SC woman charged with state’s first known case of school voucher fraud
A Gaston woman is accused of misusing more than $6,000 she received through the state’s school voucher program, SLED announced Thursday.
Between September 2024 and September 2025, Courtney Gibson, 33, allegedly used the proceeds of her child’s taxpayer-funded education scholarship to purchase $6,547 of electronics with the intent to resell the items for personal profit, an arrest warrant states.
She was arrested Feb. 13 and charged with two counts of felony breach of trust with fraudulent intent, according to SLED.
The South Carolina Department of Education, which administers the state’s voucher program, referred the case to authorities.
A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment directly on Gibson’s arrest, but said in a statement that the program’s safeguards were working.
“When something appears irregular, we verify it, investigate it, and, when warranted, refer it to law enforcement without delay,” spokeswoman Christy Cox said in a statement. “While fraud attempts are an unfortunate reality in administering any public program, the ESTF’s record reflects rigorous oversight.”
Gibson appears to be the first person criminally charged with defrauding the state’s Education Scholarship Trust Fund.
The program, which launched in 2024, subsidizes the educational expenses of qualified families that opt not to send their K-12 children to zoned public schools.
Recipients were awarded $6,000 per child in the program’s inaugural year and are receiving $7,500 per child this year.
The scholarship money, which is distributed into a digital account in quarterly installments, may only be spent with preapproved vendors and for specific purposes, such as tuition, tutoring and technological devices.
According to an arrest warrant, Gibson used her child’s scholarship to purchase Apple electronics, computer monitors and graphing calculators.
Her case is one of two suspected voucher frauds the Department of Education referred to SLED this year, State Superintendent Ellen Weaver told a Senate panel Thursday. Information about the other case was not immediately available.
In addition to the suspected frauds, the department has removed more than 1,000 participants from the program in each of the past two years due to noncompliance.
The state agency has not released how much money noncompliant individuals spent this year before they were removed from the program. Last year, 82 participants spent about $64,000 before the department realized they didn’t meet the eligibility criteria for the program, officials said.
The vast majority of that money, which the department does not have a way to recover, was spent on electronics, according to voucher transaction data obtained by The State Media Co.
Ineligible voucher recipients last year purchased 62 computers and tablets, seven printers and an assortment of other electronics, including keyboards, headphones, AirPods and Apple pencils, data shows. Tutoring services, homeschool curriculum and a $525 online class on paranormal and supernatural history were among the non-electronics purchases made by recipients who were later removed from the program.
Overall, however, Weaver told senators that the rate of improper school voucher use in South Carolina is low, by comparison.
“Based on publicly available national ESA data, improper use rates in South Carolina are below reported benchmarks in other states,” the schools chief said. “And I really attribute that to the careful and judicious implementation on a daily basis of our program staff.”
An audit of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program, for example, found that 22% of purchases in the billion-dollar program were deemed “unallowable,” a recent investigation revealed.
The department’s assurances aside, state Rep. Neal Collins remains concerned about the potential for voucher fraud in South Carolina.
The Pickens Republican, an outspoken critic of school vouchers, said he’s particularly alarmed about the large number of electronics purchases being made by participants.
According to department data, computers and technological devices account for more than $6.6 million of the roughly $46 million spent by voucher recipients since the program’s inception.
“Of the many allowable voucher expenses, I’m most concerned about the ‘computers and devices’ category,” Collins said in a statement. “That is a category particularly vulnerable to abuse.”
While the Department of Education prohibits voucher recipients from seeking reimbursement for outside purchases or accepting cash refunds from providers, the recent fraud case illustrates that there remain ways for participants to abuse the system.
“When taxpayer dollars are distributed with minimal oversight,” Collins said, “fraud is not merely a possibility – it is a predictable outcome.”