Yale EM Administrator Fraud

[Vandalia]

$40M in not more than 13 years. How the heck did they miss the amount of hardware and software she was purportedly buying?

Yale EM Director of Finance and Administration Wire Fraud

A former Yale School of Medicine employee stole $40 million in computers and electronics from the school and sold the goods to fund a lavish lifestyle that included luxury cars, multiple properties and trips, prosecutors said.

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[AlmostAnMD]

Saving all that money with the midlevel residency went somewhere I guess

 

[southerndoc]

Wow. I'm beyond speechless with how so much money would go missing before they even noticed.

 

[DeadCactus]

Sounds like she probably could have bailed at $10 million and been long gone before anyone noticed.

 

[Brigade4Radiant]

It was probably her lavish lifestyle that tips someone off that something was amiss. If she was low key and paid her taxes off he llc i doubt she would have been caught

 

[emergentmd]

#1 Greed - Rarely the person who hits a number and quit.
#2 Accomplice - Some if not many knew and didn't say anything. Probably took a cut bribe
#3 I assume more years of jail time will come when the IRS comes seeking their piece of flesh.

 

[Vandalia]

I went ahead and purchased a copy of her plea agreement. (As one more item of governmental insanity, it is ridiculous that citizens have to pay to access federal court documents online. They use it to fund court operations. Sock it to the lawyers and litigants, but the public shouldn't have to pay. End or rant.)

A detailed description of what she did with examples is on pages 15 and 16.

Once again, how in the heck can you not miss $40M over 8 years?

 

[Angry Birds]

I’m jealous.

 

[BoardingDoc]

I went ahead and purchased a copy of her plea agreement. (As one more item of governmental insanity, it is ridiculous that citizens have to pay to access federal court documents online. They use it to fund court operations. Sock it to the lawyers and litigants, but the public shouldn't have to pay. End or rant.)

A detailed description of what she did with examples is on pages 15 and 16.

Once again, how in the heck can you not miss $40M over 8 years?

WOW. The crazy brazen nature of the example they give is absurd in its own right... then you realize that she had to have done something similar to the example given TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE times in order to get to the total value lost by Yale. What? WHAT??

Note to self: do not donate money to Yale med. They literally have absolutely no idea where scrooge mcduck sized vaults of money are going on a routine basis.

 

[Kryptocoin]

I went ahead and purchased a copy of her plea agreement. (As one more item of governmental insanity, it is ridiculous that citizens have to pay to access federal court documents online. They use it to fund court operations. Sock it to the lawyers and litigants, but the public shouldn't have to pay. End or rant.)

A detailed description of what she did with examples is on pages 15 and 16.

Once again, how in the heck can you not miss $40M over 8 years?

When you have a record 42 billion dollars in endowment, 40M seem like a blip.

 

[southerndoc]

WOW. The crazy brazen nature of the example they give is absurd in its own right... then you realize that she had to have done something similar to the example given TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE times in order to get to the total value lost by Yale. What? WHAT??

Note to self: do not donate money to Yale med. They literally have absolutely no idea where scrooge mcduck sized vaults of money are going on a routine basis.

$10,000 purchase each... $40 million total lost over the years. $40 million divided by $10,000 = 279?!?

I must be more sleep deprived than I think.

 

[BoardingDoc]

$10,000 purchase each... $40 million total lost over the years. $40 million divided by $10,000 = 279?!?

I must be more sleep deprived than I think.

In the plea agreement that was linked above, the court provides a specific example where she ordered 100 laptops, split into 17 different orders soas to keep each order total below 10k. She then took possession of all 100 laptops and herself mailed them to a reseller who paid her. This one set of purchases ran up a tab of $144,822.38.

40,504,200.08 / 144,822.38 = 279.68

I found it insane that in one instance she make 17 sub 10k orders for 100 laptops and no one noticed.... and then did it again 278 additional times.

 

[southerndoc]

In the plea agreement that was linked above, the court provides a specific example where she ordered 100 laptops, split into 17 different orders soas to keep each order total below 10k. She then took possession of all 100 laptops and herself mailed them to a reseller who paid her. This one set of purchases ran up a tab of $144,822.38.

40,504,200.08 / 144,822.38 = 279.68

I found it insane that in one instance she make 17 sub 10k orders for 100 laptops and no one noticed.... and then did it again 278 additional times.

That makes sense. I was all confused. About to go to bed for some much, much needed rest. The multiple nights with 3 hours of sleep have caught up with me.

It still seems insane for that much money to go missing without somebody having a hint of problem years earlier. Even a million dollars that is misplaced should trigger alarms no matter how big of an endowment or budget one has. I'm sure this had to come out of the EM department's budget. I don't see the School of Medicine just blindly handing things out without allocating expenditures to the department. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[emergentmd]

I assume there were many people who were aware or took kickbacks. If not, This is just a gross example of mismanagement and lack of accountability which should have resulted in many higher level admins being terminated.

There should be No one capable of making these purchase without many others not knowing. You can not purchase hundreds of computers and no one asking, "Has anyone seen the upgraded computers"?

