ATLANTA,None — Two former executives of the Georgia Tech-based nonprofit Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering (SECME) have been indicted in a racketeering scheme.
Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker's office made the presentment before a Fulton County grand jury against Yvonne Freeman, the former program director of SECME, and Brandon Davis, a former SECME executive.
According to the indictment, Freeman and Davis used a system of loose internal accounting, which they had helped to create, to steal SECME funds from January 2001 through September 2005. They used SECME credit cards and withdrew cash, wrote checks and made wire transfers using SECME accounts for personal use, the indictment said.
Freeman and Davis are accused of stealing $758,494 in property through theft by taking and wire fraud.
The indictment also charged Sandi Sheffey, who was not a salaried employee of SECME, with six counts of felony theft by taking for obtaining SECME monies between April 2003 and September 2005.
Conviction of racketeering carries a five-to-20 year prison sentence as well as a fine of up to three times the pecuniary gain realized by the accused. Conviction of felony theft by taking carries a one-to-10 year prison sentence.
Though SECME is not part of the university system, records showed it has had a close affiliation with Georgia Tech and oversight from the school's college of engineering.
In 2008, Georgia Tech turned to the state to reimburse more than $250,000 of the allegedly stolen money.
At the time, state officials told Channel 2's Richard Belcher it was the second time Tech wanted the taxpayers to cover losses that were not the taxpayers' responsibility. Both times, the state rejected the claim.
Georgia Tech said the private agency was using Tech employees when an audit revealed that a lot of money was missing.