Defendants Submitted Fraudulent Reimbursement Claims for School Meals That Were Never
Served
Elozer Porges and Joel Lowy
plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud relating to their participation in a
multi-million dollar fraud scheme. Porges and Lowy committed this fraud while serving in the
administrative offices of Central United Talmudic Academy (“Central UTA”), a school system
located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Porges served as Central UTA’s Executive Director, and
Lowy served as Porges’s assistant. The pleas were entered before United States District Judge
Nicholas G. Garaufis.
Richard P. Donoghue, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New
York, William F. Sweeney, Jr., Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation,
New York Field Office (FBI), Mark Peters, Commissioner, New York City Department of
Investigation, and Bethanne M. Dinkins, Special Agent-in-Charge, United States Department of
Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, announced the guilty pleas.
According to the indictment, court filings and facts presented during the guilty
plea, from between approximately 2013 and 2015, Porges and Lowy submitted documents to the
New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) specifically falsely claiming that its school
children had received meals which, in fact, had never been served. The defendants fraudulently
inflated the number of meals served at various Central UTA schools in order to obtain larger
reimbursement payments from the federal government’s Child and Adult Care Food Program
(CACFP), a program funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and
administered by the NYSDOH that is designed to assist schools and other institutions in
providing meals to, among others, at-risk children. In total, Porges and Lowy, fraudulently
obtained more than $3 million in reimbursement payments to CUTA.
At their guilty plea proceedings, Porges and Lowy admitted to submitting the
inflated meal counts on behalf of Central UTA. As part of their plea agreements, Porges and
Lowy are required to reimburse $3,256,338.68 to the USDA in restitution. Lowy is also
required to pay restitution in the amount of $98,407.21 for food stamp and child care benefits he
improperly obtained from New York City agencies.
When sentenced, Porges and Lowy each face a statutory maximum of 20 years’
imprisonment.
The Defendants:
ELOZER PORGES
Age: 43
Brooklyn, NY
JOEL LOWY
Age: 29
Brooklyn, NY
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