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Norman Shy, the Franklin businessman at the center of a kickback scandal involving 12 Detroit principals has arranged for a guilty plea with the feds, the Detroit Free Press reports, citing court documents filed Thursday.
No details are given about what Shy gets in return for his plea when sentenced May 12, Tresa Baldas and John Wisely of the Freep write.
On March 29, the feds charged 12 current and former Detroit Public Schools principals, along with an assistant superintendent, with taking kickbacks from Shy in a scheme that ran from 2002 to January 2015 and involved millions of dollars.
Shy, 74, of Franklin, owner of Allstate Sales, a DPS vendor of school supplies, conspired with school officials to submit fraudulent invoices to DPS so that Shy could get paid for goods never delivered, authorities alleged.
The goods included auditorium chairs, supplemental teaching materials and raised line paper.
In return, Shy paid bribes and kickbacks, using a portion of the payments he received from DPS from the fraudulent invoices, authorities said in a news release at the time.
Authorities charged that the principals accepted bribes and kickbacks in various forms, including prepaid gift cards, cash and checks payable directly to them or to third parties.
In all, Shy allegedly paid to the 13 school officials about $908,518 in kickbacks and bribes. In exchange, Shy and his company received approximately $2.7 million from the school system for the fraudulent invoices.