New York state’s largest private Hasidic Jewish school admitted in federal court documents filed Monday that it stole millions of dollars from various government programs in a year-long scam.
Operators of Central United Tarmudical Academy, which serves more than 2,000 boys in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, have admitted to illegally diverting funds from government programs for school meals, technology and childcare. . According to a deferred prosecution agreement filed in federal district court in Brooklyn, they also set up no-show jobs for some employees, paid others in cash and coupons, and paid employees for benefits. He admitted that he made it possible for him to obtain the qualification.
Overall, the school agreed to pay $5 million in fines on top of the more than $3 million in damages it had already paid as part of a deal to avoid prosecution.
“Today’s admission makes clear that a culture of fraud and greed was pervasive at CUTA,” said Michael J. Driscoll, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York office, initials in a statement Monday. said in reference to school. “We expect schools to be places where students are taught how to do things right. I didn’t go out of my way to do that.”
As part of the scam, school officials took money to feed the children and used the subsidies for parties for the adults instead.
Timeline: Surveillance of Hasidic Schools in New York
State law requires all private schools to provide an education equivalent to public schools. In 2015, the New York City Department of Education announced that it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in Hasidic Jewish community schools. The investigation timeline is as follows:
Mark Mukathy, a lawyer representing the school, declined to comment. Other representatives of the school did not immediately respond to phone calls and email messages seeking comment.
A federal investigation into the school’s use of government funds led in March 2018 to a narrower criminal case in which two former school leaders, Elozer Porges and Joel Loewy, pleaded guilty to involvement in a conspiracy to defraud the government. leaving the edge.
Since that incident, the school has replaced its administrative team and developed a series of new controls, among other changes, federal officials said. will be supervised by
“The CUTA fraud was systematic and widespread, including stealing more than $3 million allocated to school children in need of food,” said Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. said in a statement on Monday. “Today’s resolution explains CUTA’s involvement in these crimes and provides a pathway to repay and repair the damage done to the community, while at the same time ensuring that CUTA continues to provide education for the children of the community. make it possible.”
The Central United Tarmudikal Academy, an all-boys private religious school, provides a basic education to its students, while Hasidic boys’ schools across the state have received hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding, a New York Times survey found last month. It took a great deal of consideration that it became clear that they had not given. secular education.
Williamsburg schools received about $10 million in funding from the government in the year before the pandemic, according to a Times analysis. A member of the Hasidic Jewish Sathma group, its leader also runs several other schools in the state.
There are more than 100 Hasidic boys’ schools in Brooklyn and the Lower Hudson Valley, which have collectively received more than $1 billion in taxpayer money over the past four years, The Times found. They focus on providing religious education, and most offer little instruction in English reading and mathematics, and little history, science, or civics classes.
In general, many Hasidic boys’ schools score lower than any other public or private school in the state on the state’s standardized tests.
In 2019, The Times reported that the Central United Tarmudic Academy agreed to provide more than 1,000 students with state-standardized tests in reading and mathematics. All of them have failed.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed to the report.