A former employee of the Elise Flagg Academy of Dance in Geneva pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing around $146,000 from the dance studio, according to the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office.
For the count of felony theft she pleaded guilty to, Desiree Cortez, 47, of Geneva, was sentenced to four years of probation and ordered to pay back the money she stole from the studio at 9 N. Fourth St., according to the state’s attorney’s office.
Cortez was first charged last May and then indicted in July, according to records from the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office. She was charged with theft over $100,000 but under $500,000, financial exploitation of an elderly person over $50,000 and financial exploitation over $15,000 of a victim over 70 years old.
The latter two charges were dropped as part of the plea agreement, a spokesperson for the state’s attorney’s office said Friday.
The law firm representing Cortez did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Cortez was hired in January 2021 by the Elise Flagg School of Dance as the studio’s accountant. She oversaw the business’ finances and payroll until she was fired in January 2024, a Geneva police report said.
Following her firing, Elizabeth Brubaker DeFrancisco – whose son attended the studio – volunteered to help the studio get its finances in order, she told The Beacon-News.
According to Brubaker DeFrancisco, 48, Cortez was initially unwilling to hand over the business’ banking and bookkeeping logins. The dance studio’s owner, Elise Flagg, 73, had handed over financial control to Cortez when she worked there, according to police.
After getting into the company’s accounts, Brubaker DeFrancisco began noticing unusual activity, like lengthy bank statements with seemingly personal expenses being deducted from business accounts.
In March 2024, Flagg and Brubaker DeFrancisco went to Geneva police with their concerns, according to police records. The department launched an investigation, ultimately accusing Cortez of providing direct payments to herself from business accounts, as well as using business accounts to pay for personal expenses like Amazon purchases, Doordash, UberEats, Verizon bills and trips for her daughter.
According to the findings of police, Cortez was listed as the only name on the company’s main bank account, despite Flagg being the founder and owner.
According to the police report, Cortez had stopped paying employees through the studio’s third-party payroll system and instead began paying them through Zelle, while also paying herself significantly more than her $1,000 per week salary via Zelle – more than $216,000 from June 2022 to March 2024. But Cortez may also have been using her own funds to pay for business expenses like utility bills and competition fees.
In all, police concluded from their investigation that Cortez received around $259,000 from the business from that time frame. Subtracting what she should have been paid as an employee and the money she spent on business expenses using her personal accounts, it is estimated that Cortez stole roughly $146,000 from the academy.
The studio was unaware that any of this had been going on until after Cortez’s firing, Brubaker DeFrancisco said.
But, while the studio waited to hear the outcome of the case these past few months, they had finances to get in order.
“Through all this, it was just putting out fires all over the place,” Brubaker DeFrancisco said.
The studio was in a precarious position at first. Brubaker DeFrancisco said they essentially had to start over with their banking and recordkeeping. They had only about $6,000 left in their accounts, and they had a spring show coming up and no money for costumes.
As of this month, Brubaker DeFrancisco said on Friday, the studio is finally in the black as far as its finances and rent payments. They will also be receiving the $146,000 they are owed by Cortez in monthly installments over nine years, she said.
Now, Brubaker DeFrancisco manages the business side of the studio. The school has five dance teachers, and Brubaker DeFrancisco estimates about 80 to 100 students.
According to the studio’s website, the studio’s owner, Elise Flagg, was selected at 12 years old to study at The School of American Ballet in New York City with a Ford Foundation Scholarship by George Balanchine, known as the father of American ballet. She later studied at the New York City Ballet and the Zurich Ballet. Now, she continues to teach ballet and Pilates classes at her studio.
The school is currently expanding its offerings to include more contemporary, modern and jazz classes, Brubaker DeFrancisco said. They also offer some adult classes.
Brubaker DeFrancisco’s son received a full-ride scholarship to the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, where two other of Flagg’s students attend, and another student attends The School of American Ballet.
Brubaker DeFrancisco hopes the studio will be remembered for those achievements, not for their previous financial woes.
“We’re going to reinvent it,” she said on Friday about the studio. “This is not the legacy it should have. … Lots of people don’t know about this studio – this little gem in Geneva – with this woman, who, just, the caliber of dancers she turns out just can’t be ignored.”
Brubaker DeFrancisco said Flagg came out of the experience even more confident than before.
“The woman that I sat with in Starbucks to kind of tell her what I felt was happening (a year ago) is not the same woman that gave her statement in court today,” she said on Friday, saying Flagg is focused on the dance studio’s future. “She said her piece, and she walked out the door, and she said, you know, ‘We need to have a meeting about summer. We need to start talking about this stuff.’ … This was over.”
And through it all, Flagg kept teaching – and still does.
“There were days where I (was) like, ‘OK, we got to go here, we got to go to the police but we got to go to the bank,’” Brubaker DeFrancisco recalled about the past year as they put the business back together. “And then she (Flagg) would go and she would teach. … She didn’t miss a beat.”
mmorrow@chicagotribune.com