School supply company owner pleads guilty to defrauding Fort Worth ISD, feds say
The owner of a school equipment company has pleaded guilty to federal charges of defrauding the Fort Worth Independent School District in a case that led to the firing of two principals.
Virenkumar Patel, the owner of VR Group Promotions, pleaded guilty Wednesday, Feb. 19, to three counts of wire fraud, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
In the spring of 2021, Patel was approached by the principal of Eastern Hills High School in Fort Worth ISD, who was looking to buy planners, notepads and flash drives for the school, according to court documents.
Patel knew the school district required principals to get three quotes from competing companies before purchasing those types of items. He fabricated quotes from two other companies, with his own company quoting the lowest price, federal investigators said.
Patel hand-delivered the quotes to the principal, who selected his company’s $18,287 quote as the winning bid for the contract, according to court documents.
Patel repeated the same fraud with fake quotes two more times in transactions with the principals at Eastern Hills High and Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School — once in the winter of 2022 and again in spring 2023 for purchases of flash drives, headphones, wireless chargers and power banks, court documents state.
In total, he netted $14,495 from those two instances and was paid by the school district through wire transfers, according to court documents.
The Fort Worth ISD school board voted in September 2023 to fire the principals of both high schools because of the fraud allegations, according to Texas Education Agency records obtained by the Star-Telegram.
Former Diamond Hill-Jarvis principal James Garcia and former Eastern Hills principal Katrina Smith later agreed to dismiss appeals of their terminations and retired or resigned from their positions.
The FBI’s Dallas Field Office investigated the case.
Patel, 33, faces up to 20 years in federal prison for each count on which he was convicted. His sentencing hearing has been set for June 6.
This story was originally published February 21, 2025 at 4:29 PM.
