NYU Director Pleads ‘Not Guilty’: Indicted on Embezzling Millions from Women, Minority Businesses

Cindy Tappe, 57, a former finance director at New York University (NYU), has been indicted this week on charges of money laundering, grand larceny, offering a false instrument for filing, and falsifying business records.

According to Gothamist, Tappe is accused of diverting millions in funds for minority- and women-owned businesses for personal gain and has pleaded not guilty.

During her six-year appointment between 2012 and 2018, Tappe has allegedly used false invoices to embezzle more than $3 million in state education grants into her own shell companies, using some of the money for her Connecticut home renovations and an $80,000 swimming pool, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Monday.

In her role, Tappe managed a $23 million grant from the state’s Education Department to the university’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, where she worked. The funds were intended to hire subcontractors to help English language learners and address the under-representation of students in special education.

In doing so, the conditions of the grants required that a certain portion of the award be allocated for women- and minority-owned businesses, NY Times reported.

In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the scheme “negatively impacted our city’s minority- and women-owned business enterprises by denying them the chance to fairly compete for and secure the funding,” per the news outlet.

Using companies Rice Fowler & Associates Ltd, Wei Wei & Co L.L.P., and PC Liu, prosecutors said that Tappe spent more than $660,000 on personal expenses and other portions of the money to reimburse employees of the private university.

When NYU discovered Tappe’s actions in 2018, the school reported the case of theft to the state comptroller, which launched its own investigation before flagging it to the district attorney’s office.

“We are deeply disappointed that an employee abused the trust we placed in her in this way, and we are pleased to have been able to assist in stopping this misdirection of taxpayer money,” NYU spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement.