Source: Geoff Decker, Gotham Schools, August 17, 2012

Two men used shell companies and forged signatures to charge the Department of Education for sign language services that students didn’t need, an investigation found. The fraud ran for more than two school years and cost the city at least $1.5 million. The brazen scheme involved claiming payment for services to students who were not enrolled in city schools and, in some cases, offered as proof that services had been provided the forged signatures of people who were retired or even deceased. In one instance, the city paid more than $100,000 over an eight-month period for a student who had left the school system a decade earlier. In another, the city handed out $187,200 in payments that were authorized by someone who had died “several years ago.”…

…Investigators opened the case in February after a department official questioned the authenticity of billing documents that had been submitted by a sign language company called Bilingual Words in Motion. Eventually, investigators found that a total of five companies, all owned by either Ruiz or Cruz, were swindling the department of payments for sign language services….