Jury Finds AIDS Charity Head Swindled $330,000 from D.C.

A Washington, D.C., Superior Court jury found that a former drug kingpin who received nearly $330,000 in taxpayer funds to help people with HIV/AIDS channeled the money into a high-end strip club, The Washington Post and Washington City Paper report.

Following a four-day trial last week, jurors found that Cornell Jones and Miracle Hands falsified documents to support grants from 2006 to 2008 to convert a Northeast Washington warehouse into a job-training center. District Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan charged in a 2011 lawsuit that the money was instead used to turn the building into a nightspot called the Stadium Club.

Mr. Jones, who operated a notorious D.C. drug market and was once profiled on the TV show American Gangster, founded Miracle Hands after serving a nine-year prison sentence. The nonprofit received more than $5.8-million in city funds from 2000 to 2011. A countersuit by Mr. Jones accusing city officials of defaming him was thrown out in 2012.