Convicted charter school CEO: ‘I was blinded by greed’

Kevin M. O'Shea, the former chief executive officer of Philadelphia Academy Charter School, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison this morning for stealing more than $500,000 from the school.

Standing in a courtroom filled with angry parents and other representatives of the Northeast school as well as about 40 relatives and friends, O'Shea apologized, saying, "I was blinded by greed and I abused the trust people placed in me."

The sentenced imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Eduardo C. Robreno was the maximim allowable under federal sentencing guidelines.

In July, O'Shea had admitted collecting kickbacks from contractors, plundering the Northeast charter school's coffers to pay for improvements to his home in the Morrell Park section and pocketing money from its vending machines.

At that time he waived his right to a jury trial and pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud, theft from a federally funded program, and filing a false tax return.

In all, he admitted misusing as much as $1 million from the publicly funded charter between March 2002 and May 2008.

In his plea agreement, O'Shea also admitted submitting invoices to the charter school in April 2008 for a computer company he had retained "to help destroy computer evidence in an effort to obstruct" the federal investigation.

As part of his agreement with the government, O'Shea pledged to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney's Office in an ongoing federal probe of area charter schools.

O'Shea was fired from the school in the spring of 2008 after an Inquirer investigation into parents' allegations of financial wrongdoing there. The federal probe began shortly afterward.

Philadelphia Academy, which opened in 1999, enrolls 1,200 students from kindergarten through 12th grade on its campuses at 11000 Roosevelt Blvd. and 1700 Tomlinson Rd.