A former California public school district executive was sentenced to more than five years in prison Thursday after officials discovered that he embezzled over $16.7 million from the district over the years, storing stacks of cash in a small refrigerator.
Jorge Armando Contreras, 53, who previously served as the executive director of fiscal services at the Magnolia School District, a public school district that serves Anaheim and Stanton, was sentenced Thursday in Santa Ana court.
He was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $16,694,942 in restitution, according to a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
In March, he pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement, theft, and intentional misapplication of funds from an entity receiving government funds.
Prosecutors claimed Contreras was hired in 2006 and oversaw the district’s fiscal operations, where 81% of students from preschool to sixth grade are designated as socioeconomically challenged.
Instead of spending the money entrusted to him to benefit the schools, he spent it on a lavish lifestyle, including Louis Vuitton fashionable bags, a fancy automobile, and a mansion.
In his capacity, he had access to school district and student body bank accounts, and “caused checks from these accounts to be deposited into his personal bank account,” according to the announcement.
In his method, he wrote tiny dollar checks addressed to “M S D” with the letters spaced out. After getting others’ paper signatures, he would fill in the spaces to spell fictional names, increase the amounts of the checks, and deposit them into his bank account using ATMs. To conceal the theft, he distributed bank reconciliation packets to others in the school system with fabricated bank statements and data.
Prosecutors claim he took a total of $16,694,942 from the district.
He was placed on administrative leave in August 2023. The district then brought a case in Orange County Superior Court.
Officials said law enforcement seized approximately $7.7 million in personal and real property linked to his fraud, including a Yorba Linda home, a 2021 BMW automobile, 57 luxury designer bags, the majority of which were Louis Vuitton, pieces of jewelry, designer clothes and shoes, and eight bottles of Clase Azul Ultra luxury tequila.
The prosecutor’s office revealed photos showing a little fridge loaded with stacks of cash, as well as an array of Louis Vuitton purses stuffed with wads of money.
NBC News has contacted Contreras’ attorney for comment.
The FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Department of Education all conducted investigations into the case.