Follows former business manager Celestia Ziemkowski’s guilty pleas to felonies in 2020 involving embezzling VACTE money for personal use
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced Friday, September 24, that the state’s grand jury had handed down a six-count indictment charging former Valley Academy for Career and Technical Education (VACTE) superintendent Lois Lamer as being involved in fraudulent schemes, artifices and violating the duties of a custodian of public monies. The alleged crimes occurred while Lamer was employed by VACTE. Lamer was VACTE’s CTE program director starting in July 2002 and became superintendent in July 2011 until she resigned in March 2016. VACTE is a major provider of Career and Technical Education training on the east side of Yavapai County consisting of about 75,000 residents.
An indictment was also handed down charging Dennis Fiscus, the Arizona Department of Education’s former CTE programs of study director, with similar offenses. He was allegedly involved in a scheme with Lamer to divert federal grant money into personal accounts.
Ms. Lois Lamer in happier times (Facebook photo)
Lamer is scheduled for a hearing on the charges on October 15 at the Prescott courthouse.
The Arizona Department of Education terminated Fiscus in November 2015 after “discovering discrepancies” with Perkins monies. Fiscus was fired because he awarded excessive amounts of Perkins money to VACTE in 2011. VACTE should have received $120,000 in Perkins grant money; however, Fiscus awarded VACTE $467,039. As a result of the Auditor General’s investigation, in February 2018 the U.S. Department of Education requested re-payments totaling $426,451 from the state’s education department. They were repaid in full by January 2020.
The Auditor General’s Office investigation had also revealed that from June 2015 through March 2016, VACTE business manager, Celestia Ziemkowski, “may have embezzled VACTE monies when she issued five unauthorized warrants totaling $19,851 for her personal purposes and used a VACTE credit card to make personal purchases totaling $10,746.” Because of the investigation, Ziemkowski resigned in May 2016 from her position at VACTE.
Ziemkowski was indicted in June 2019 with misuse of VACTE public money, fraudulent schemes, forgery, and computer tampering for unsanctioned charges in 2015 and 2016 totaling more than $30,000. After pleading guilty to two counts of the indictment in 2020, she received probation.
