A former Boston public school principal has admitted to wire fraud over tens of thousands of dollars of school money and using it to pay for all-inclusive trips to Barbados for her and her friends, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Naia Wilson, 60, has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of wire fraud and pay the $38,806 back, the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Wilson was head of school of the New Mission school, a pilot school in the Boston Public Schools system, from 2006 to 2019, prosecutors said. The Mattapan resident is accused of requesting checks from the authority that manages school funds, then fraudulently putting the money into her own bank account or, in the case of the two Barbados trips, to the accounts of friends, between September 2016 and May 2019.
The trips took place in 2016 and 2018 and involved all-inclusive hotel stays and airfare, prosecutors said.
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"We will not allow this type of gross abuse of authority and responsibility fly under the radar. Individuals who take advantage of public trust to line their pockets will be investigated and held accountable," acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement.
Prosecutors said Boston Public Schools cooperated in the investigation, and Superintendent Mary Skipper, whose tenure leading BPS began last year, said in a statement Tuesday that the agency takes being "a steward of public funds very seriously" and is committed to putting students first when spending its resources.
"Since these incidents, the Boston Public Schools has implemented additional internal protocols and procedures to prevent a situation like this from occurring again," Skipper said.
New Mission High School is a college prep school of about 260 students from grades 7 to 12 in Hyde Park.
