I thought this was particularly interesting: State sues over defrauding of city schools.
A quick snippet from the story:
The district's former chief financial officer, Henry Marini, is named in the lawsuit, along with the Perrys, Spier, Filtered Internet Solutions Inc., Compression Technologies Inc., Partner Relationship Management Inc., Performance Brands Online Inc. and Perimeter Security Consulting Inc.
Spitzer's office said Andrew and Karen Perry and Peter Spier, with Marini's help, got 13 consulting contracts with the city using seven different company names. Twelve were for amounts between $24,000 and $24,900, which the state alleges was designed to evade review. The district requires school board approval of contracts for $25,000 or more.
What is interesting to me is, about 3 years ago, a former business associate mentioned that we should try and get a contract with the city school district. That, essentially, Henry Marini did these "deals" and that there was tons of money even though they (the Rochester City School District) were always claiming to be broke. Needless to say, it was not something we pursued - particularly given the amount of bad press that could occur given the school district's public perception. Not to mention, this kind of thing didn't pass the "smell test," and now apparently was obviously worse than fishy.
It's sad to see that there are so many people out there who claim to care about the community, but in reality don't care at ALL about stealing from the community because "everybody's doin' it!"
