An alleged fraudster inside the Los Angeles Unified Faculty District appeared in a downtown court docket on Friday charged with collaborating in an enormous cash laundering rip-off.
Disgraced Hong “Grace” Peng, 53, — who labored as a technical undertaking supervisor for LAUSD — pled not responsible to facilitating an alleged eye-popping $22 million kickback scheme.
The case comes because the scandal-plagued faculty district reels from fraud claims in opposition to Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.
Peng, of Pasadena, was wearing a blue pin-striped jacked, blue collared shirt and together with her darkish hair tied again in a ponytail. She stood earlier than Decide Theresa McGonigle in Dept. 30 after a $500,000 warrant was issued for her to seem.
In the course of the listening to, Deputy District Lawyer Casey Higgins of the Public Integrity Division, revealed there have been 24,000 pages of proof to be turned over to Peng’s protection.
Peng, repped by personal counsel Rayn Gravelly, appeared impassive together with her head barely bowed through the 10 minute listening to and solely mentioned one phrase in court docket – “sure” – when the decide requested if she understood what was occurred through the proceedings.
She was launched on her personal recognizance, and declined to talk to The California Submit.
Peng was required to give up all passports and put on an ankle monitor with GPS monitoring. She is forbidden from leaving the U.S. and would require permission from the court docket to go away California.
She was ordered to attend a neighborhood police station to be booked, photographed and finger-printed.
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A preliminary setting listening to is scheduled for June 10.
Lawyer Higgins informed The Submit after the listening to that the variety of pages of proof will exceed the 24,000 quantity he talked about in court docket.
Peng faces two felony costs — cash laundering and having a monetary curiosity in an official contract— for her alleged function within the scheme. The allegations date again to 2018.
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman known as the racket the most important kickback scheme ever within the nation’s second-largest faculty system.
“This case entails a blatant abuse of public belief — funneling taxpayer {dollars} supposed for college students into private coffers,” Hochman mentioned in an announcement on March 26.
The “multi-year, multi-contract pay-to-play association … siphoned thousands and thousands of {dollars} from our colleges.”
An arrest warrant was issued for Peng on March 19.
Peng’s co-accused, Gautham Sampath of Flower Mound, Texas, was a senior govt at Innive, the corporate that obtained the LAUSD contracts.
Their alleged scheme was uncovered in 2022, after one of many concerned events bragged about it at an expert convention and was overheard by one other LAUSD worker who reported the feedback to district officers, the official grievance.
Sampath is predicted to be arraigned on April 17.
