Prosecutors told a federal judge Tuesday they expect to file new charges in a case against a former Chicago Public Schools elementary school principal accused of orchestrating an overtime-kickback scheme.
The development came in a telephone status hearing for Sarah Jackson Abedelal, who was charged in July in a 10-count wire fraud indictment alleging a seven-year scheme to have employees file for overtime they didn’t work and kick back at least $200,000 to her.
Abedelal was the only one charged at the time, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Kinney said in court Tuesday that the government expects to file a superseding indictment “adding a number of counts and a number of defendants” within the next month.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis set a status hearing for Nov. 16.
Abedelal was the principal of Brennemann Elementary School in the Buena Park neighborhood for about 12 years until 2019, when the CPS inspector general began investigating the alleged scheme.
According to the 18-page indictment, Abedelal and several administrative underlings at Brennemann, including the assistant principal, a clerk and a business manager, ran the scheme over a seven-year period beginning in 2012. None of the other administrators was identified by name in the indictment.
Abedelal told employees that she would sign off on overtime that they never worked, and that the extra money they received would be used to pay legitimate expenses incurred by the school, when she was actually using it for her own purposes, according to the charges.
Abedelal had the employees withdraw the unearned overtime in cash on the day their paychecks were deposited. She’d then meet with them individually in her office or in classrooms to collect the cash, the indictment alleged.
To conceal the scheme, Abedelal allegedly used the cash to buy money orders at a currency exchange, which she then used to pay personal expenses, including the mortgage on her home, the indictment stated.
Brennemann, in the 4200 block of North Clarendon Avenue, serves just over 400 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students. The school’s motto is, “Where high standards and excellence are the expectations,” according to its website.
More charges coming in overtime kickback case involving CPS principal, prosecutors say - Chicago Tribune
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