On February 12, 2020, the United States Department of Justice announced that seven individuals have pleaded guilty to E-rate fraud related to funding applications filed by multiple private religious schools in Rockland County, New York. In the fraud case, the DoJ reports that schools “never received millions of dollars’ worth of… items and services for which the defendants billed the E-Rate program.”
The DoJ’s press release goes on to state that “in other cases, the schools and the defendants requested hundreds of thousands of dollars of sophisticated technology that served no real purpose for the student population” and that “defendants who held themselves out as independent consultants working for the schools in truth worked for and were paid by other defendants who controlled vendor companies. These defendants presented the schools with forms to sign or certify, awarding E-Rate funded contracts to companies owned by several defendants.”
The DoJ’s press release may be found here