Hasidic School to Pay $8 Million After Admitting to Federal Fraud
The Central United Talmudical Academy, which operates the largest all-boys yeshiva in New York State, acknowledged illegally diverting money from federal food aid and other programs.
\The operators of the Central United Talmudical Academy in Brooklyn admitted in federal court to diverting government money in a wide-ranging fraud.
Credit...Jonah Markowitz for The New York Times
By Brian M. Rosenthal and Eliza Shapiro
Oct. 24, 2022,
The largest private Hasidic Jewish school in New York State stole millions of dollars from a variety of government programs in a yearslong fraud, the school admitted in federal court documents filed on Monday.
The operators of the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, which serves more than 2,000 boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, acknowledged that they illegally diverted money from government programs for school lunches, technology and child care. They also admitted to setting up no-show jobs for some employees while paying others in cash and coupons so the employees could qualify for welfare, according to a deferred prosecution agreement filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
In all, the school agreed to pay $5 million in fines in addition to the more than $3 million it had already paid in restitution as part of the deal to avoid prosecution.
“Today’s admission makes clear there was a pervasive culture of fraud and greed in place at C.U.T.A.,” said Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, referring to the school by its initials in a statement on Monday. “We expect schools to be places where students are taught how to do things properly. The leaders of C.U.T.A. went out of their way to do the opposite, creating multiple systems of fraud in order to cheat the government.”
As part of the fraud, school officials took money intended to feed children and instead used it to subsidize parties for adults, the federal authorities said Monday.
A lawyer representing the school, Marc Mukasey, declined to comment. Other representatives of the school did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
The federal investigation into the school’s use of government funding stemmed from a more narrow criminal case in which two former school leaders, Elozer Porges and Joel Lowy, pleaded guilty in March 2018 for their roles in the conspiracy to defraud the government.
Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.
Since that case, the school has replaced its executive management team and developed a new set of controls, among other changes, the federal authorities said. As part of the deal, the school will also be subject to the supervision of an independent monitor for the next three years.
The Central United Talmudical Academy, an all-boys private religious school, factored prominently in a New York Times investigation last month that found that Hasidic boys’ schools across the state had received hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding while denying their students a basic secular education.
The Williamsburg school received about $10 million in government funding in the year before the pandemic, according to a Times analysis. Its leaders, who are affiliated with the Satmar group of Hasidic Judaism, also operate several other schools in the state.
There are more than 100 Hasidic boys’ schools in Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, and they have received a total of more than $1 billion in taxpayer money over the past four years, The Times found. They focus on providing religious instruction, with most offering little instruction in English reading and math and almost no classes in history, science or civics.
In general, many Hasidic boys’ schools score lower on state standardized tests than any other schools in the state, public or private.
In 2019, The Times reported, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. Every one of them failed.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed reporting.
Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro desk of The Times and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. @brianmrosenthal • Facebook
Eliza Shapiro is a reporter covering New York City education. She joined The Times in 2018 and grew up in New York, attending public and private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn. @elizashapiro
By Brian M. Rosenthal and Eliza Shapiro
Oct. 24, 2022,
The largest private Hasidic Jewish school in New York State stole millions of dollars from a variety of government programs in a yearslong fraud, the school admitted in federal court documents filed on Monday.
The operators of the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, which serves more than 2,000 boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, acknowledged that they illegally diverted money from government programs for school lunches, technology and child care. They also admitted to setting up no-show jobs for some employees while paying others in cash and coupons so the employees could qualify for welfare, according to a deferred prosecution agreement filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
In all, the school agreed to pay $5 million in fines in addition to the more than $3 million it had already paid in restitution as part of the deal to avoid prosecution.
“Today’s admission makes clear there was a pervasive culture of fraud and greed in place at C.U.T.A.,” said Michael J. Driscoll, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s New York office, referring to the school by its initials in a statement on Monday. “We expect schools to be places where students are taught how to do things properly. The leaders of C.U.T.A. went out of their way to do the opposite, creating multiple systems of fraud in order to cheat the government.”
As part of the fraud, school officials took money intended to feed children and instead used it to subsidize parties for adults, the federal authorities said Monday.
Timeline: New York’s Oversight of Hasidic Schools
State law requires all private schools to provide an education comparable to what is in public schools. In 2015, New York City’s education department said it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in schools in the Hasidic Jewish community. Here’s a timeline of the investigation:
July 2015: Graduates of Hasidic religious schools, known as yeshivas, wrote a complaint about the poor secular education they received. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration opened an investigation into the schools, but it soon stalled, plagued by delays and a lack of cooperation from the yeshivas.
November 2018: The state released updated rules outlining what nonpublic schools like yeshivas must teach and for how long – with consequences for schools that did not comply. Hasidic leaders sued, and the rules were thrown out in court in 2019.
December 2019: The city Department of Investigation found the de Blasio administration delayed a report on the schools. A few days later, the city finally released findings: only two of 28 yeshivas that officials visited were offering a basic secular education. The investigation has not concluded, and the city has done little to follow up.
Sept. 11, 2022: A New York Times investigation found scores of schools are systematically denying children a basic education, a violation of state law that has trapped generations of students in a cycle of joblessness and destitution. Even so, The Times found, these institutions have collected more than $1 billion from city, state and federal sources in the past four years alone.
Sept. 13, 2022: The State Board of Regents voted unanimously to approve rules that would force Hasidic yeshivas and other private schools to prove they are offering basic secular instruction. The vote came after four years of tumultuous debate about how the government should regulate the schools.
October 2022: The New York education commissioner ruled that a large boys' yeshiva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is violating state law by failing to provide a basic secular education. This is the first time the state has taken action against a Hasidic boys' school. New York City had earlier recommended the school be found in compliance with the law
A lawyer representing the school, Marc Mukasey, declined to comment. Other representatives of the school did not immediately respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
The federal investigation into the school’s use of government funding stemmed from a more narrow criminal case in which two former school leaders, Elozer Porges and Joel Lowy, pleaded guilty in March 2018 for their roles in the conspiracy to defraud the government.
Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.
Since that case, the school has replaced its executive management team and developed a new set of controls, among other changes, the federal authorities said. As part of the deal, the school will also be subject to the supervision of an independent monitor for the next three years.
The Central United Talmudical Academy, an all-boys private religious school, factored prominently in a New York Times investigation last month that found that Hasidic boys’ schools across the state had received hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding while denying their students a basic secular education.
The Williamsburg school received about $10 million in government funding in the year before the pandemic, according to a Times analysis. Its leaders, who are affiliated with the Satmar group of Hasidic Judaism, also operate several other schools in the state.
There are more than 100 Hasidic boys’ schools in Brooklyn and the lower Hudson Valley, and they have received a total of more than $1 billion in taxpayer money over the past four years, The Times found. They focus on providing religious instruction, with most offering little instruction in English reading and math and almost no classes in history, science or civics.
In general, many Hasidic boys’ schools score lower on state standardized tests than any other schools in the state, public or private.
In 2019, The Times reported, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. Every one of them failed.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed reporting.
Brian M. Rosenthal is an investigative reporter on the Metro desk of The Times and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. @brianmrosenthal • Facebook
Eliza Shapiro is a reporter covering New York City education. She joined The Times in 2018 and grew up in New York, attending public and private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn. @elizashapiro
No comments:
Post a Comment