Dive Brief:

• Cheon Park, who ran a special ed pre-K program in New York City, was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in March to mail fraud.  
• Through his company, Bilingual SEIT, Park stole $2.1 million, that was allegedly doled out to himself and relatives.    
• Bilingual SEIT, which received state and city funds, had five centers where it served 3- to 5-year-olds with special needs throughout NYC.  

Dive Insight:

Unfortunately, the stories like Park's have become far too common. Last month, we wrote about a Queens school repair vendor who allegedly over-billed the city for more than $1 million, and that was preceded by an Illinois father-son duo who collected over $33 million in federal education grants for a substandard and misrepresented tutoring service that they operated. While one may get a certain feeling of satisfaction when reading about the exposing and punishment of these education profiteers, ultimately the goal should be focusing less on catching them after the fact and more on deterring their activities to begin with. Checks and balances must be in place to discourage and prevent education embezzlement.