Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark announced Tuesday, July 14, that a married Yonkers couple was sentenced for their roles in a fraudulent scheme that netted them and a co-conspirator more than $170,000 in illicit proceeds from the New York City Department of Education (DOE).

 

“The female defendant, a longtime employee with the New York City Department of Education, used her position to falsify purchase orders,” Clark said. “She engaged her husband and a friend in this crime of greed that stole more than $170,000, money that should have been used for the education of our schoolchildren.”

 

Clark said defendant Rusnelly Clase, 42, was sentenced on Tuesday to six months in prison with five years’ post-release supervision and defendant Justin Echevarria, 38, was sentenced the same day to five years’ probation before Bronx Supreme Court Justice Steven Horsntein.

 

She said the pair pleaded guilty to fourth degree corrupting the government on April 9. To date, she said Clase has paid $50,000 in restitution and has been ordered to pay an additional $36,654.88. They said Echevarria was also ordered to pay $47,448.63.

 

According to the investigation, from 2018 through February of 2022, Clase, a community coordinator with Middle School 302 in Longwood for over ten years, used her access to the school’s procurement and accounting systems to register her husband and another co-conspirator as non-contracted vendors with the DOE.

 

Prosecutors said Clase filed a substantial number of fraudulent vendor invoices, along with falsified purchase orders for clothing such as sweatshirts, shorts, t-shirts, and jackets. They said Clase then used unauthorized access to approve the invoices and trigger over $90,000 in fraudulent payments to her husband and $75,000 in fraudulent payments to the other co-conspirator, both of whom “kicked back” some of the illicit proceeds to Clase. They said no items were ever delivered.

 

The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Robert F. Lindston and Zachary Reid of the financial frauds bureau, under the supervision of Eugene Bykov, supervisor of the financial frauds bureau, Pia Freedman, supervisor of the financial frauds bureau, Michelle Milanes, deputy chief of the financial frauds bureau, and Herman Wun, chief of the financial frauds bureau, and under the overall supervision of Denise Kodjo, deputy chief of the investigations division, and Wanda Perez-Maldonado, chief of the investigations division.

Clark thanked Trial Preparation Assistant April Glenn, BXDA Forensic Accountant Julio Santiago, Detective Investigator Randy Scarpinato, Peter Holness, deputy chief of detective investigators, former Senior Detective Investigator Brendan Hammond and former Lt. Vincent Cantarella for their work on the investigation.

 

She also thanked SCI Investigator Daniel Sullivan, SCI Chief Investigator Michael Bisogna, SCI Special Counsel Valerie Batista, DOE General Counsel Elizabeth Vladeck, and the New York City Financial Information Services Agency – Office of Payroll Administration for their work on the case.