South County Scandal: Inside Rhode Island’s ‘Most Disturbing’ Ponzi Scheme

‘Path of Destruction’ 

In the digital age, most financial fraud involves a scammer who rips off strangers over the internet. But in the case of Monique Brady, the victims were far from strangers.

They trusted her, frequented her East Greenwich home, traveled with her, attended school with her and helped take care of her children. Among them were firefighters, a man with Alzheimer’s disease, a new immigrant from Vietnam and an older woman whose parents had dementia. 

And while many of Brady’s victims also came from her affluent community of East Greenwich, she didn’t discriminate based on income. 

“Brady’s path of destruction showed no distinction between the well-off and the poor,” prosecutors argued. 

Many of Brady’s targets got an opportunity to address her directly during her sentencing in federal court. Tim White, a veteran investigative reporter at WPRI-TV who covered the case, was in the courtroom that day and said it was an important moment for Brady’s victims because “it is highly unlikely they will see much, if anything, in restitution. 

“This was their moment — the only thing they would likely ever get was Brady’s punishment,” White says, adding that her sentencing was “one of the more emotionally charged hearings I’ve covered. 

“As several victims delivered impact statements, Brady never looked at them,” White says. “And their comments were nothing short of gut-wrenching.”  

One victim wrote in court documents that she lost all of her retirement money to Brady and was forced to sell her home and personal belongings to survive. 

“Monique has taken my money, my health and my self-respect,” the victim wrote in a letter to Judge McConnell. “She used the daughter-like love I had for her and the love of her family only to gain what she needed for her adding wealth.” 

Another woman, in her sixties, was a full-time caregiver for both her quadriplegic husband and parents. The woman, who declined to be interviewed for this story, lost both her and her parents’ savings to Brady’s scheme.

“I cannot articulate the guilt that haunts me for having made such an irresponsible decision that was grounded in emotion instead of common sense,” the woman said in a victim impact statement. “Monique was fully aware of who I was as a caregiver and she exploited that knowledge for her own selfish and criminal gain.” 

Many of the victims didn’t even realize they were getting swindled until investigators showed up at their doorsteps with questions. And when the FBI started
interviewing people around Brady, she and her boyfriend, Kevin Heitke, who has also represented Brady as an attorney, tried to paint the victims as villains,
according to Vilker. 

“It was a ridiculous attempt to subvert the system,” he says. 

Brady and Heitke met with officials from the Rhode Island State Police and the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office, alleging that Brady was the true victim because her investors had committed usury — a crime tied to lending money at an unlawfully high interest rate. 

But the state police and Peter Neronha’s office knew the feds were investigating Brady for fraud, and didn’t buy the accusations. They reported Brady to federal
investigators, and Vilker says her attempt to shift the blame didn’t go over well with her victims. 

“During the investigation, she didn’t exhibit any remorse whatsoever,” Vilker says. “That really upset the victims because they were aware that she was reporting them to the attorney general and the state police, and they didn’t do anything wrong.” 

One of Brady’s victims, who is owed money, says she hasn’t heard from Brady since her arrest. 

“Monique has not ever tried to reach out to us to let us know how truly sorry she is for her actions and what she will do to make it right,” she says. 

As for Brady’s attempt to fly to Vietnam ahead of her impending arrest, supporters — including Brady’s father — have since argued she was trying to travel there to visit a dying relative. Investigators later confirmed Brady did indeed have a sick family member, and Vilker concedes that it’s tough to be certain about anyone’s true intent. 

But in light of the circumstances, Vilker refused to accept the sick-relative argument. And two federal judges, including McConnell, agreed with him. As a result, Brady was denied bail after her arrest and deemed a flight risk. 

“Like any good story, there’s always a kernel of truth in there,” Vilker says. “But the evidence strongly suggested that she was trying to take off.”

Vilker asked the judge to give Brady ten years in prison. Brady’s attorney suggested three years behind bars. McConnell gave her eight. 

Looking to ‘Short the System’

Prosecutors say Brady continues to try and cheat the system, even from behind bars. 

As her fraud case moved through federal court, a Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility warden asked for Brady to be transferred because she was “causing such problems.” 

She was transferred to the state’s Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston and quickly disciplined for making more than 200 unauthorized phone calls using personal identification numbers belonging to nine different inmates. 

“How she was able to convince these nine other inmates to provide her with their PINs is unknown,” prosecutors wrote at the time. 

Brady even convinced a fellow Rhode Island inmate to write a letter in support of her at sentencing. The inmate wrote that she’s seen “Monique’s true character and I am blessed to count her as a friend. 

“Although we have both made mistakes, those transgressions do not need to define us,” she wrote. “I am truly grateful to have met Monique and know that she has what it takes to rise above this situation and come out the other end even better than before.”  

After Judge McConnell sentenced Brady in February 2020, that April she was assigned to serve her time at FCI Danbury, a minimum-security federal prison in Connecticut. But with COVID-19 starting to spread, Brady quickly launched a multiyear effort for early release. 

She was hardly alone. As the pandemic took hold in the United States, federal judges started granting compassionate release to nonviolent offenders at a higher-than-normal rate. But the prisoners let out early were usually within months of their release dates.

