A federal judge on March 31 identified the long-suspected president of a Plains Township, Pa., technology firm as the contractor who paid thousands of dollars in hidden kickbacks to a former Luzerne County school administrator facing prison in an ongoing corruption probe, reports the Standard Speaker. Anthony J. Trombetta of Intellacom Inc. paid Jeffrey J. Piazza $16,600 in illegal commissions after Piazza convinced colleagues at the Wilkes-Barre Area Career and Technical Center to purchase overpriced digital whiteboards from the firm, U.S. District Judge James M. Munley said, revealing details of a confidential pre-sentencing report. Munley’s disclosure, minutes before he sentenced Piazza to six months in prison for attempting to hide the bribes on tax returns, eviscerated a wall of secrecy federal prosecutors had built around Trombetta since he was first linked a year ago to an investigation into illicit contracting practices in the Pittston Area School District. No charges have been filed against Trombetta, whose technology and condominium development firms have since been tied to investigations into two other school districts and Luzerne County Community College. In the Piazza case, Trombetta made the payoffs after Piazza, the career and technical center’s technology director, conned school officials into believing Intellacom’s inflated whiteboard prices were fair, Munley said. In reality, the prices had been inflated to include the kickbacks—approximately $2,500 for each of the six $10,000 digital whiteboards installed at the school, according to the report…
- ‘Buyer’s remorse’ dogging Common Core rollout - October 30, 2014
- Calif. law targets social media monitoring of students - October 2, 2014
- Elementary world language instruction - September 25, 2014