Sam Amico
You don’t have to be smart to know that stealing $40 million worth of electronics and computer equipment from your school is probably a bad idea. So you have to wonder what a former Yale School of Medicine employee was thinking when she did exactly that.
Videos by Rare
Which actually makes you wonder who is the real dummy here — the woman, or Yale?
Anyway, the woman in question is 43-year-old Jamie Petrone, 43. She pleaded guilty to the charge and was sent to jail in Hartford, Conn., on Oct. 13. Her sentence? Nine years.
“Ms. Petrone has accepted responsibility for her actions and is remorseful,” her attorney told the Washington Post. “She now looks forward … (to) repairing some of the damage that has been caused.”
Petrone didn’t just sit on the cash from her grand scheme, either. She used it t purchase some luxury cars and real estate, and funded more than a few trips.
How Jamie Petrone Spent $40 Million She Scammed From Yale School of Medicine
“Officials said Petrone bought or ordered others to buy millions of dollars of electronics and computer equipment such as Apple iPads and MacBooks and cameras using Yale Med funds, splitting up the purchases to fall below the $10,000 threshold,” the Post reported. “The goods were later shipped to an out-of-state business, which resold the equipment and wired money to Maziv Entertainment LLC, a company of which Petrone is a principal, according to federal officials.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Jamie Petrone worked in finance for Yale University — and one of her duties was to approve purchases of less than $10,000. So she was someone the school trusted with its money.
Yeah, big mistake, apparently.
She began working at the school in 2008 and five years later, started her crime spree — ordering millions of dollars worth of electronics. All while making sure to keep all of the purchases below (you guessed it) 10 grand. That way, no one else had to approve it.
She was done in by an anonymous tip to the university, then arrested in September 2021. No word on if she was able to squeeze in one last trip to the spa first.