Brady, whose release date is set for 2026, made her first attempt to get out early
before she even arrived in Connecticut. As pandemic-related lockdowns delayed her transfer from Cranston to FCI Danbury, she called on McConnell to grant her home confinement and allow her to self-report to Connecticut at a later date.  

“COVID-19 has changed all of our lives,” Brady wrote to McConnell in November 2020, arguing that the pandemic was making it more difficult for her family to care for her autistic son.

“My children need me,” she added. “I could never forgive myself should something happen to any of my children if I did not fight to get home to them.” 

McConnell rejected the request and criticized Brady for apparently ignoring the harm she’s caused others. 

“Not once, in her four-page letter to the court, did Ms. Brady even hint at expressing remorse for her actions that harmed her victims and her family,” McConnell wrote in his denial. “This attitude leads the court to doubt that her short incarceration has had much effect on her rehabilitation.” 

When she arrived at FCI Danbury, Brady joined a class-action lawsuit accusing the prison system of failing to protect prisoners with underlying medical conditions from COVID-19. When she was passed over for home confinement again, Brady filed a lawsuit against the prison and its warden, alleging they were wrongfully denying her compassionate release. 

Brady said her underlying health conditions and vulnerabilities include joint
inflammation, arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, twenty-five years as a smoker and obesity. Brady argued those factors were more than enough reason to grant her home confinement.

“The fact that I committed a serious fraud offense by no means predicts that I am an immediate danger to the community,” she wrote in one court filing. 

Brady, who graduated from Roger Williams School of Law in 2002 but didn’t end up getting into the profession, initially represented herself in court. In addition to her underlying health conditions, she said prison medical staff told her not to take a second dose of the
COVID-19 vaccine after presenting with a full-body rash within forty-eight hours of receiving the first in late 2020. 

Prosecutors later poked holes in her story, saying she didn’t report the rash to prison doctors until weeks after her first shot, and that she’d never disclosed the rash to anyone prior to the visit. 

And while a prison doctor suggested the rash could be a “harbinger of a more serious somatic response,” Connecticut Assistant U.S. Attorney Nate Putnam said Brady wrote, “I am not to take second dose due to systemic somatic response and allergic reaction” on her vaccine consent sheet, attributing it to the doctor. She subsequently rejected taking a second shot in 2021. 

Putnam argues the “completely unwitnessed and unverified” full-body rash didn’t fit any common pattern of allergic reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine recognized by federal health officials, and suggested there was good reason to believe the rash may have been a fabrication. 

Thomas Farrish, U.S. magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court of Connecticut, raised his own concerns about giving too much weight to self-reported symptoms that aren’t observed by any medical professional. 

“If inmates could regularly do this and still remain under consideration for home confinement, opportunities for gaming the system would abound,” he said during a recent hearing. 

Brady continued to file arguments with help from a court-appointed attorney from Connecticut. But her case hit a wall in February 2022 when federal investigators accused her of using a contraband cellphone to communicate with people outside of the prison, including her boyfriend, Heitke. 

“Attorney Heitke had a direct role in this security violation as the individual with whom [Brady] was communicating by contraband cell when she earned her infraction,” Putnam argued in April. 

Brady was subsequently transferred to FCI Hazelton in May, a medium-security prison in West Virginia, more than 

500 miles away from Rhode Island. The transfer took several weeks, and Heitke repeatedly filed arguments to have her transferred elsewhere.  

In May, Heitke declined to be interviewed for this story, citing ongoing litigation. Heitke would not address the contraband cellphone and his involvement, saying only “your email narrative … is inaccurate.” He didn’t respond to a follow-up question seeking clarification about what he claimed was inaccurate.   

“I will not be responding to any further communication with you, while my representation of Ms. Brady continues,” Heitke wrote in an email. 

Brady’s time at FCI Hazelton was tumultuous. A July court filing suggested she was bullied by other inmates. To separate her, she was put into a Special Housing Unit, known colloquially as “the shoe,” which is essentially solitary confinement. 

Heitke argues SHU inmates also harassed Brady, threatened her life and sent an envelope of feces under her prison cell door. 

Brady was transferred to FCI Tallahassee in Florida in June, which is about 1,200 miles from Rhode Island. She was still there as of July 13, and Heitke continued to argue she should be returned
to FCI Danbury, and ultimately released early because of her conditions and the way she’s been treated, according to court records.  

When asked about Brady’s behavior while incarcerated, Vilker says it’s consistent with someone who’s engaged in fraud and is looking to “short the system to her own benefit.” 

Vilker made a similar argument in 2020 when he asked the court to order a “significant sentence” in order to deter Brady from similar behavior in the future. 

“Fraud was her way of life,” he wrote.  

I asked one of her former friends recently what they thought about Vilker’s characterization of Brady. 

She seemed taken aback and quickly corrected the statement: “Fraud is her way of life.”

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Eli Sherman is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning reporter with the CBS affiliate WPRI-TV. He’s a member of the station’s Target 12 investigative team. 

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