Newpoint Charter Owner Goes to Jail

Marcus May, founder of the Newpoint charter chain was sentenced to twenty years in jail and fined $5 million. During the trial, prosecuting attorney, Russell Edgars, provided evidence that Marcus May’s personal worth increased from $200,000 in 2010 to nearly $9 million in 2015, yet May owned no other business except the charter schools. According to the testimony during the trial, May set up shell companies to launder purchases from legitimate companies and then resold furniture, computers and other supplies to the charter schools at inflated prices. May was convicted of organized fraud and racketeering.

Newpoint operated fifteen charter schools across Florida. Newpoint has a history of problems revealed in 2015 in a story run by nbcmiami. Four of its schools received ‘F’ grades and others had closed.

The lack of state regulation on charter school management makes it impossible for school districts to adequately supervise charter school management practices.

Posted in Charter School Management, Charter Schools, Florida.

2 Comments

  1. I hope you’ll do a deep dive into this.
    1. How did he get caught?
    2. How did he amass $9 billion dollars in wealth? Asked another way:
    a. What was the revenue per student and how many students per year
    b. What was the expenses including per teacher salary per year
    c. Is “a” minus “b” equal to $9 billion dollars divided by 5 years?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.