Jowhar Soultanali, son Kabir Kassam ran businesses near Chicago.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: A father and son duo near Chicago have been indicted on charges of orchestrating an elaborate scheme, in which they defrauded around 200 US school districts out of millions of dollars.
Jowhar Soultanali (58) and Kabir Kassam (34) own and operate Brilliance Academy Inc. and Babbage Net School Inc. Soultanali is the Director of Operations for both companies, while Kassam is the president. According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, both companies were contracted with various school districts to provide “supplemental educational services” (SES) by tutoring children on-site at the involved schools.
However, according to the complaint, the two companies did very rudimentary tutoring, and sometimes didn’t even tutor at all. Between July 2008 and February 2012, the two acted duplicitously about “the nature and quality of the tutoring services the companies provided, instead providing substandard supplemental educational materials to students, falsely inflating invoices the companies submitted to school districts for purported tutoring services, and creating and distributing false student progress and improvement reports.”
Through their contracts, however, they were able to obtain $33 million in payments from these school districts, all of which was actually taxpayer money. What’s more, in order to help secure contracts and keep up business for their companies, Soultanali and Kassam bribed school officials in Texas and New Mexico with things like lavish dinners and trips to “gentlemen’s clubs.”
Soultanali and Kassam allegedly scammed $8 million to $13.6 million for themselves by overbilling, according to the indictment. They used this money lavishly, including buying five houses, a fleet of luxury cars and diamond jewelry.
Additionally the men falsified forms and record, inflated invoices and attendance records, and lied about when and how much they were teaching at various schools. When asked about why they were overbilling these school districts, Soultanali allegedly lied and said it was a clerical error, while Kassam apparently went so far as to “onfigure a computer program to ensure that students’ post-test scores were always higher than their purported pre-test scores,” making their tutoring programs seem so good that schools would have no choice but to extend contracts.
The bribery charges mean that four other cohorts have also been arrested: Arturo Martinez (52), an educational administrator with the New Mexico Public Education Department; Cedric Petersen (61), the SES coordinator and assistant principal at Fox Tech High School in San Antonio; Armando Rodriguez (54), the SES coordinator at Miller High School in Corpus Christi; and Brian Harris (33), the SES coordinator at Sam Houston High School in San Antonio.
Each of those four men has been charged with one count of bribing a federal program. Soultanali and Babbage were each charged with five counts of mail fraud, along with three counts of bribing a federal program; Kassam and Brilliance were each charged with five counts of mail fraud and two counts of federal program bribery. Each bribery count could potentially mean a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while each count of mail fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine or “an alternate fine totaling twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater.”
Neither Soultanali and Kassam have spoken publically about the charges, and both have yet to enter a plea.