According to the network’s website, “Seth Andrew founded Democracy Prep in 2005 to ensure that every single student will work hard, go to college, and change the world!” The phrase “Change the world!” is on the again of the yellow baseball cap that Mr. Andrew made a part of his signature look.
The community’s first college opened in Harlem in 2006. It ultimately expanded to 23 colleges, within the Bronx; Camden, N.J.; San Antonio; and Las Vegas. Of the community’s 7,000 college students, practically all are college students of coloration and 85 p.c qualify free of charge lunch, in line with the network’s website.
Under an settlement with the New York State Board of Regents, the constitution community was required to “maintain an ‘escrow account’ that may be accessed only if the school dissolves,” prosecutors mentioned. Mr. Andrew was a signatory to these accounts and had entry to them, they mentioned. The cash within the accounts totaled a bit greater than $218,000.
Propelled by the community’s success, Mr. Andrew landed a job in 2013 within the United States Department of Education and later grew to become a senior adviser within the Office of Educational Technology on the White House underneath President Barack Obama. In the administration, Mr. Andrew helped promote and enhance STEM schooling, a curriculum centered on science, know-how, engineering and arithmetic.
While there, Mr. Andrew was nonetheless paid by the constitution community, in line with prosecutors. In November 2016, he left the administration, and by the next January he had formally severed ties with the constitution community.
Two years later, Mr. Andrew started tapping into these escrow accounts, prosecutors mentioned. On March 28, 2019, Mr. Andrew walked right into a financial institution and closed two escrow accounts and walked out with two checks totaling greater than $142,000, they mentioned.
Later that day Mr. Andrew took a kind of checks to open a brand new account at a special financial institution, prosecutors mentioned. He informed the second financial institution, which prosecutors didn’t determine, that he was a “key executive with control of” the constitution community. Days later, Mr. Andrew used an A.T.M. to deposit the second examine into that account, prosecutors mentioned.
