suspicious payments to the FBI, leading to Gatlin’s arrest in May at her Riceboro home near Savannah. The Herald obtained the analysis through a public records request.
Gatlin, 52, pleaded guilty last month to wire-fraud conspiracy and admitted in Miami federal court that she embezzled at least $4.3 million from the Foundation between 2019 and 2024.
Prosecutors are likely to argue at her upcoming sentencing that her theft was higher – somewhere between $3.5 million and $9.5 million, according to a plea agreement. They will also ask a federal judge to make Gatlin pay back the Foundation.
Foundation officials said they are still assisting prosecutors in calculating the nonprofit’s loss, and could not provide that figure to the Herald before the government makes its restitution request.
“We will seek to recover every dollar that was stolen from the Foundation, and we look forward to seeing those responsible face the consequences of their actions,” Migoya said in his statement Friday.
Gatlin and her defense lawyer, David Howard, declined to comment for this article as she awaits sentencing in November.
Fake invoices, bilks ‘restricted funds’
Top 5 most expensive invoices paid by “restricted” donor funds Charmaine Gatlin paid fraudulent invoices more than 100 times from 2019-2024 with “restricted” donor funds that could only be used for specific causes. Here are the five priciest:
By MICHELLE MARCHANTE and JAY WEAVER/Miami Herald