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Leonard Hart of Mount Wolf, the former CEO and principal of Lincoln Charter School in York admitted to nearly 20 false and fraudulent reimbursement requests between 2018 and 2020, on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022, according to a previous release by the US Department of Justice.
Hart "obtained by fraud and misapplied approximately $6,400," starting in May 2018, United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam says.
During that time, the school received grants funded by the U.S. Department of Education— "primarily Title I funding, which is financial assistance for schools with high numbers of children from low-income backgrounds," as stated in the release.
In addition to that financial fraud, it is now known that "Hart misrepresented that he was pursuing a Ph.D. and submitted numerous requests for reimbursement for courses that he falsely claimed he was taking from a couple of universities," the USDOJ release stated. "He also falsified records to support these claims for tuition reimbursement and pressured a lower-level employee of the school and former LCS student to assist him in creating a forged diploma."
Hart could have been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, but he will not be going to jail at all. Instead, Hart has been sentenced to five years of probation, and he was ordered to pay $55,311 in restitution, "representing the total amount of funds he received through fraudulent reimbursement requests," according to the release.
Hart presented the first payment in the form of a $10,000 check at his sentencing.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ravi Romel Sharma prosecuted the case.
The school welcomed Rob Catten as its new CEO on July 1, 2022.
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