Ex-Chicago school employee accused of embezzlement

 A watchdog is accusing a former Chicago public high school employee of embezzling nearly $420,000 in a fraudulent billing scheme involving fictitious vendors.

The allegation is part of an annual report by the school district's inspector general, James Sullivan.

The report doesn't identify the former employee or the high school where he worked as a technology coordinator.

Chicago Public Schools said in a statement it "takes seriously any abuse of school resources and has created rigorous safeguards in its procurement process."

The inspector general's report says that during its investigation the technology coordinator resigned, withdrew $70,000 from a personal bank account, traveled to California and was found dead in Tijuana, Mexico.

The employee allegedly issued fraudulent payments to nine purported vendors, directing most of the money to his own account.

A technology coordinator at a North Side high school embezzled nearly $420,000 from Chicago Public Schools in an elaborate, decadelong fraudulent billing scheme, according to an investigation highlighted in the district inspector general's annual report.

The suspect, Roberto Tirado of Lake View High School, resigned as the investigation was underway and in January 2012 was found dead in a hotel in Tijuana, Mexico, according to Inspector General Jim Sullivan, whose report was released Friday.

The investigation found that from 2001 to 2011, Tirado lined up nine former classmates and students to pose as CPS vendors. He then had checks issued to them from the district delivered to a post office box he opened in Evanston, according to Sullivan's report.

Tirado allegedly forged the names of the vendors on the checks, countersigning his own name under theirs before depositing the money into his own account, the report said. An audit performed when a new principal took over at Lake View showed more than $144,000 in suspect reimbursements to Tirado's personal credit card. That triggered the investigation.

Tirado, then 36, resigned during the investigation, withdrew $70,000 from his personal account and told his wife he was going to California to visit one of the vendors, according to Sullivan. When he died in Mexico, there were no signs of foul play, Sullivan said.

"It's all very mysterious," Sullivan said of the events in Tirado's final months.

Sullivan's report suggests that his office is able to uncover only a fraction of the fraud and waste afflicting the school district. He said the watchdog office remains "critically under-staffed and under-funded."

As a result, he wrote, slightly more than 1 in 5 of the 1,460 complaints the office received led to an investigation. That, he wrote, "creates a substantial risk that waste, fraud, financial mismanagement and employee misconduct go undetected."

The misconduct the inspector did uncover spanned a wide spectrum.

In one case, a principal and school programmer at Hirsch Metropolitan High School allegedly boosted enrollment figures with "ghost students" at the start of the school year in 2011 to reach a threshold that could qualify the school for an additional assistant principal.

The school officials allegedly did the same thing later that year to secure nonteaching positions. The scheme, allegedly directed by the principal, worked by using the names of students who initially were projected to come to the school but failed to attend. The pair allegedly falsified grades for the phony students.

The principal retired and was deemed ineligible to be rehired. The programmer faces disciplinary action, according to Sullivan's report.

In another case, the report describes how lax standards allowed a contractor to provide "inferior" computer tables rather than the tables the district ordered. Those tables had to be replaced, costing the district $90,000. The contractor, Frank Cooney Co., agreed not to do work for CPS for 18 months and to pay a $225,000 fine, according to the report. Three CPS employees who left their jobs before or during the inquiry were deemed ineligible to work at CPS.

Also in the report, the former principal of Ogden International School was accused of falsifying three hotel invoices as news reports surfaced about excessive travel and lavish entertaining at the school. The principal, Kenneth Staral, also had an associate's airfare paid through school funds. Staral and his assistant principal were relieved of their duties over the summer, and Staral subsequently resigned.

In another investigation at Ogden, the inspector general found that an assistant principal submitted two sets of reimbursement requests for about $10,000 in spending — pocketing money that, according to the report, he had no right to receive as well as more than 650,000 credit card reward points.

Over three years, the inspector general wrote, the assistant principal repeatedly "gamed the purchasing system." He eventually resigned and has been deemed ineligible to be rehired, while the district is still negotiating to recoup some of the money.

At Harvard Elementary, a failing school taken over six years ago by the privately run Academy for Urban School Leadership, a principal falsified grades to allow students to graduate, according to Sullivan.

Other investigations found that high-level central office administrators reported their income falsely so their children could receive free or reduced meals; employees hired relatives despite nepotism policies; and substantial money was wasted on overtime pay.

The office worked with federal investigators in the case against Tirado, but the report said no criminal charges have been filed. Sullivan recommended that CPS initiate legal action to recover the fraudulent payments — most of which ranged from about $5,800 to nearly $57,000.

Tirado's attorney, Kevin O'Rourke, said his client denied any wrongdoing.

"Mr. Tirado asserted his innocence," O'Rourke said. "He really was a good kid. His life was wrapped up in that school. It was devastating for him to have to remove himself."

Sullivan said Tirado chose not to cooperate with investigators on the advice of his lawyer.

Tirado's widow declined comment.

Donna Kurzynski, a special education teacher at Lake View, said Tirado was well-liked. She said staff and students were surprised when rumors of the embezzlement started. At the time Tirado left Lake View, in late September 2011, many people assumed it was because of illness, she said.