Former Yale Official Admits to $40 Million Fraud Scheme

By protecting the quantity of particular person buy orders below $10,000, investigators mentioned, Ms. Petrone was in a position to keep away from an extra layer of evaluate required by the college. In 2021, she organized for the college to purchase 8,000 iPads and Floor Professional tablets, in accordance with a prison grievance.

Ms. Petrone held numerous administrative positions on the Division of Emergency Drugs since 2008 and labored in different capacities on the college and Yale New Haven Hospital beginning in 1999, in accordance with courtroom paperwork.

Whereas she was below legislation enforcement surveillance final August, Ms. Petrone drove 94 bins that had been loaded into the again of her Vary Rover and contained new Floor Professional tablets from her workplace to a FedEx facility in Orange, Conn., close to New Haven, investigators mentioned.

In asserting the plea settlement, federal prosecutors mentioned that Ms. Petrone had additionally evaded $6 million federal revenue taxes on her income from the scheme, together with submitting a number of years of false tax returns.

On these tax returns, they mentioned, she falsely claimed the prices of the stolen tools as enterprise bills. For 3 years, Ms. Petrone did not file any tax returns, in accordance with prosecutors, who mentioned that she had additionally agreed to pay restitution to the federal authorities for the unpaid taxes.

“Miss Petrone has accepted accountability for her actions, and he or she appears to be like in direction of sentencing,” Frank J. Riccio II, a lawyer for Ms. Petrone, mentioned in an e-mail on Friday.

Ms. Petrone pleaded responsible to at least one rely of wire fraud and one rely of submitting a false tax return. She faces a most sentence of 23 years in jail. Primarily based on federal sentencing tips, her sentence is extra prone to be within the vary of eight to 10 years, with a tremendous of $30,000 to $300,000, in accordance with the plea settlement.

Ms. Petrone was launched on $1 million bond till her sentencing, which is scheduled for June.