A former finance official at New York University pleaded guilty to orchestrating a $3.5 million fraud that involved using state education funds to renovate her Westport, Conn., home and install a swimming pool.
Cindy Tappe, the ex-director of finance and administration at NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and Transformation of Schools, routed millions intended for minority- and women-owned businesses to shell companies, prosecutors said.
She used some funds to pay for legitimate expenses and employee reimbursements, but embezzled more than $660,000 to cover her own personal spending.
She used $80,000 on the swimming pool alone, the state comptroller’s office and the Manhattan district attorney found.
“Cindy Tappe shamelessly used her high-ranking position at NYU to steal more than $660,000 in state funds,” state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement. “Her actions cheated [minority and women-owned business enterprises] out of critical funding opportunities and deprived student programs of key resources meant to aid children with special needs and young English language learners.”
Deborah Colson, Tappe’s lawyer, said her client “strongly regrets her misconduct.”
“She accepted responsibility for her wrongdoing in open court,” Colson said, “and will pay the restitution in full prior to sentencing. After that, she looks forward to putting this case behind her.”
Tappe pleaded guilty in Manhattan Criminal Court to one count of second-degree grand larceny and will be sentenced to five years of probation and pay $663,209 in restitution. She must also waive her right to appeal.
After NYU, Tappe was hired as the director of operations at Yale School of Medicine in 2019, according to student newspaper Yale Daily News. Following her indictment, she was put on leave and eventually terminated in early 2023.
NYU said it detected “suspicious activity” by Tappe while she was still an employee. The university’s internal audit office investigated and shared its findings with the state.
“We are deeply disappointed that Ms. Tappe abused the trust we placed in her in this way; she stole from everyone — the taxpayer, the university, the people the Metro Center is supposed to help,” NYU spokesman John Beckman said in a statement. “NYU is pleased to have been able to assist in stopping this misdirection of taxpayer money, and glad that the case has been brought to a close.”
Between 2011 and 2018, the state Education Department awarded $23 million for NYU’s Metro Center to administer two state education programs, the Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network and the Technical Assistance Center on Disproportionality. Both programs require that a percentage of subcontractor work be awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses.
While Tappe led the Metro Center’s finances during six of those years, she engineered things so that three subcontractors would receive the majority of the set-aside. Tappe drafted fraudulent invoices on the companies’ letterheads for work they did not perform, prosecutors said. Instead, they paid themselves between 3% and 6% of the invoices, and funneled the remainder into Tappe’s shell companies, High Galaxy Inc. and PCM Group Inc..
NYU reported the theft to the state Education Department, which referred the allegations to the comptroller’s office for an investigation, then the Manhattan DA’s office for prosecution.
“Her fraudulent actions not only threatened to affect the quality of education for students with disabilities and multilingual students,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, “but denied our city’s minority- and women-owned business enterprises a chance to fairly compete for funding.”
