SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2010
KLMNO
Demonstrators want Md. principal dismissed Apology not accepted
the principal, Floyd Starnes. The school system investigated
from administrator accused of harassment
by Michael Birnbaum
A Silver Spring principal, who has been accused of sexual ha- rassment by some of his staff, sent a letter to the school community apologizing for language he used in school.
But it was not enough to satisfy
a group of high school students and parents who picketed Kemp Mill Elementary School on Friday during a back-to-school open house, demanding the ouster of
accusations against Starnes this summer after teachers com- plained that he had called them “baby” or “sweetie” and that he touched or pinched at least one of them. In the letter to Kemp Mill par- ents last week, Starnes apologized for the “terms of endearment” and said he would no longer ad- dress teachers in that manner. He denied other allegations against him, and the school system does not plan to remove him from his job.
One of the teachers who ac-
cused Starnes of misconduct, Daniel J. Picca, was fired in late May after allegations that he inap-
Loudoun man gets 12-year sentence in bank loan fraud case
bank fraud from B1
icies had cash values of as much as $15million. At times, court records show, he would create phony e-mails from non-existent insurance agents, as well as a fake Web site, to “verify” his policies. In a sentencing memorandum
written by his attorneys, Bernard S. Grimm and Katherine Yin- gling, El-Atari said a loan officer at United Bank showed him how to obtain fraudulent insurance documentation, and the two “be- gan working together to falsify life insurance documents.” The officer, Sissaye Gezachew, 32, an assistant vice president at United Bank, pleaded guilty in June and faces up to 30 years when he is sentenced Sept. 3. Through winter 2009, El-Atari obtained loans or lines of credit between $4 million and $12mil- lion, sometimes using one loan to repay another when a bank be- came suspicious. He used the money to buy Ferraris, Lam- borghinis and his Ashburn home, he said in his guilty plea. In a 2008 Washington Post ar- ticle reporting that the economic slump had not deterred Lam- borghini from opening a show- room in the Dulles area, El-Atari was interviewed while having his Lamborghini Murcielago serv- iced. He said that he had another Lamborghini, two Ferraris, two Mercedes, a Rolls-Royce Phan- tom and a Cadillac Escalade. He said that his auto insurance bill was $18,000 a month.
“I have no other bad habits,” El- Atari said, adding, “I drive my cars to work.” El-Atari’s attorneys acknowl-
edged his “extravagant lifestyle” but said it was funded by profits from his businesses, not by the loans. He owned Original Steak- house and Sports Theaters in Ashburn and Woodbridge, the Crofton Shopping Center, the Cantina Cove in Brambleton, Va., and a hotel in Nashville. He also helped launch the Buffalo Wing Factory restaurants in Sterling, Ashburn, Reston and Chantilly. His attorneys said El-Atari
started as a 15-year-old counter worker at The Deli in Sterling and bought the deli three years later with his brother, turning it into the first Buffalo Wing Facto- ry. He later launched the Original Steakhouses. “His fraud was fueled by his own greed and a desire to live a lifestyle that he did not earn,” prosecutors wrote in a sentenc- ing brief.
El-Atari fled the country in
May last year but was spotted at a Ferrari dealership in Houston in January. He was arrested a short time later at a Houston airport, authorities said. Of the approximately $71mil- lion El-Atari obtained from the banks, his attorneys said that he had repaid more than $17million with other fraudulent loans. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ordered him to repay the remain- ing $53 million in restitution.
jackmant@washpost.com
propriately touched a boy in his fourth-grade math class in April. The school system is attempting to deny Picca unemployment ben- efits, which he has received since May. The boy’s parents say the in- cident did not take place and that Starnes forced their son into writ- ing a false statement. At least nine other current and former school staff have filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Com- mission over their grievances with Starnes. “The school system has been to- tally unresponsive,” said Hedy Ross, the parent of the fourth- grader at the center of the case against Picca. She and her hus- band organized the protest,
K R
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which was attended by about 20 high school students — most for- mer students of Picca’s — and sev- eral community members. For Ross, the apology was not nearly enough.