 

[Vandalia]

There are two other things that are at least as surprising as the amount of the fraud:

• I am not a lawyer but I have sat next to enough lawyers at civic events over the decades to pick up a few things. It is very unusual that there is no requirement that she testify for the government as part of this plea agreement. I remember a plea agreement for someone related to Trump last year and the media jumped on the fact that it was required that he testify truthfully in any future investigation. Then it was explained that this was merely boilerplate in all federal plea agreements. However, there is nothing like that here (she did agree to testify truthfully in any proceeding for Yale to recover its money). In addition to being unusual, as mentioned above, someone else had to know; at the very least whoever she was shipping this stuff to for sale.
• The timing is also very strange. Federal prosecutions take forever. They go slow because they can, and as a result they (almost) never lose. She was employed by Yale up until August 2021. I can't believe Yale or the federal government would leave her in that position once the fraud was known. So we have to assume that this was only very recently - less than a year ago - discovered. That is moving incredibly quickly by federal prosecutors, particularly since everything was backed up due to COVID. Then they don't require her to testify against anyone else.

$40M in fraud. No requirement to testify in any possible future prosecution. Closing a major financial fraud case in a matter of months. I am told those last two things never happen.

If this was a couple of days later I would say it is an April Fool's joke on us.

 

[Taurus]

Here's a pic of her and her loot.

Yale School of Medicine worker bought THOUSANDS of iPads over 10 years

 

[sylvanthus]

And im struggling to get my cme money for the year.

 

[Franzd'Epinay]

And im struggling to get my cme money for the year.

Maybe it's related. Let's hope the books don't show that "you" have been given $9,999.99 for CME every quarter for the past 10 years.

 

[GassYous]

Meanwhile I have pharmacy on my ass about using exparel and ofirmev

 

[emergentmd]

For No one else, including the CPA/auditor, to not ever see millions in purchases and question why we are buying so many computers is impossible even in the most inefficient systems.

There were alot of people making money from this and she is the fall person told to keep quiet.

 

[BoardingDoc]

For No one else, including the CPA/auditor, to not ever see millions in purchases and question why we are buying so many computers is impossible even in the most inefficient systems.

There were alot of people making money from this and she is the fall person told to keep quiet.

I feel that you grossly underestimate the stupidity of the average bureaucrat.

I'm not saying you're wrong about there being a conspiracy here, I simply have not read anything about this case that would suggest there being one.

 

[emergentmd]

I feel that you grossly underestimate the stupidity of the average bureaucrat.

I'm not saying you're wrong about there being a conspiracy here, I simply have not read anything about this case that would suggest there being one.

The reason is this person was the scape goat. Only in the bizzaro world would someone be able to order 40 Mil worth of computers/equipment for 8 years and no one catches wind of this.

I can see a year or two of complete negligence but 8 years?

 

[Vandalia]

The reason is this person was the scape goat. Only in the bizzaro world would someone be able to order 40 Mil worth of computers/equipment for 8 years and no one catches wind of this.

I can see a year or two of complete negligence but 8 years?

To add even more to it, according to the reporting Yale was alerted to the fraud several years ago, investigated, and found nothing wrong.

The other part is that every US Attorney in the country has political aspirations. Uncovering significant fraud at a major institution like Yale is literally what they dream about. So much good publicity.

There are so many aspects of this that are so bizarre, that if the story was in the news today, I would have to think it was an "April Fools."

 

[Tenk]

This crap exists yet I still get anxious when I hit submit for my TurboTax. 🤷‍♂️

 

[twospadz]

She definitely paid off a few people in that department for those 8 years. However, it seems she is the big fall person.

 

[twospadz]

How much time do y'all think she will get? 5 years? 10 Years?

 

[Vandalia]

How much time do y'all think she will get? 5 years? 10 Years?

The offense level they agreed upon in the plea agreement is 30. However, the judge is not bound by that. I would be shocked if the judge went below 97 months, but since everything else in this case has been shocking, then that will probably happen.

A total offense level 30, assuming a Criminal History Category I, would result in a range of 97 to 121 months of imprisonment (sentencing table) and a fine range of $30,000 to $300,000, U.S.S.G. § 5E1 .2(c)(3). The defendant is also subject to a supervised release term of 1 to 3 years. U.S.S.G. § 5D1 .2.

 

[Robotic Wis-Hipple]

That’s a lot of tablets. Just one of those instances would supply every doc, resident, and scribe a new surface tablet. Annually.

It’s insane a report isn’t run on number of particular devices ordered, i.e. new computers purchased for entire Dept, expect 3-5yrs before additional tablets required. Or that a report isn’t run on the number of purchase orders placed by an individual with purchasing power each year.

In particular, it’s shocking to me that every hospital/system just adds administrators and clipboard stupidvisors en masse year after year yet it was nobody’s job to run a checks & balances report on each department? What are all these layers of admin actually doing other than skimming off the backs of the talent?

 

[WilcoWorld]

What are all these layers of admin actually doing other than skimming off the backs of the talent?

Also making it harder to provide patient care?

 

[Robotic Wis-Hipple]

Also making it harder to provide patient care?

And increasing cost to the system….. the suits are a cancer. We all know it.

 

[HemeOncHopeful19]

What are all these layers of admin actually doing other than skimming off the backs of the talent?

They’re lobbying Congress.

 

[turkeyjerky]

What are all these layers of admin actually doing other than skimming off the backs of the talent?

Conspiring to get us prosecuted?

 

[RuralEDDoc]

I’ll wager that this sort of fraud is quite common just on a lesser scale. At some point in the early 2010s multiple medical schools made big deals of giving “free” iPads to students for educational purposes. Who knows who funded what and if most students actually pain through fees outside of tuition. Flow of funds in academic and medical settings can be quite opaque. This idiot was caught because of her multiple custom painted $100k+ vehicles on Instagram.