A Marlboro resident who owned a computer training center has been sentenced to 24 months in prison for stealing $2.8 million from a program designed to help veterans find employment, Acting U.S. Attorney William E. Fitzpatrick announced.
Elizabeth Honig, 52, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan to an information charging her with one count of theft of government funds. Sheridan imposed the sentence on Oct. 23 in Trenton federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court: Honig owns Computer Insight Learning Center (CILC), a computer training school based in Eatontown.
She helped 182 veterans enroll to receive federal funding under a program – funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Labor – designed to help older, unemployed veterans receive training and find employment in high-demand occupations.
The vast majority of these veterans were either not eligible or not actually attending the training, according to the documents.
Honig’s program was approved by the VA to provide education and training to military veterans, including veterans who received tuition assistance under the Veteran’s Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP), which offered up to 12 months of benefits for older, unemployed veterans between the ages of 35 and 60. This program provided training assistance to unemployed veterans for programs designed to lead to a high-demand occupation.
Honig admitted she logged on to the applications system more than 100 times and certified she was the actual veteran who was applying for benefits. She supplied false information about employment status to qualify to attend her school and receive funding from the VA.
Honig then certified to the VA that the veterans enrolled in her Business Software Applications Program – approved by the VA as a 14-week course costing approximately $4,000 – were attending for up to one year.
Honig also certified that the veterans were attending full-time, in-class, knowing that 62 of those veterans lived out of the state. CILC is not eligible to be approved to provide online education.
Honig allowed veterans to attend less than the required hours, to stop attending prior to completion, or, in many cases, never attend at all. Honig failed to report the non-attendance to VA, which is required by law after 30 days of non-attendance, as long as the veterans continued to pay her a monthly fee.
This caused the VA to continue payments to veterans who were not entitled to the funds. Honig’s monthly fee of approximately $750 also resulted in overpayments by veterans far in excess of the VA approved $4,000 course tuition.
In addition to the prison term, Sheridan sentenced Honig to three years of supervised release. Under terms of the plea agreement, Honig consented to a forfeiture judgment of $1,274,154 and agreed to pay restitution of $2,831,455.
