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Ronnie Sims (photo from WDIV video)
Ex-Detroit Public Schools officials continued to get fairly light sentences for their role in a major kickback scandal that cost the district nearly $3 million in stolen funds.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts sentenced past principal Ronnie Sims to 15 months in prison for receiving nearly $59,000 in kickbacks from Norman Shy, who got 12 principals and an administrator to sign fake invoices for $2.7 million in undelivered equipment, Tresa Baldas of the Detroit Free Press reports. Sims had led Fleming Elementary and Brenda Scott Middle School.
Shy paid about $900,000 in kickbacks in a scheme that ran from 2009-14.
Sims told the judge that he was bullied into taking part in the kickbacks, the Freep reports.
He's the third to be sentenced in the scandal. On Tuesday, Judge Roberts sentenced Shy, the mastermind of the scheme, to five years in prison, and administrator Clara Flowers to three years. Flowers received $324,785 in kickbacks, more than any other school official. Both sentences were below what the government had asked.
In all the sentences, the defendants have been ordered to pay restitution for the stole funds.
On Wednesday, Sims stated in court, according to the Freep:
"I was kind of pressured. There were a couple of people pressuring principals" to use Shy. And if you didn't use Shy, "they just acted like you don't exist," Sims said, claiming he would be left out of conversations or forced to sit alone at a table on certain occasions.
"So you took kickbacks so that people would talk to you and so that you could sit at someone's table?" Roberts asked.
Sims conceded he realized what he was doing was wrong.
