A former Department of Education sub-contractor “lied repeatedly” to steal more than $1.7 million while working on a massive project to provide Internet access to the city’s schools, a prosecutor told jurors today.
Willard “Ross” Lanham secretly hired consultants — including his brother — for unrelated work reviewing the school system’s phone bills, prosecutor Brian Jacobs said in Manhattan federal court.
But while Lanham paid the consultants between $35 and $75 an hour, he billed the DoE from $175 to $225 an hour and pocketed the difference, Jacobs said during his opening statement.
“Lanham saw an opportunity to make a lot of money by telling lies and taking advantage of people who trusted him,” Jacobs told the jury.
Public defender Ian McDonald countered that Lanham — who made more than $200,000 a year working on “Project Connect” — was a “hard-working entrepreneur” who did nothing wrong by “marking up” the cost of the consultants.
McDonald said the situation was no different than the various wholesalers and suppliers who tack on extra costs to deliver food from farmers to “your local grocery store.”
“That’s how our economy works,” McDonald said.
There was no mention of the lavish lifestyle — including a $600,000 fleet of luxury vehicles — that Lanham financed with his alleged fraud, nor of his estranged “cougar” wife, Laura, who dumped him and posed nearly nude online to attract younger men.