Maricopa County Community College District: False AmeriCorps Service Hours in Project Ayuda

Maricopa County Community College District agreed to pay $4.08 million to resolve allegations of false AmeriCorps service hours in Project Ayuda. The government alleged that the district improperly certified students for education awards. The Inspector General described clinical work already required by their academic programs being counted as AmeriCorps service. For someone who knows the service records, the central question is concrete: did the hours qualify as the additional service the award was meant to support?

The district operates community colleges in Maricopa County, Arizona, and is based in Phoenix. The Justice Department announced the settlement on December 1, 2014. An employee of the district brought the whistleblower case under the False Claims Act. The alleged false grant performance certifications affected both the students’ education awards and money the district received to administer the project.

Clinical Requirements Counted as AmeriCorps Service

The Inspector General reported that Maricopa counted clinical services students already had to perform for their academic programs toward AmeriCorps credit. Project Ayuda proposed to engage students in national service, with education awards dependent on completing the required hours.

The Corporation for National and Community Service administered AmeriCorps and other national-service programs at the time. Maricopa obtained the project funding and certified completion of the students’ hours. According to the Justice Department, those improper certifications caused the corporation to issue education awards.

The award went out for work already required by the academic program.

We see a community shortchanged in that bargain: the promised work was the reason for the benefit. The government’s allegation concerned the district’s assurance that the service was complete. For someone working inside a service program, the question is what stood behind that assurance: additional national service or clinical work already required for their studies.

What the Inspector General Found at Project Ayuda

The agency Inspector General’s semiannual report to Congress places Project Ayuda at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix. Its account describes a hotline tip followed by an investigation of the program. The Inspector General reported that the executive director allowed students to count independently required clinical services toward AmeriCorps credit between 2007 and 2010.

The report says only a handful of the more than one thousand enrolled students supplied qualifying service to the community. Its concern was the additional public benefit the federal program was supposed to buy. A clinical placement can involve actual work and still leave unanswered whether the student supplied the separate service represented in the education-award certification.

That distinction changes what an insider’s knowledge can explain. The academic requirement, the participant’s assigned work and the certification of service belong together. A record showing attendance at a clinical placement answers where the student worked. The program’s representation concerned why those same hours qualified for a federally funded benefit.

The Inspector General described false timesheets and false certifications as the means by which the program obtained education-award and administration funds. Those are connected but distinct parts of the alleged mechanism: the recorded hours supported an individual award, while the community college also received money to administer the program. The college’s settlement resolved the allegations; the investigation’s account remains attributed to the Inspector General.

Education Awards and Money to Run the Project

The government also alleged that Maricopa improperly received grants to administer Project Ayuda. The students’ education awards and the district’s administration funding were different benefits within the same project, and both figured in the settlement allegations.

This civilian grant fraud case reached beyond the benefit given to a student. The institution’s own funding to run the program was also at issue. Someone who knows the grant accounts may see that side of the arrangement, while a person supervising service may know whether the hours certified reflect the work done.

An Employee Brought the Whistleblower Case

A Maricopa employee filed the False Claims Act lawsuit that produced the allegations resolved by the settlement and was awarded a share of the recovery.

The corporation’s general counsel credited its internal process with uncovering the district’s mismanagement and said it worked with the Justice Department. The same announcement said the settled allegations arose from the employee’s lawsuit. We would give the employee’s role at least as much attention as the agency’s account of its own processes.

For an employee who knows a service program, the relevant knowledge may sit between the participant records and the certification sent outside the institution. We work with insiders to understand what the reported hours represented, what service actually occurred and who understood any difference.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay a whistleblower reward of 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

The Inspector General’s report also says the corporation strongly discouraged it from pursuing the inquiry. That account sits beside the general counsel’s statement in the settlement announcement crediting the agency’s internal process. They are different institutional accounts of how the problem came to light. The report says the former employee filed the civil whistleblower action while the investigation was underway.

The Justice Department announced that the employee would receive $775,827 from the settlement. That was the case-specific award it reported, separate from the general recovery-share range above.

What Other Grant Cases Show

Other grant cases show how a payment can depend on who qualified for a program or what work a time record represents.

DeKalb County and the Participants Who Qualified

DeKalb County, Georgia, agreed to pay $750,000 in 2019 to resolve allegations involving workforce training grants administered through WorkSource DeKalb. The government alleged that Department of Labor on-the-job training grants subsidized already-hired, ineligible county workers, including firefighters.

The DeKalb allegations concerned whether the people receiving the funded training qualified. The Project Ayuda allegations concerned whether the work counted toward an award supplied qualifying service beyond students’ academic requirements.

Scripps and the Hours Already on the Form

A whistleblower complaint against The Scripps Research Institute alleged that effort reports came with total hours already filled in, raising a similar question about the work behind reported time.

You Know Whether the Service Happened

If you know that reported AmeriCorps hours do not match the service performed, talk with our whistleblower experts about the certifications and awards. We build your strongest AmeriCorps whistleblower case with you around the work, the funding and the decisions inside the program, and bring in federal grant fraud whistleblower lawyers for that specific case. You have a partner from the first conversation about the service records through the pursuit of a recovery.