Accused Florida Voucher Thief in Jail
TALLAHASSEE -- Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher's ongoing investigation of the state's school voucher programs led to its first criminal charge Thursday, with the arrest of the operator of an Ocala correspondence school accused of stealing more than $268,000 in voucher money.
James K. Isenhour, 56, was charged with one count of grand theft, a felony punishable by as much as 30 years in prison. He was in the Marion County Jail late Thursday, with bail set at $10,000.
Isenhour, through his Silver Archer Foundation, collected a $268,125 contribution from Pulte Homes Inc., but instead of using the money to provide students with vouchers, Isenhour paid it to his companies, himself and others, including his lawyer, said Mark Simpson, the assistant state attorney in Marion County who is handling the case.
"Not one dime of the money was used for scholarships at all," Simpson said.
Under the corporate tax voucher law, every penny collected by voucher-granting groups must be used for educational vouchers. With the $268,125 that officials said Isenhour collected, he was required to give out 76 vouchers at the legal maximum of $3,500 each, and even more if the school's tuition was less than that.
Isenhour solicited the money from the Michigan-based Pulte Homes, which owns DiVosta Homes of Palm Beach Gardens, by telling the company he intended to use its money to pay for vouchers, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed with Marion County Circuit Judge David Eddy Thursday morning.
The voucher program works by allowing corporations to take a dollar-for-dollar tax credit against donations to a scholarship funding organization, which is then supposed to dole out vouchers worth as much as $3,500 each. The check must be made out to a parent of an eligible child but is supposed to be sent directly to the private school and later endorsed by the parent.
"Isenhour made a willful misrepresentation to Colette Zukoff, tax director, Pulte Homes Inc., that he had 100 kids waiting for scholarships to be paid from Pulte Homes' corporate tax credit contribution," according to the affidavit filed by Richard Speer and Steven Horn, two of Gallagher's investigators.
When investigators originally pressed Isenhour on how many vouchers he had given out, he said he had distributed five, Simpson said. But even that number was inaccurate. Isenhour provided no students with vouchers, Simpson said.
Instead, the money went to Cambridge Academy, Isenhour's correspondence school; SeaCoast Enterprises, another of Isenhour's companies; Isenhour personally; and others, Simpson said. Isenhour used $12,800 of the money to pay his bankruptcy lawyer, Simpson said.
Others not implicated
The alleged theft occurred between March and August, according to a release from Gallagher's Department of Financial Services.
Officials at Pulte Homes and Robert Altman, Isenhour's Palatka lawyer, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Simpson said there was no indication that either Pulte or Altman knew Isenhour had stolen the money.
Education Commissioner Jim Horne Thursday took credit for the investigation.
"DOE acted swiftly in referring this matter to the appropriate authorities," spokeswoman Frances Marine said.
However, Gallagher had started a criminal investigation weeks before Horne referred the matter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Gallagher has said his investigation began after The Palm Beach Post reported in August that Isenhour might have received as much as $400,000 in donations intended for vouchers, even though he had declared personal bankruptcy in 2000 and his for-profit correspondence school had sought bankruptcy protection in March.
The Post reported that court records showed Isenhour had persuaded a federal bankruptcy court judge to let him pay himself $1,000 a week and his daughter, $650 a week, using the cash he had collected using the corporate voucher program.
"Mr. Isenhour should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for denying parents the opportunity to pursue a better education for their children," Gallagher said Thursday.
Other probes continue
Gallagher's investigators also are continuing four other probes into schools and groups involved with the state's three voucher programs:
• FloridaChild, the state's largest corporate voucher granting group which announced this month it was getting out of the voucher business.
• Castle Oak Academy, a Boynton Beach home-school consultant with 23 voucher students.
• Heritage Schools of Opa-locka, which has 44 voucher students.
• Faith Academy of Bartow, which has 56 voucher students.
And Gallagher is investigating the state's computer-based "virtual school" program, for which the Department of Education illegally allowed children to enroll in kindergarten and first grade even if they had not attended public school the previous year, which the law requires.
Department of Education whistle-blower Robert Metty said the reason Isenhour was able to get away with what he is accused of doing is that lawmakers wrote the corporate tax voucher law so loosely that "there was no process in place to let us monitor this."
Besides Gallagher's investigations, many months of articles in The Post uncovering abuses in the voucher programs led Horne and Gov. Jeb Bush to announce in September the creation of a database to keep track of voucher schools and students.
Reform plans predicted
Horne also is conducting an internal investigation into Capital City Preparatory School in Tallahassee, which had 82 voucher students before its Jacksonville Beach-based voucher group pulled its vouchers and accused its director of forging parents' signatures on checks.
In addition, Senate President Jim King said this week that one of his top two goals for this year's legislative session is passing a series of reforms of the voucher programs. Lawmakers never anticipated how easily "charlatans" would abuse the system, he said.
King, a Jacksonville Republican, wants to impose a number of financial and academic safeguards, including mandatory testing of voucher students.
But House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, a longtime supporter of vouchers, said changes in the law should be made cautiously, or else private schools might not participate.
The corporate voucher program, which had nearly 16,000 students last year but this year has about 11,000, was created in 2001, a few months after Tampa venture capitalist John Kirtley gave the Republican Party a $100,000 check to help push the issue.
Kirtley, through a spokeswoman, released a statement Thursday on behalf of the association that represents the four voucher groups for which he collects tax-credited donations.
"The arrest illustrates the state's strong commitment to hold accountable any individual whose intention is to misuse donations meant to provide educational choices for Florida's low-income students," Denise Lasher said.
s_v_date@pbpost.com
— S. V. Date
Voucher group head accused of looting $268,000
Palm Beach Post
2004-01-30
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/friday/news_0491bd9a454c620d006f.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
