Former Jacksonville teachers union leaders sentenced to prison for $2.6M fraud

The women who ran Jacksonville’s teachers union for nearly a quarter-century are both headed to prison for cheating the union out of $2.6 million, a federal judge ruled Feb. 9.

Terrie Brady and Ruby George pleaded guilty in 2025 to “selling back” to Duval Teachers United thousands of days more vacation time than they possessed from respective careers as president and executive vice president of a union with more than 5,000 members.

After an extended hearing where advocates recounted both women’s histories of good works, Chief U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard sentenced 70-year-old Brady to 27 months of incarceration and George, who is 82 and was in a wheelchair, to a year and a day in federal custody and six months of home confinement.

Howard said she was “firmly convinced” that nothing more lenient for either woman would serve justice and meet sentencing standards spelled out in federal law.

“It does not erase all the other good things that Ms. Brady and Ms. George did,” the judge said. “But there does have to be accountability for a decade of stealing.”

Attorneys for both women asked for compassion, with Brady’s counsel, Hank Coxe, seeking 31 months of probation with 18 months of home detention for his client.

“It is not an overstatement to say that Terrie Brady devoted her life to the welfare of Duval County Public School (DCPS) teachers and employees,” Coxe wrote in a sentencing memo that called her sentencing for cheating DTU “tragically sad and ironic.”

The man who prosecuted Brady and George described no tragedy, just wrongdoing in his narrative of the crime, arguing the women “stole at will ― treating DTU’s treasury like their own piggy bank.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Coolican quoted a Latin adage about corruption of the best being worst to argue that Brady needed to be put behind bars.

“While holding positions of great influence and trust, despite having loving friends and families, and despite wanting for nothing, Teresa Brady and Ruby George stole,” Coolican told Howard in his own sentencing memo. “They stole for years. They stole millions. They covered it up and would not have stopped if they had not been caught. They need to be punished.”

The judge echoed Coolican’s piggy bank comparison when she imposed her sentence, saying the women “stole from the very people they were supposed to be representing.”

How has DTU been affected by the scandal?

The indictment against Brady and George was filed more than a year after a 2023 raid of DTU’s San Marco offices by federal agents who carried off boxes of records and computers.

The woman who succeeded Brady as union president after the raid, Tammie Brooks-Evans, said at the hearing that a stigma has haunted the work of leading DTU since then ― “it will probably follow me forever,” she said ― even while union leaders have installed safeguards to prevent anyone scamming the union again.

DTU’s current executive vice president, Jessica Reyst, told the judge the union’s headquarters had visible mold in some areas and in recent years needed lots of repairs and maintenance that had been deferred because of the cost. Without the expense of bogus leave sales “there would have been plenty of money,” Reyst said.

Brady had already paid back $1,328,695 she received for non-existent vacation time. But she and George are both held responsible for repaying the full $2.6 million the union lost, so Coxe had suggested Brady could pay $1,000 a month to chip away at the balance as part of her probation. After rejecting defense counsel’s probation idea, the judge instead told Brady to pay $750 a month after finishing prison, and George to pay $150 a month. George had paid $160,000 toward her obligation, defense attorney Reid Hart told Howard.

Terrie Brady (left) and Ruby George led a rally of Duval Teachers United members and supporters outside the Duval County School Board’s headquarters in this 2010 photo.

How did Terrie Brady and Ruby George break the law?

In his memo, Coolican referred to Brady as a “corrupt union boss” and George as her “chief lieutenant.” Brady pleaded guilty in October 2025 to single counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, the four charges detailed in a 14-count indictment from December 2024.

George pleaded guilty in August 2025 to conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud and single counts on aiding and abetting wire fraud and aiding and abetting mail fraud.

Those crimes carried potential sentences of up to 70 years behind bars for Brady and up to 60 years for George.

A summary from an interview prosecutors and FBI agents had with George in June 2025 said George claimed “it was an open joke in the [DTU] office that Brady did not really have any leave days to sell.”

Because George’s job included keeping track of union employees’ (not members’) leave balances, “when Brady needed money she would say something along the lines of I need to sell some days,” said the summary, which Coolican attached to his sentencing memo. “Brady would tell George how much money she needed after taxes and then George would initiate a payment for the equivalent value of leave days. Brady directed George to do the same for herself.”

For example, the summary said that Brady sold $20,000 worth of leave time when she needed roof repairs, and George assumed the two facts were connected.

“George said it was easier to go along with Brady,” the summary said.

Both women expressed dismay about their actions leading them to be in court.

“I don’t know how I got off track. I don’t know,” George told the judge. “I forgot about why I was there [at DTU]. … How did I lose sight of that?”

Brady said she has been “horrified and ashamed” by her conduct and the cost it carried for her union’s members.

“Because of my actions, I have lost their trust. They do deserve better,” Brady said. “… I feel like at the end of my life, I have thrown everything away.”