Detroit Public Schools Supplier Pleads Guilty To Fraud

DETROIT (WWJ) - A director who was supposed to supply Detroit Public Schools with educational services has pleaded guilty to defrauding the school district.

Theodore Pride III, the former program director of supplemental educational services provider Priority: My Education, issued the plea Tuesday to federal program fraud.

Priority: My Education had been approved by the State of Michigan to provide supplemental educational services to eligible students in the state.

According to court records, between 2011 and 2012, Pride obtained at least $684, 644 from DPS through a scheme in which he submitted fraudulent invoices for payment to DPS for tutorial services that were never rendered to DPS students.

The "plea agreement highlights the continuing efforts by the FBI and our partners to hold accountable individuals who place their own interests ahead of the public good," David Gelios, head of the FBI in Detroit, said in a statement. "While we are pleased with the outcome, once again Detroit Public School students were deprived of the services that public funding was meant to support."

Pride, 37, faces up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 when he's sentenced on April 11.