Ex-school officials accused of embezzling $3M from federal lunch program

By Emily Saul
New York Post
August 17, 2017

http://nypost.com/2017/08/17/ex-school-officials-accused-of-embezzling-3m-from-federal-lunch-program/

These Yeshiva school “suppers” were definitely not kosher.

Two former leaders of a prestigious, Brooklyn-based chain of Yeshivas are facing up to 20 years prison for claiming they were serving kids federally subsidized suppers five nights a week — and instead pocketing the $3 million in subsidies, the feds said Thursday.

Elozer Porges and Joel Lowy, formerly executive director and assistant director of Central United Talmudic Academy, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and fraud at their arraignment in Brooklyn federal court.

The yeshiva bigwigs had submitted phony documents claiming that between 2014 and 2016, low-income and at-risk children stayed late and ate supper every weeknight at three of their schools — at 762 Wythe Ave., 25 Franklin St. and 84-88 Sandford St. — the charges allege.

But while many of the schools’ kids ate federally subsidized breakfasts, lunches and snacks, they wouldn’t stay for supper, the feds said.

School is dismissed by 4:45 p.m. and no supper is served, bus drivers at the Wythe Avenue school told The Post Thursday.

“I just know they are fine people,” another employee at the school said of Porges, 43, and Lowy, 29.

“They have families and are normal people,” said the employee, who asked not to use her name.

The pair dramatically inflated the number of meals the schools were serving, authorities said, in order to pocket larger reimbursements from the federal government’s Child and Adult Care Food Program, which is designated for at-risk and vulnerable children.

The pair undermined “a program designed to assist the most vulnerable members of our community,” Acting United States Attorney Bridget Rohde said in a statement.

“As charged, these defendants stole food from children in need by diverting millions of dollars in public funds intended to pay for their dinners,” said Mark Peters, Commissioner of the city Department of Investigation, which assisted in the probe.