“If you rob a bank, and you apologize for it, do you get off the hook?” she said. A Montgomery County schools
spokesman, Dana Tofig, said that the internal investigation against Starnes had concluded that “most of the charges were either not true, misrepresentations or were unverifiable.” Tofig declined comment on the dispute over Picca’s unemploy- ment benefits, saying that it was a confidential personnel matter.
birnbaumm@washpost.com
Jury finds D.C. police officials violated
whistleblower act Officer suspended in 2005 after alleging departmental misdeeds
by Keith L. Alexander
Konterra 2,200-acre mixed-use development
MONTGOMERY CO.
29 NV
Fairland Rec. Park
PRINCE
Konterra Town Center West
GEORGE’S CO.
Konterra Town
Center East
Intercounty Connector route
Ca
BRIGGS CHANEY RD.
95 OLD
GUNPOWDER RD.
1 R 212 Calver on alverton
Special use area
Business Park
MAR YLAND 0
MILE Muirkirk I 1/2 Residential Residential 95
MONT. CO.
D.C. 198 VA. Detail MD.
P.G. CO.
CHARLES CO.
Laurel 1
A.A. CO.
A D.C. Superior Court jury ruled that senior police officials, including Chief Cathy L. Lanier, violated the District’s whistle- blower act when they suspended a police officer in 2005 after he informed city officials that the department allegedly brokered an illegal deal to provide security for the Gallery Place entertain- ment area downtown. The jury ruled Thursday that
officer Sean McLaughlin was wrongly suspended after he alert- ed the mayor’s office and the D.C. Council that the department had brokered a deal to make officers available to provide security in the area, after the department had rejected requests by McLaughlin and other officers to supply off-duty security in the same neighborhood. Citing the District’s Whistle- blower Protection Act, the jury sided with McLaughlin, saying Lanier wrongly disciplined him. In 2005, the police union and nine officers filed a class-action suit against Lanier and the de- partment, arguing that the offi- cers were wrongfully punished for the disclosure. Last year, Judge Judith E.
Beltsville LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST
Md. officials accuse Konterra’s developer of violating pollution rules
konterra from B1
the state permit. Kingdon Gould purchased the former sand and gravel operation more than 30 years ago with plans to create a mini-city in the northern part of the county. Konterra Town Center East, the cornerstone of the project, is planned as a 488-acre develop-
ment that will include 4,500 resi- dential units, 5.3million square feet of commercial, retail and of- fice space, and 500,000 square feet of hospitality space. Caleb Gould said this summer that, de- spite many fits and starts, he ex- pects to break ground on the project in 2012.
wigginsovetta@washpost.com
Retchin dismissed the claim filed by six of the officers. But the jury found Thursday that the three re- maining officers — McLaughlin, Duane Fowler and Martin Free- man — had alerted officials of the department’s wrongdoing, con- stituting whistleblowing. In March 2005, Freeman was termi- nated and McLaughlin and Free- man were suspended.
According to the complaint,
the officers submitted their off- duty security requests for Gallery Place in October 2004. A month later, while the officers were wait- ing for supervisors to approve their requests, the department brokered its own security deal with Gallery Place officials, the complaint alleges. But D.C. Attorney General Pe- ter Nickles said no such deal was brokered by the department. “This was a bogus allegation,” Nickles said, adding that the law- suit was a “waste of union mem- ber funds.” Department officials said the officers had started working the
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D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the department plans to challenge the verdict.
NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST
D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles said the lawsuit was a “waste of union member funds.”
off-duty security job without de- partment approval when they no- tified their supervisors, which was the cause of their suspension and termination.
Still, while union attorneys were able to prove that McLaugh- lin’s suspension was directly linked to whistleblowing, attor- neys were not able to prove such a case for Freeman and Fowler. Using the two officers’ personnel files, D.C. attorneys convinced the nine civil jurors that their being disciplined would have occurred without whistleblowing, based on their prior departmental in- fractions.
Calls to the Fraternal Order of
Police were referred to the union’s attorney, Anthony Conti. Calls and an e-mail to Conti re- questing comment were not re- turned. In its verdict, the jury said
McLaughlin should be awarded $6,800 in lost wages and $6,000 in punitive damages. Lanier said the department plans to chal- lenge the jury’s verdict. “There is no evidence in the record to support this conclu- sion,” she said in a statement.
alexanderk@washpost.com
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