ABSTRACT
Do people learn from the past? Tommy Ingram may have learned the wrong lesson. In 1979 and 1980, he saw an older generation of athletic coaches and administrators caught up in a maintenance kickback scandal. According to Moffeit and Autrey (2002a), 16 district employees and businessmen were indicted in 1980 in connection with kickback schemes and other abuses. One public official went to prison, and a district purchasing agent committed suicide. The buddy system that encouraged self-dealing provided fertile ground for fraud, and a breakdown in the district’s financial controls allowed abuses to flourish. Two maintenance people set up a company that would buy materials from a legitimate vendor at a discount, and then sell those same materials to the FWISD at inflated prices. Employees worked on FWISD time on jobs that had no purpose. Maintenance workers moonlighted for administrators and board members. One of the most common practices was breaking single purchases into several invoices so that the costs would fall under the amount at which standard bidding is required.
