A man duped a Brooklyn high school into going on a spending spree after he donated a $1.5 million check that turned out to be fake.
Teachers and staffers at Brooklyn’s High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology in East Williamsburg thought they hit the Lottery when Juan Diaz Romero came calling with a $1.5 million check in November.
Romero (picture in a mugshot from 1998) presented himself as a millionaire Wall Street wizard with money to spare. After bragging about his financial success he wrote out a check for $1,500,000, saying there was more where that came from.
The school forwarded the check on to the Department of Education (DOE), which issued funds back to the school.
Unfortunately, the DOE didn’t deposit the check until January 2016 — when the check bounced.
Thinking their benefactor was probably moving cash around, the DOE contacted Romero to ask him to re-up another check. But the 2nd check bounced, too.
In the meantime, the faculty went on a shopping spree spending vast amounts of cash on computer equipment, tickets to Broadway shows(!) and a trip to the Grand Canyon(!), according to the NY Post.
Still, no one suspected anything out of the ordinary until Romero showed up at the school last month, this time with a generous donation of $10 million, which he said should be earmarked for the school’s 2017 budget.
That’s when DOE officials contacted the bunco squad over at the NYPD.
Officials won’t say how much of the bogus $1.5 million was spent — or how the funds will be returned to the DOE.
School officials are worried about next year’s school budget, since 2016’s budget is pretty much gone.
“I feel like the school was robbed,” said Estafano Santana.
