School technology consultants ripped off the city right under the noses of asleep-at-the-switch Department of Education supervisors, a new report has found.
Monica Rhodas-Campagna — among the IBM trio who misbehaved while working on a project to install surveillance cameras in public schools — took a trip to Canada and worked for her private design firm while clocked in at the DOE, a probe by Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon found.
And husband-and-wife team Barry Jay and Lynn Harold took home video cameras and other surveillance equipment by the cart-full — then put the items up for sale on eBay, investigators said.
They told probers the equipment was going to be junked anyway.
But their misdeeds were only magnified by the sloppy supervision of the DOE, according to Condon.
Project manager Paul Ringel, who signed off on the Canada trip, said he didn’t realize he was supposed to supervise the consultants’ time sheets — telling probers, “I never questioned anyone’s time card.”
Chief tech officer Stephen Vigilante admitted not reporting allegations to investigators because he tried to look into them himself.
But when asked how, he said, “I can’t remember how I looked into it,” the report said.
Ringel was the only one of five DOE workers recommended by Condon for possible termination who was disciplined, according to a DOE spokeswoman.