By The newspaper
05 Mar 2024, 09:33 AM EST
Cindy Tappe pleaded guilty to a $3.5 million fraud scheme over six years when she was Director of Finance and Administration at New York University (NYU) in Manhattan.
According to authorities, Tappe, 57, used public money to finance renovations at his home in Westport, Connecticut. Those funds were originally intended for businesses owned by women and minorities, according to a joint statement from the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Tappe was originally charged in December 2022. She has now pleaded guilty to grand theft and agreed to five years of probation and to pay $663,209 in restitution. She is scheduled to be sentenced on April 16, she said. NBC News.
“Their fraudulent actions not only threatened to undermine the quality of education for students with disabilities and multilingual students, but they denied our city’s minority- and women-owned businesses the opportunity to compete fairly for funding,” said Attorney Bragg. it’s a statement.
Bragg and DiNapoli’s offices detailed that Tappe improperly diverted approximately $3.5 million to two shell companies she created while serving as Director of Finance and Administration for the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and School Transformation, known at NYU as “Metro Center”.
Some of the diverted funds covered NYU-related expenses, including employee reimbursements, but more than $660,000 was used to pay for Tappe’s personal expenses, including renovations to his Connecticut home and an $80,000 swimming pool, they said. The offices.
The diverted funds were related to $23 million in state Department of Education grants awarded to the Metropolitan Center between 2011 and 2018, according to Bragg and DiNapoli’s offices.
NYU said its internal audit office investigated Tappe and provided its findings to state officials, leading to criminal charges.
“We are deeply disappointed that Tappe abused the trust we placed in her in this way. She stole from everyone: from the taxpayers, from the University, from the people the Metro Center is supposed to help,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman wrote in an email. “New York University is pleased to have been able to help stop this misappropriation of taxpayer money.”
In November, state comptroller DiNapoli reported that a resident of the state of Georgia had collected almost $500,000 in pension and Social Security payments from her deceased mother-in-law in NY over a period of 15 years.
In a similar case, a woman was arrested in The Bronx (NYC) for allegedly burglarizing the home of a dead man who had the same name as her deceased father, then selling the property and squandering the funds on jewelry and a luxury car. .
In September, a woman was arrested on suspicion of using credit cards from the company she worked for to pay herself more than $350,000 over the course of two years on Long Island (NY).
In another alleged local scam, a year ago Charlie Javice, founder of the college financial planning platform Frank, was arrested and charged with defrauding JPMorgan Chase of $175 million in New York, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.