The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
An FBI agent believed corrupt former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett worked to “fraudulently steer” a $40 million contract to one of the country’s biggest educational publishers while she worked for the Detroit schools, according to records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The court documents obtained Monday also show federal law-enforcement authorities suspected two aides who later worked for CPS helped Byrd-Bennett to rig the bidding process in Detroit in favor of Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
The revelations appear in a March 2013 affidavit the FBI filed for a warrant to search Byrd-Bennett’s America Online email account. That’s the same personal account Byrd-Bennett allegedly used to work out the details of a kickback scheme at CPS.
There's more:
But the Sun-Times first reported last week that federal investigators were looking into the massive deal Houghton Mifflin Harcourt won in Detroit in 2009, when Byrd-Bennett was a high-ranking official for the Michigan city’s school district.
And the newly obtained court records shed further light on how authorities believed long ago that they had “probable cause” to suspect corruption in the dealings between Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Byrd-Bennett.
In the sealed affidavit from more than 2-1/2 years ago, FBI Special Agent Joseph Richard Jensen told the judge he thought Byrd-Bennett “worked with and through” longtime aides Sherry Ulery and Tracy Martin and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt executive John Winkler in a fraudulent scheme. In the Detroit deal, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was paid about $40 million in federal stimulus funds.
The greed involved in government education.
