A federal grand jury has indicted a former Cincinnati charter school superintendent and his business partner, accusing them of turning a school for at-risk students into a source of personal enrichment while the school itself collapsed into bankruptcy.
Leondo Ramone Davenport, 50, the former superintendent and operator of Dohn Community High School, and Jonathan Larry Ballew, 62, a contractor and business partner, were indicted on September 3, 2026, in the Southern District of Ohio. Both men were arrested by federal agents the same morning, according to the Department of Justice announcement. They face charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and related counts.
The Allegations
According to the indictment, Davenport used his control over Dohn Community High School, exercised through a for-profit company he ran, to authorize the taxpayer-funded charter school to pay more than $8 million to four companies controlled by Ballew.
Prosecutors say those payments covered education, technology, and construction services that were inflated, overbilled, or never actually performed.
The details in the Justice Department’s announcement sharpen the picture. Each man faces eight counts: wire fraud, which carries up to 20 years in prison, and engaging in monetary transactions in unlawfully obtained property, which carries up to 10 years. Prosecutors say the scheme ran from 2021 to 2024. Davenport had been Dohn’s superintendent from 2015 to 2019 and later operated the school. Ballew lives in Phoenix. In October 2023, prosecutors say, the two men signed a two-year lease on a Miami-area vacation property at $30,000 a month. The FBI’s Cincinnati Division investigated alongside the office of Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber. U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Ohio.
Dohn was not an ordinary school. According to the Justice Department, it began as a nonprofit addiction recovery program around 1999 and operated as a community school under Ohio law from about 2001 until 2025, outside any traditional school district. That independence is exactly what makes community schools valuable for kids who have fallen through the cracks elsewhere. It is also what makes them vulnerable, because fewer layers of oversight stand between public money and the people who control it. U.S. Attorney Dominick Gerace said: “We’re putting an end to fraudsters exploiting public trust and profiting off of the American taxpayer.”
In return, the indictment alleges, Ballew kicked back more than $4 million of those payments to entities controlled by Davenport, according to WVXU’s reporting on the case.
Rolls-Royces and Miami Rentals
Federal prosecutors say the men used the proceeds to fund a lifestyle far removed from the classrooms they were supposed to be serving. Court filings cited by WCPO describe purchases of luxury vehicles, including a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley, along with a $30,000-per-month rental property in Miami.
One federal official put it bluntly in comments reported by Fox19: investigators allege the two men treated the school as their personal piggy bank.
A School That Served At-Risk Students, Then Closed
Dohn Community High School served at-risk students in Cincinnati. According to WCPO, the school abruptly shut its doors in March 2025 amid financial collapse, displacing students with only about a month left in the school year.
The indictment did not come until more than a year later, in September 2026, meaning the students affected by the school’s closure had no idea, at the time, why their school was disappearing out from under them.
The Moral Decay Index Take
This is editorial interpretation, not part of the government’s factual allegations: if the charges are proven, this case fits a familiar pattern the Moral Decay Index has tracked before — public money meant for the most vulnerable kids diverted into private hands, with the institutional collapse landing on students who had no say in any of it. A superintendent is supposed to be a steward of public trust. An indictment like this alleges the opposite: that the position itself became the mechanism for the fraud.
Both men have been indicted, not convicted. The charges must still be proven in court, and no trial date has been confirmed in the sources available.
Read the full case, weigh the allegations, and share your own verdict at themoraldecayindex.com. What do you think should happen to public officials accused of turning a school into a personal ATM? We want to hear it.
Photo: Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse in Cincinnati, by Warren LeMay from Cincinnati, OH, United States, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.