By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A former White House education adviser under President Barack Obama was sentenced on Thursday to one year and one day in prison after pleading guilty to charges he stole more than $200,000 from a charter school network he founded.
Seth Andrew, 44, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Cronan in Manhattan.
Andrew had previously paid $218,005 in restitution to the network Democracy Prep Public Schools, which teaches mostly lower-income people of color, and forfeited another $22,537.
Lawyers for Andrew did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Prosecutors alleged that in 2019, Andrew looted escrow accounts for Democracy Prep’s schools so he and his wife could qualify for a lower-rate mortgage on a $2.37 million apartment they bought on Manhattan’s Central Park West.
Andrew had left the network two years earlier. His wife was not accused of wrongdoing.
“Seth Andrew was sentenced today for stealing from those who once trusted him,” after the network had declined his offer to return as its leader, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan said in a statement.
Andrew joined the U.S. Department of Education in 2013, and later became a senior adviser in the White House’s Office of Educational Technology.
Prosecutors had sought a 1-3/4-year prison term.
Andrew had sought home confinement plus three years of probation. He said greed had not motivated him, and the transferred money ended up with another non-profit helping the same children he thought Democracy Prep should prioritize.
Founded in 2005, Democracy Prep said it operates 21 schools with more than 6,000 students in New York, Louisiana, Nevada and Texas.
“We are grateful this sad chapter is finally closed,” it said in a statement.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Richard Pullin)
