NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — An ex-Yale Medical School employee was sentenced to nine years in prison for defrauding the school out of more than $40 million through her job at the university, authorities said.
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The 43-year-old woman, Jamie Petrone, was hired by Yale Med School around 2008 to work as the Director of Finance and Administration for the Department of Emergency Medicine.
Petrone’s role allowed her to make and authorize certain purchases for departmental needs if the purchases were below $10,000, officials said.
From as early as 2013, Petrone had a scheme where she would order, or have others working for her order, millions of dollars of electronic equipment, including computers and iPads, from Yale vendors using Yale Med funds. The stolen equipment would then be shipped to an out-of-state business for money, court documents show.
Petrone would lie on internal forms and interactions about what the electronics were for, claiming they were for medical studies, for example. She strategically broke the purchases into orders below $10,000 so they wouldn’t need additional approval.
The business Petrone resold the equipment to paid her by wiring funds into her company account, Maziv Entertainment LLC.
In total, Petrone caused a loss of about $40,504,200 to Yale, using the proceeds to cash out on personal expenses like expensive cars, real estate and travel. Petrone also failed to pay taxes on the money she received from selling the stolen equipment. She also filed false federal tax returns from 2013 to 2016, falsely claiming as business expenses the costs of the stolen equipment. She didn’t file any federal tax returns from 2017 to 2020 which in total caused a loss of $6,416,618 to the U.S. Treasury.
Petrone was arrested on September 3, 2021. On March 28, 2022, she pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return. She agreed to give up $560,421.14 that was seized from the Maziv Entertainment LLC bank account as part of the investigation as well as a 2014 Mercedes-Benz G550, a 2017 Land Rover/Range Rover Sv Autobiography, a 2015 Cadillac Escalade Premium, a 2020 Mercedes Benz Model E450A, a 2016 Cadillac Escalade (4 Door Sport), and a 2018 Dodge Charger.
Three Connecticut properties Petrone owns or co-owns were also liquidated to help satisfy the restitution obligation. A property in Georgia owned by Petrone is also subject to seizure and liquidation.
Along with a nine year prison sentence, Petrone was given three years of post-release supervision.
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