ST. LOUIS – A St. Peters, Missouri, man who served as Webster University’s IT director appeared in federal court on Thursday and was sentenced for defrauding both his employer and an IT equipment seller in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said Ronald Simpson, 54, devised his plan in late November 2018.
Simpson admitted in court that he received university approval to purchase hundreds of pieces of IT equipment with the understanding that it would be installed on campus. Instead, Simpson sold that equipment to a third party, defrauding the university of a little over a million dollars.
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Simpson reached out to the university’s IT supplier and falsely claimed the equipment they shipped him was defective. Simpson received replacement equipment and sold that as well. The IT supplier lost approximately $780,000 based on Simpson’s lies…