Schools Lost $225 Million to Fraud Since 2019. Only $67 Million Has Been Repaid

Somebody stole $225 million meant for classrooms since 2019, and taxpayers have only gotten $67 million of it back.

That's the topline from a joint analysis by Open the Books and the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), which combed through every U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General semiannual report to Congress issued between October 1, 2019, and March 31, 2026. The groups found fraud confirmed across 24 states and Puerto Rico, according to reporting by Jeremy Portnoy for RealClearInvestigations and by Kiera McDonald and Andrew Mark Miller for Fox News Digital.

The two outlets put the case count slightly differently. RealClearInvestigations and ZeroHedge, both citing the same underlying report, say 74 confirmed instances of fraud, averaging over $3 million each. Fox News Digital, which says it obtained the report first, cites "nearly 90 cases." Either way, the pattern is clear. Embezzlement, fake invoices, inflated enrollment numbers, bid-rigging, and kickbacks, all funded by money that was supposed to go to kids.

Where the money went

Indiana lost more than any other state, $44 million, after two now-closed online charter schools allegedly inflated their enrollment numbers to pull in extra state funding. The schools shut down in 2019. Four alleged conspirators weren't charged until 2024, and prosecutors allege the schools' founder funneled the money into companies he owned.

In Puerto Rico, a tutoring company allegedly billed the government for $24 million in services that were never provided, according to Fox News Digital.

In Florida, Broward County Public Schools information officer Anthony Hunter allegedly steered $17 million in school supply contracts to a friend's business, skipping the competitive bidding process required for public contracts. In return, state prosecutors allege, the friend gave Hunter's son a security job and sold Hunter a house for $150,000 under market value. Florida and Illinois each had the most confirmed fraud instances, with 11 apiece.

Chicago Public Schools took in $1 million in federal grants earmarked for Native American students, but the district's application reportedly included more than 1,000 students who were actually of South Asian descent. Chicago Public Schools couldn't verify how many students genuinely qualified for the program and agreed to repay the money.

Smaller districts got hit hardest relative to their size. Janis Bucknor, former head of Community Preparatory Academy in California, admitted to stealing $3 million from the school over five years, roughly a third of the school's entire state and federal funding. She spent $220,600 of it on Disney vacations, online shopping, and private school tuition for her own kids. Bucknor was sentenced to three years of home detention and ordered to repay the money.

A gap in the numbers

Only three of the nation's 20 largest federally funded school districts turned up anywhere in the inspector general's records, according to Fox News Digital's reporting on the SFOF findings. The other 17 were absent. Meanwhile, federal investigations were concentrated on smaller districts, charter schools, and online education programs.

The question is whether that means the biggest districts are cleaner or less scrutinized. The report doesn't answer that, and neither source claims to know. It's a limitation of the inspector general's own casework, not proof of a cover-up, but it's the kind of blind spot that deserves more attention than it's gotten.

SFOF CEO OJ Oleka called the fraud "especially hideous" in a statement to Fox News Digital, arguing that state oversight "has never mattered more." Open the Books CEO John Hart said the losses hit the country "where it hurts most," noting that in at least one case, the per-student fraud loss was enough to cover a full semester at a charter school.

Context that matters

This report lands as Vice President JD Vance leads what Fox News Digital describes as a nationwide "War on Fraud" within the Trump administration, an effort aimed at rooting out improper payments across federal programs. The SFOF report frames itself explicitly as evidence for why that effort, and stronger state-level oversight, is needed. That's the report's own framing, not an independent finding, and it's worth reading with that in mind since SFOF is a group actively pushing for the oversight it's citing fraud numbers to justify.

$225 million confirmed stolen. $67 million recovered, at most, and the reporting doesn't specify how much of that has actually landed back in district accounts versus simply being ordered by a court. That leaves roughly $158 million gone for good, some of it tied up in prosecutions that took years to even get filed, like the Indiana case that sat five years between school closure and charges.

The open question is whether Washington or state auditors do anything differently because of this report, or whether it joins the pile of findings that get cited in press releases and change nothing about how school funding gets audited.