This Woman Billed Detroit Schools a Small Fortune for Nonexistent Tutoring. Great Work If You Can Get It!
Detroit Public Schools can’t seem to get anything right. As if the system’s forever-looming bankruptcy, the black mold in its classrooms, and the constant sickouts by frustrated teachers weren’t bad enough, now just two months after a dozen current and former DPS principals were charged with pocketing hundred of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a school-supply vendor, it transpires that the school district paid a former administrator close to $1.3 million for tutoring services that she never provided. Ouch.
Carolyn Starkey-Darden, DPS’ director of grant development, retired in 2005 after nearly four decades with the district. According to court documents, she proceeded to spend the next seven years submitting fraudulent tutoring invoices through several companies—one of which, “Grants ‘N Such,” gets my enthusiastic vote for best shell company name of the month—that totaled $1.27 million.
Starkey-Darden’s scam was nothing if not elaborately executed, according to aDetroit Free Press report on the latest scandal to beset Motor City schools:
She did this, court records show, by submitting phony documents to the district that included doctored test scores, forged attendance records and parental signatures and fake individual learning plans—all of which went on forms that were required by DPS before payment could be made.
Starkey-Darden’s companies, which the FBI has been investigating since 2011, received $6.1 million in federal programming money, at least $1.2 million of which was “ill-gotten,” per the Free Press.Retired school administrator bills Detroit $1.3 million for nonexistent tutoring services:
