SAN DIEGO — A statewide task force met in San Diego on Monday to figure out how to prevent fraud in charter schools.
The meeting comes more than four years after a group of people, including educators from San Diego, were charged with stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from California.
Prosecutors say it was the largest charter school fraud case ever discovered in the United States.
“They defrauded California families and the state by enrolling fake students into online charter schools. Specifically, the school was called A3," said Malia Cohen, the California State Controller.
Cohen wasn’t elected until years after the fraud occurred, but says, when she found out the details, she was infuriated.
"The scheme resulted in a theft of approximately 400 million dollars from the state. We believe that we will be able to recover $215 million, but obviously that is not enough," said Cohen.
Cohen chairs the 18-member task force, which met for the first time at the Logan Memorial Educational Campus.
The group formed as part of a court order from the case, which was initiated and prosecuted in San Diego.
In 2019, the District Attorney's office announced criminal charges against an Australian man and his Long Beach based business partner, as well as nine co-conspirators, for opening 19 charter schools in San Diego and elsewhere to defraud the state.
The scheme involved using names, report cards and student information of roughly 40,000 students, including ones from the Dehesa Elementary School District in El Cajon.
A3 Education would receive between $2,000 and $5,000 per child from the state.
In the Dehesa School District, which has fewer than 150 full-time students, A3 Education received funding for nearly 20,000 students during the 2017-2018 school year.
Those charged included former Dehesa School District Superintendent Nancy Hauer, and Stephen Van Zant, former superintendent of the Mountain Empire Unified School District.
“The prosecution was successful, but we know that's not enough. There are other greedy people out there that will also try to game the system,” said San Diego District Attorney, Summer Stephan.
Monday’s task force meeting is the first of many planned throughout the next year.
The group, which consists of San Diego Unified School Board members, is tasked with addressing issues with the school auditing process, specifically the fact schools can hire their own auditors, who can help facilitate fraud.
They will present their findings and recommendations by the end of June.
“Our goal for the entire task force is to make sure public dollars designated to go towards education go exactly there and are not diverted by greedy fraudsters who want to line their pockets,” said Stephan.
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