The former interim CEO of Strong City Baltimore was sentenced to “time served” – that is, no prison sentence or fine – by U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher today, ending with a whimper the saga of a once high-flying, now defunct nonprofit.

Back in June, Reginald L. Davis, 42, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor bank theft for improperly using $1.4 million in Covid-19 relief funds.

Davis had secretly diverted Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) loans to pay off some of the debt that Strong City had accumulated after siphoning off funds it controlled on behalf of mostly Black-led organizations and wasting additional money to bankroll the reconstruction of the historic Hoen Lithography building in East Baltimore.

Federal prosecutors today stressed that Davis did not use the money for his own benefit, but instead to deal with the financial “quagmire” left by CEO Karen D. Stokes, who hired Davis before she abruptly left the organization in 2020.

Originally called the Greater Homewood Community Corp., the organization grew fat acting as the “fiscal sponsor” for over 100 small organizations, many set up to deal with the aftermath of the Freddie Gray protests. The group’s move into the poor Collington Square neighborhood, hailed by government officials and the media, elicited millions of dollars in public tax credits and construction loans.

Reports in the Baltimore Brew in August 2020 that Strong City was withholding funds it was meant to safeguard led to Davis’ indictment in August 2023 on three federal counts of wire fraud and money laundering.

• THE BREW’S FULL COVERAGE:  STRONG CITY

According to the indictment, Davis did pay $625,000 in PPP loans to settle accounts with three nonprofit. But he earmarked the other $800,000 for employee salaries, rent for its new offices in the Hoen building and loans to unnamed board members.

“Organizations seeking to better the City of Baltimore entrusted Strong City Baltimore and Reginald Davis to help manage their money,” Special FBI Agent Thomas Sobocinski said at the time. “Davis is accused of exploiting that trust by orchestrating this unscrupulous scheme and misusing federal CARES Act funds to cover up his criminal behavior.”

The IRS sued the organization for back payroll and Social Security taxes.

Strong City was also the subject of a lawsuit filed by seven former sponsored organizations that never got back their funds – Aziza Pe&ce, The Be. Organization, Maryland Justice Project, Step Up Maryland, Fearlessly Loving Yourself, Helping Oppressed People Excel, and the William Tipper Thomas Foundation. The lawsuit was deferred and now appears inactive.

The Case Collapses

Five months after Davis was indicted in January 2024, the FBI raided three rowhouses on Mura Street, a block from the Hoen building, owned and used by Strong City as an unofficial storage unit.

Agents seized about 1,000 files and electronic devices as part of an investigation of alleged criminal activity on part of the nonprofit, according to subsequent court filings.

For reasons never explained in the court documents, the U.S. attorney’s office failed to notify Gerald C. Ruter, Davis’ lawyer, of the material seized until January of this year.

Ruter filed a motion to suppress the search evidence, causing Judge Gallagher to rebuke the government for its handling of the case. At the same time, the lead prosecutor and then the U.S. Attorney for Maryland, Erek Barron, resigned from their positions as the Trump administration took control of the office.

Apparently, the files collected in the raid were never fully examined, and what happened to the millions of dollars at Strong City, which was officially forfeited by the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation last October, remains unresolved.

What happened to the millions of dollars remains unresolved.

Fast forward to June 2025: With the Davis trial scheduled to start, Barron’s replacement, Kelly O. Hayes, and the new lead prosecutor entered into plea negotiations with Ruter.

The result was the downgrading of the three felony charges to a single misdemeanor (bank theft) punishable by a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Even before today’s hearing, it was clear that the government would not press for jail time.

In recent weeks, nearly two dozen character witnesses, including family members, a former employer and members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, wrote to Judge Gallagher asking for mercy and compassion for Davis.

One former Strong City colleague wrote this: “He made a mistake, is sorry, is absolutely no danger to to anyone and is deeply needed by his family, his church and especially by the young men he mentors like a father.”

Defense Council Ruter told the judge that Davis was raised by his mother in Chicago. “At age 12, while still living in public housing, he moved to a better section of Chicago known as Humble Park [actually Humboldt Park], graduated from high school in Chicago, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington, D.C., in 2011 and completed a certificate program in nonprofit management in January 2012.

“From 2013 to 2015,” Ruter continued in a court memo, “he attended a public management graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. He was just four classes away from finishing the program but stopped when a brother and half-brother were murdered in Chicago. Recently, while on release in this case, he has taken two classes in a master’s degree program at the University of Maryland Global Campus in Eldridge.”