Seth Andrew Money Laundering Case Resolution | Local news

BRATTLEBORO – A man accused of stealing $ 218,005 from a charter school network he founded has “reached a decision” in his case, according to documents filed with the US District Court in New York.
Details of the resolution of the charges against Seth Andrew are not available at this time.
Lawyers and prosecutors for Andrew in the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the resolution of the case.
“As alleged, Seth Andrew abused his position as founder of a charter school network to steal the same schools he helped create,” said Audrey Strauss, acting director of the attorney’s Manhattan office. American when Andrew was billed in April. “Andrew is not only accused of stealing money from schools, but also of using the stolen funds to save on a mortgage for a multi-million dollar apartment in Manhattan.”
Andrew arrived in Windham County in 2020 with the grand vision to open a new kind of hybrid school, named Degrees of Freedom, dependent on federal grant money on the Marlboro College campus, which merged with Emerson. College in Boston and sold the campus to Democracy Builders Fund 1 for $ 225,000 in cash and assumption of the $ 1.5 million debt the college owed to the Marlboro Music Festival.
The school was set to open, albeit delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, when Andrew was arrested and charged with one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of one count of misrepresenting a bank.
After his arrest, plans to open the school were put on hold and ultimately canceled. In July, Marlboro Music, which has hosted a summer music festival on campus for 70 years, purchased the entire campus and its buildings from Democracy Builders for $ 2,740,000.
In 2005, Andrew helped establish Democracy Prep, a New York-based charter school network. Andrew left Democracy Prep, which opened schools in New Jersey, Texas, and Nevada, in 2013 to take up a post as an advisor in the US Department of Education. In 2016, he left the White House and soon after broke his relationship with Democracy Prep.
But according to information presented by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Andrew had access to the school’s three escrow accounts, which could only be accessed if the school was dissolved.
In 2019, Andrew dissolved the escrow accounts, taking checks issued by the bank to open a new business account in Democracy Prep’s name, according to court documents.
Earlier this year, Andrew and his family moved from their Marlboro home to Rhode Island.
Andrew’s lawyers and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have until Jan. 27 to file details of the resolution with the court.