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Mee-ouch!
A city Department of Education consultant took $3 million out of the mouths of schoolchildren to help fund a “lavish lifestyle” on Long Island replete with a sprawling mansion and a self-described “cougar” wife, investigators charged yesterday.
Willard “Ross” Lanham surrendered in Manhattan federal court yesterday to face mail-fraud and theft charges in a six-year overbilling scheme that exposed a stunning lack of oversight on a massive program to provide Internet access to city classrooms.
Authorities say he stole $3.6 million of the kids’ computer funds to shower luxuries on his much-younger wife.
It apparently wasn’t enough.
Laura Lanham — who founded the Web site The Housewives Next Door — filed for divorce last year and has been trolling the Internet for trysts with younger guys, although she still apparently lives with her hubby in their East Northport spread.
“Laura and her friends are into some weird stuff,” a neighbor said. “The thing is they have kids. It’s just kind of strange, the whole situation. You always wondered how Ross was paying for everything. Now we know.”
Willard Lanham, 57, was allowed to make nearly all the decisions on “Project Connect” without any interference after the Department of Education named him the “single point of contact” between the city and at least one of its contractors, Verizon, a $220,000 a year job.
Verizon and another contractor, IBM, allegedly reaped about $1.2 million through Lanham’s overbilling scheme, which jacked up the charges to the DOE for the five consultants he hired, including his brother, Robert.
“Project Connect was a billion-dollar undertaking, yet no one exercised any oversight of Lanham,” wrote Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon. “It is difficult to understand how the DOE could allow so much power to reside in a consultant, even an honest one, which Lanham was not.”
According to a federal criminal complaint, Lanham spent some of the stolen money on a $600,000 fleet of “new luxury automobiles.”
Lanham also developed “three high-end houses” — one of which is their home — in a subdivision he dubbed “Lanham Estates” and where he named the street “Laura Lane” after his 42-year-old wife.
The house is across the street from Commack HS, where a sign boasts “Home of the Cougars.”
She apparently took the signage to heart. “I am still living in the house, still married but living what most people perceive to be a single life,” she’s quoted as saying on cougarlifediaries.com.
“I am looking for fun and excitement with no ties.”
After being released yesterday on $250,000 bond, Willard Lanham was shown a photo of his wife posing nearly naked on the cougarlifediaries site.
He grimaced but refused to comment.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott acknowledged that the DOE “should have been more vigilant.”
The city spent $360 million wiring schools with the Internet as part of Project Connect between 1997 and 2007, the DOE said. Additional federal funds were also used. The city didn’t have a figure for how much they’ve spent on upgrades since.
Verizon said it “has cooperated extensively” with the investigation. IBM did not return requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Hannah Rappleye