Source: David M. Halbfinger, New York Times, July 18, 2012

The owners of a fast-growing Queens company that teaches toddlers with disabilities took nearly $1.5 million from a public preschool program, paying themselves inflated salaries and rent, and billing the government for their cars, children’s furniture and even cosmetics, a state audit has found. The company’s owners, who were once married, also violated tax regulations, gave the wife’s sister a no-show job and wrongly billed the state for utility expenses incurred by a private day care business they operate on the side, investigators said….State records show that billings by the company, Bilingual SEIT and Preschool, based in Flushing, exploded over the last decade, to more than $15 million in the 2010-11 school year, from $808,935 in 2002-3. Most of its revenue comes from employing “special education itinerant teachers,” or SEITs, who work one-on-one with children in their homes or in nursery schools.