Isn’t it great to be free of people watching over your shoulder when you are in charge of the money?
That’s what the employee of North Carolina’s largest voucher school thought. He just pleaded guilty to embezzling $400,000 over an eight-year period from the school.
Lindsay Wagner writes:
Heath Vandevender is a coach, teacher and the employee tasked with managing the payroll operations of the state’s largest private school recipient of state-funded vouchers—Trinity Christian School located in Fayetteville.
In a Wake County courthouse this week, Vandevender pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $400,000 in employee state tax withholdings over an eight year period while serving in his capacity at Trinity Christian.
Vandevender entered into a plea deal struck with the state, whereby he will serve 3 months in prison, pay a $45,000 fine and be placed under supervised probation for five years. He will also serve 100 hours of community service. Vandevender has already repaid the nearly $400,000 owed to the state.
The basketball coach and journalism teacher will still be able to work at Trinity Christian, which is run by his father, Dennis. As a part of the plea deal, Vandevender will likely serve his incarceration at night while teaching, coaching, and—presumably—continuing to manage payroll operations during the day as part of a work release option.
Vandevender was charged earlier this year with embezzling $388,422 between Jan. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2015, from Truth Outreach Center Inc., located in Fayetteville. Trinity Christian School, which has received more than $1 million in publicly-funded school vouchers since 2014, operates under the Truth Outreach Center’s umbrella.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And we’re supposed to believe his father didn’t know about this? So the school can remain open?
Well, heck, as long as some families are still choosing that school, it’s all good, amiright?
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Vandevender didn’t embezzle from the school. He embezzled from the state on behalf of the school. He stopped paying withholding taxes for 8 years and used the money for the school’s operational expenses.
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Still embezzling tax money, since he didn’t send the tax money withheld from employees to the state. Robbing Peter’s tax money to pay Paul, which also takes tax money.
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Yes it is an anomaly that this dedicated employee ploughed the unpaid tax dollars back into school operations– sets him apart from other charter-founder-families in the news who’ve used tax $ for private pool, fancy car& vacation. However, the point is: this charter school was not viable financially. It took more $ to run it than could be accrued from tuition & fund-raising. Theft of public taxes kept it running. Just one more of countless examples illustrating the folly of school choice/ privatization ed policy.
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It Just keeps going on with these charter school scams, He got a slap on the wrist, 3 months jail, total BS. And a POS christian school. When will people finally see that these christians are the biggest scammers and hypocrites in the world?
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I hope there is a master record somewhere of these scams, in addition to what may be retrievable from your blog.
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Unbelievable!! The irony of that he worked at a “Christian” school, under the umbrella of the TRUTH Outreach Center would be laughable, except we are talking about public taxpayer funds, every dollar of which could have been put to good use in the PUBLIC schools of Fayetteville! To top it all off–he’s still allowed to work, and manage financial operations? Anyone working for a public school found to have embezzled money would have been fired! This. Is. Wrong.
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Debbcody, anyone working for a public school who embezzled $400,000 would have been fired and imprisoned.
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$45k fine for stealing $400k and he can keep his job and the three months in jail will be nights only so he can work days at the same corporate charter school his daddy owns where he stole the money.
Gee, let’s open a charter school and steal the public’s money.
Three months of night prison for $355k. Does that mean he only spends 8-hours a night in prison? That means he’s getting paid about $40 an hour for the time he spends behind bars for that three months. $40 an hour for sleeping in a cell. That is way above minimum wage.
I want that job!
I want that job!
I want that job!
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I made a mistake. It’s not $40 an hour. It is almost $450 an hour.
He gets to work off a $355k debt (that he stole) by sleeping in prison and he keeps his day job at daddy’s corporate charter school and gets paid for that too.
Wow!
I REALLY want that night job!
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To be fair, the article says he already returned the $400,000 he stole, so he didn’t make a profit off the deal at least.
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Thanks. I must have missed that. I wonder where the $400k came from – daddy?
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And teachers who cheated on standardized test saw jail time.
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Yes, and it was for racketeering, a much more serious charge!
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years of jail time
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The charter Holy Trinity: Waste, Fraud and Embezzlement
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Do the endless “lies” fall under fraud?
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Unless I am mistaken, this is not a charter school, it’s a private voucher school, Trinity Christian School. In the end, charter or voucher, it’s a rip off of the funding and resources from the real public schools. Charters and vouchers are parasites and leeches that erode and weaken the viability of the public schools system.
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Says it’s a voucher school in the headline and several times in the article. In fact, it’s the “state’s largest voucher school”.
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Some of the other commenters referred to it as a charter school, I was just trying to politely correct the record.
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Maybe it is time for taxpayers to sue the states for failure to hold charters accountable. States are supposed to be managing charters. Without oversight and independent audits, taxpayers are left holding the bag for all the waste and fraud. This is a failure on the part of the state to discharge its duty. They have to stop turning over public funds with no strings attached.
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Sorry, it’s a “voucher” school, but charters and vouchers are both parasites to public schools. When they steal money, it adds insult to injury, and the public schools continue to operate at diminished capacity.
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It’s hard to keep who is committing what fraud straight these days.
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There was a blog or site that was keeping a database of all the reported frauds by corporate charter schools and the list was long. I haven’t visited that site for some time.
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Agree, retired teacher! Where are the taxpayer lawsuits?!
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Embezzling $400,000 in public money intended for the education of children? How un-Christian, but we can at least seek comfort in the knowledge that Mr. Vandevender is likely rehearsing an uplifting personal redemption story in front of a mirror at this very moment.
Wow, for so-called education reformers, “cutting red tape” and “eliminating bureaucratic waste” also translates in practice to not really having to worry about those pesky criminal larceny statutes. The fundamental message is that the Overclass is so intent on school privatization that it will mostly ignore criminal wrongdoing, while occasionally meting out nod-and-a-wink “punishment” as a form of perception management.
This education reform racket is one sweet, sweet deal, and you’d have to be a chump not to take advantage of it. What a loser I am for having been a public school teacher for two decades!
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“Mr. Vandevender is likely rehearsing an uplifting personal redemption story in front of a mirror at this very moment.”
Written by someone in the PR firm his father pays to make them look good no matter how rotten they are. For instance, Bill Gates had an entire PR industry burnishing his false public image.
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In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Klepto . . . .
Where was the “Christ” in this “Christian” school?
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Tangential- “Bradley Foundation Bankrolls Art Pope’s Extreme Agenda in N.C.” (Center for Media and Democracy)
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Good grief! Vandevender has no shame. This is NOT UNbelievable. Sharks are better then Vandevender. Hope his family is real proud of him and visit him a lot. They should bring “NO THANK YOU” letters from the public school parents, teachers, and students. Sad.
We definitely are living TYRANNY BY CORPORATIONS. Charter schools are really just CORPORATIONS.
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Dear Ms. Ravitch,
Possibly one of your contacts would be able to do this research. I think it would be instructive if we were to see how many school officials have engaged in illegal activities in the last 2-3 years, broken out by public school/charter school.
I cannot remember when so many school officials have had run ins with the law.
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