DUVAL COUNTY, Fla. — Former Duval Teachers United President Teresa Brady on Thursday pleaded guilty to several charges in a $1.2 million federal fraud case.

Brady pleaded guilty to counts one, two, 12 and 13 in the 14-count indictment.

The charges she pleaded to are below:

• Count One: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud
• Count Two: Aiding and abetting wire fraud
• Count Twelve: Aiding and abetting wire fraud
• County Thirteen: Money laundering, specifically engaging in monetary transaction in property derived from specified unlawful activity

Brady faces no more than 70 years in prison, a $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain or loss and twice the amount of the laundered funds for each count she is pleading to (whichever is greater), and a term of supervised release of not more than three years, according to the plea agreement.

The plea agreement also states that Brady has to forfeit $1,328,695.28 in assets she admitted she obtained as a result of her charges; however, the U.S. cannot find the money since they have been transferred to third parties. So, the U.S. can take substitute assets.

Brady released the following statement regarding her plea:

“I accept full responsibility for my actions and their consequences. I am truly sorry for my wrongdoing and the harm I caused to Duval Teachers United (DTU) and its members. Understanding the seriousness of my offenses, I accept the outcome with humility and sincere remorse while deeply regretting breaching the trust I placed in me by DTU, my community and my family.”

Brady’s plea follows former Duval Teachers United Executive Vice President Ruby George’s guilty plea to federal fraud charges on Aug. 4.

George and Brady, who jointly led the 6,500-member union for 24 years and were its top-ranking employees, were indicted together in December 2024 on charges that they both sold back to Duval Teachers United big blocks of vacation time they hadn’t earned.

George pleaded to three of the seven counts that mention her by name, admitting roles in conspiracy, wire fraud and mail fraud, crimes that each carry maximum penalties of 20 years in prison.

A part of George’s plea agreement reciting a “factual basis” for the charges says both George and Brady began selling leave to the union in the 2000s, describing sales of leave balances that would have been nearly impossible to accrue.

The union allotted its employees ― not the teachers, paraprofessionals and others who are DTU members ― 42 days of leave per year that they could use or keep to grow balances of available time off year over year.

George’s plea agreement says she sold more leave than she’d ever earned, giving as one example sales in 2013 of 2,872 hours of leave, the equivalent of 359 days of time off. Her agreement also says George and Brady signed each other’s checks (part of the conspiracy) to authorize the payments into bank accounts (the wire fraud) and didn’t circulate information about their leave balances to the union’s governing board, made up of volunteers who usually met monthly.

The board hired an auditor in 2017 to review union finances, George’s agreement says, but there was an effort to mislead the auditor about leave data and no time was ever allotted for the auditor to report findings to the board.

DTU had to send yearly financial reports with Florida’s Public Employees Relations Commission, but the reports were doctored (the mail fraud) to hide information that could have derailed the leave scam, the report said.

Our news partners, The Florida-Times Union, contributed to this report.