Educator found guilty of embezzling from SC charter school

A federal jury on Thursday found the director of a Lee County charter school guilty of two counts of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds that should have gone to buy lunches and supplies for students.

The fraud lasted from 2007 to 2013, when the school was operated for years in Bishopville and then in Sumter by Benita Dinkins-Robinson, 40, prosecutors told the jury in a three-week trial. She was convicted by the eight-woman, four-man jury after three hours of deliberation that began Wednesday evening.

Although the school was called the Mary L. Dinkins Academy of Higher Learning, the only thing high about the school was the amount of federal money Dinkins-Robinson surreptitiously transferred from school coffers to four shell companies she controlled, assistant U.S. Attorney Winston Holliday stressed to the jury in closing arguments.

Federal prosecutors did not identify a specific amount of federal funds that Dinkins-Robinson had converted to her own use, but Holliday presented figures showing it was likely hundreds of thousands of dollars and possibly more than $1 million.

“She got rich off the school,” Holliday told the jury in closing arguments Wednesday. He also presented evidence she had employed her brother and two sons at the school and had a business relationship with one of her board members whereby she used federal funds to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of annuities for herself.

After the verdicts, Dinkins-Robinson said her faith was comforting her amd quoted the Bible. “All is well, God is still in control. We fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

The verdicts climaxed a trial that began before U.S. Judge Terry Wooten three weeks ago. Wooten did not hold trial for several days due to weather and scheduling conflicts.

Throughout the trial, Dinkins-Robinson asserted her innocence and took the witness stand for about six hours Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. She testified she had legitimately earned the hundreds of thousands of dollars the FBI found in her bank accounts and that she used to purchase annuities

Holliday grilled her about 10 missing boxes of invoices that covered the school's operation over a five-year period. FBI agent Julie Bitzel, the government's lead investigator, testified during the trial she had tried for months to get the records but neither Dinkins-Robinson nor her school board ever made them available.

"If she (Dinkins-Robinson) felt like these invoices were legitimate, she should have brought them in," Holliday said.

The money that Dinkins-Robinson stole came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture children's nutrition programs and U.S. Department of Education funds, evidence showed.

Federal lunch money "was spent on trips, eating out with friends and family - everything but food for children, Holliday told the jury.

One set of victims was taxpayers, who trust their public officials to spend money in ways that are beneficial to the community, Holliday said.

But Dinkins-Robinson's school children were the real victims, he said.

These were children in Bishopville, “an impoverished-bad luck community. ... kids who didn’t have the time to be set back by people stealing money from their school,” Holliday said.

During the trial, the defense put up some 20 witnesses. The prosecution put on 13, some who testified children would often go hungry at school because there was no food. In those cases, children had to wait until pizza was brought to the school.

The more low-income children the school had, the more federal funds it received. Testimony indicated some 140-150 students were enrolled much of the time.

The Dinkins school was a member of the S.C. public Charter School District - a growing group of 31 public schools with 17,000 students and 500 teachers across South Carolina in more than a dozen counties.

Dinkins-Robinson was indicted in May 2014, two years after the State Charter School District board voted to stop all funding to the school because of reports of financial irregularities.

This story was originally published March 12, 2015 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Educator found guilty of embezzling from SC charter school."