Ellen Corkrum

Ellen Corkrum is a former Liberian public official who served as managing director of the Liberia Airport Authority. She later became the subject of a major political and legal controversy in Liberia after alleging corruption by senior government officials and fleeing the country in 2013. In 2016, she announced an intention to seek the Liberian presidency. In the United States, where she had legally changed her name to Hunter VanPelt in 2016, she pleaded guilty in 2021 to bank fraud connected to the Paycheck Protection Program and was sentenced in 2022 to three years and five months in prison.

Career Corkrum served as a United States military supply and logistics officer and later worked as a military and commercial pilot. She also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Corkrum later returned to Liberia and was appointed managing director of the Liberia Airport Authority.

Corkrum subsequently left Liberia and traveled through Sierra Leone before returning to the United States.

In January 2020, she returned to Liberia after the government dropped all criminal charges against her, ending several years of legal uncertainty following her departure from the country in 2013.

U.S. fraud case In July 2016, Corkrum legally changed her name to Hunter VanPelt.