Bloomberg Should Be Brought Up On Racketeering Charges

Juan Gonzalez shows how the DOE tech consultant stole $3.6 million from the city and how he was aided by DOE vendors IBM and Verizon:

Prosecutors say former Department of Education consultant Ross Lanham bilked more than $3.6 million from taxpayers. Lanham was the man in charge of a federally funded project to wire our public schools for Internet service - an effort that has already cost a whopping $1 billion.

Prosecutors claim Lanham directed subcontractors he supervised to hire the people supplied by his own company - among them his brother - then grossly inflated the billings of those people.

He pocketed the difference for himself.

They say he approved payments for no-show jobs, arranged kickbacks from contractors, and then hid all of this from Education officials by using layers of other phantom companies.

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Take Lanham's brother, Robert, for example. His main job was working from home reviewing electronic files of school phone bills, according to a report released yesterday by Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon.

For this Robert Lanham was paid a very healthy rate of $40 per hour.

Willard Lanham's company then charged a Verizon subcontractor $175 an hour for the brother's labor. The subcontractor, in turn, billed Verizon $192.50 for the same guy.

Verizon then marked up the final price to the DOE to $225 an hour.

Made mobsters and streetcorner hoods display more ethics than these clowns.

Gonzalez points out the connection to the CityTime scandal that had six people being arrested after they stole more than $85 million from the city:

Just as with CityTime - the huge computerized payroll project from which four consultants are accused of stealing more than $85 million - the alleged mastermind of the scheme was the very person the city had put in charge.

Just as with CityTime, city officials who were supposed to supervise Lanham were nowhere to be found. They allowed him to approve spending increases and claimed no knowledge of a scheme that went on for years.

And just like CityTime, big-name national firms involved in the project never alerted authorities to the apparently shady dealings. Instead, those companies - this time it was Verizon and IBM - like Lanham profited from excessive markups for the same consultants, then helped disguise their payments.

He wonders how it is nobody from Verizon or IBM got charged in this case:

No official from Verizon or IBM was accused of any wrongdoing. You have to wonder why.

It's pretty apparent that some executives from those companies knew much of what was going on.

"Verizon employees were unaware of any wrongdoing in connection with the project," company spokesman John Bonomo said.

"We have told DOE we are prepared to return any inappropriate profits," he added.

And finally he points out how much Bloomberg is going to spend on outside tech consultants next year (after already spending over $1 billion on tech upgrades) and calls it organized criminal activity:

Amazingly, Bloomberg's school budget for next year already includes an additional $500 million for Internet wiring. Meanwhile, teachers are being laid off and instructional budgets are being cut.

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How many more of these cases will it take before someone realizes the Bloomberg administration has unleashed a whole new form of racketeering inside city agencies through its uncontrolled rush to computerize every aspect of government?

Indeed.

Even more importantly to me, how many more criminal cases involving outside tech consultants will it take before somebody cuts off Bloomberg's ability to unilaterally decide to spend $550 million next year on technology contracts while laying off 6,166 teachers in a move that will save $300 million?

Seriously - how many?

And when will Bloomberg himself be called to account for these crimes?

He's big on accountability for others, but when it comes to these crimes, there seems to be no accountability for the Bloomberg cronies doing the stealing or the Bloomberg administration officials who were supposed to be watching them - or for Bloomberg himself.