The FBI has charged a Yale School of Medicine administrator with mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering for allegedly stealing and selling millions of dollars worth of computer hardware that she had purchased through her workplace account.
Th charges are laid out in an eight-page affidavit written and signed Thursday by FBI Special Agent Anthony Crisera. The U.S. Attorney’s Office sent out an email press release about the arrest and charges on Friday afternoon.
The affidavit states that a 41-year-old Naugatuck resident who has worked in some capacity for Yale University, the Yale School of Medicine, and Yale New Haven Hospital for the past 22 years has engaged in a decade-long scheme to buy tablets and other electronics hardware with her workplace account and then ship those products out of state and resell them.
Here’s what happened, according to the Crisera’s affidavit:
On Aug. 25, the FBI started investigating the suspect regarding an apparent scheme to defraud Yale and the Yale School of Medicine.
According to the affidavit, the suspect purchased electronic devices from vendors through a Yale School of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine account, and then sold those devices to a third party “for her own financial gain.”
The FBI initiated the investigation based on information provided by the university.
According to the affidavit, the suspect began work at Yale’s emergency medicine department in 2008. She had previously worked for other areas of the university and the hospital since 1999.
Starting in late 2019, she was a lead administrator and the director of finance and administration for the emergency medicine department. As part of her job responsibilities, she had the authority to make and authorize certain purchases so long as the purchase amount stayed below $10,000.
Beginning in as early as 2013, she allegedly engaged in a scheme “whereby she ordered, or caused other works for her to order, large amounts of computer hardware — most recently tablet computers such as Microsoft Surface Pros — from Yale vendors using Yale Med funds.”
She allegedly broke up the purchases into several orders below the $10,000 threshold that would have required additional approval. She then allegedly falsely represented on Yale internal forms and in electronic communications that the hardware was for certain Yale medical school needs, such as for particular medical studies.
Instead, when she received the hardware from vendors, she allegedly arranged to ship the hardware via FedEx or other interstate carrier to “an out-of-state business in exchange for money.”
That business would then resell the hardware to other customers.
The suspect allegedly directed the out-of-state business to pay her via a company of which she was the principal. She “then used that money to purchase expensive goods and services, among other things, often in excess of $10,000.”
The affidavit states that, since fiscal year 2018, she drafted thousands of purchase orders totaling approximately $30 million.
Since January 2021, alone, she allegedly arranged for Yale’s purchase of around 8,000 iPads and Surface Pro tablets. From May 27 through Aug. 19, she allegedly ordered approximately $2.1 million in computer equipment on behalf of Yale.
As recently as Aug. 24, the affidavit reads, she placed an order from a Yale vendor for approximately $144,000 in Surface Pro tablets, broken into several purchase orders under $10,000.
“Law enforcement is currently evaluating how much of those totals were fraudulent, as opposed to legitimate purposes.”
The affidavit states that, armed with a court-authorized search warrant, on Aug. 26 the FBI searched seven boxes containing packages delivered by the suspect to a FedEx location in Orange the day before. Those boxes were slated to be shipped to a New York address associated with the out-of-state business. The boxes included numerous individually boxed new Surface Pro tablet computers, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit states that the suspect provided a voluntary statement to law enforcement on Aug. 26 in which she “admitted to having devised and executed the above-referenced scheme, and indicated that it had been going on for several years, possibly as many as ten years.”
She estimated that approximately 90 percent of her computer-related purchases were fraudulent.
We need this person in NH to bilk the federal govt out of money and split it with the city. Call her up.