A federal prosecutor revealed UNC’s inclusion in a settlement on Tuesday regarding alleged false claims for grant funding.
A release from the U.S. Justice Department announced the Chapel Hill university, as well as East Carolina University and the North Carolina Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, agreed to a settlement with the federal government over discrepancies in claims for funding from AmeriCorps. The agency, which says its mission is “to strengthen communities through community service,” often provides grant funding for salaries, school programs and student education awards.
“Based on its investigation,” said Tuesday’s release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, “the United States contends that UNC-CH, ECU, and NCCV caused false certifications for service hours worked and related violations of grant requirements in connection with grant funds paid from 2014 through 2019. The United States contends that these actions constituted a misuse of grant funds and harmed AmeriCorps programs.”
The Justice Department said it specifically accuses UNC and ECU as having “widespread violations of grant requirements” done with “reckless disregard in causing false claims.” The release said both universities regularly certified false hours for AmeriCorps Members, sometimes taking “mere seconds” to approve hours falsely claimed to be worked on holidays or weekends or excessive hours at the end of school years. Another example contends the schools certified 16-hour work days, which are beyond available service site hours for weekdays.
UNC will pay $375,000 as determined in the settlement, which is the most out of the trio involved. The Justice Department reports East Carolina University will pay $140,000, while the North Carolina Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service will pay $327,500.
University spokesperson Pace Sagester shared with Chapelboro that UNC reviewed more than 900,000 pages of documents in response to requests and subpoenas in the investigation, with campus officials actively assisting federal investigators. Sagester also said UNC has since put in place a new timesheet approval and verification policies for current AmeriCorps members.
“UNC-Chapel Hill worked diligently to fairly resolve this matter and strengthen our stewardship of AmeriCorps funding that has benefitted thousands of students, college advisers, adult literacy learners, literacy tutors and educators across North Carolina,” said Sagester. “We take our obligation to strictly follow the regulations that come with those taxpayer funds very seriously. We cooperated fully with this investigation and implemented numerous safeguards to ensure future compliance.”
“These AmeriCorps programs were meant to support at-risk and low-income youth academically,” said AmeriCorps Inspector General Deborah Jeffrey in Tuesday’s release. “Instead, the universities and agency involved here ran them in a way that allowed participants to falsify their timesheets, and robbed North Carolina communities of the assistance they were supposed to receive. We and our partners at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina will vigorously pursue any such frauds.”
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