A Chicago educator who founded her own school to help low-income students has been accused of embezzling millions from the very students who most needed her help. The money allegedly went to fund her extravagant lifestyle.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Pamela Strain said she’d once dreamed of following in the footsteps of Clarence Darrow, the legendary Chicago attorney known for championing the underdog.

Strain instead went into education, rising to become an elementary school principal in an impoverished neighborhood in Chicago before founding her own private school in the south suburbs serving underprivileged kids.

But federal investigators say instead of championing the less fortunate, Strain has been stealing from the very programs intended to help them.

Court records made public this week show that Strain is suspected of using the small, nonprofit school she founded in 2005 to loot as much as $2.7 million in funds over a seven-year period, including money from federal school lunch subsidies and other grants designed to provide nutritious food to low-income children.