Grant Writer Sentenced To 6 Years In Federal Prison

A woman who falsified documents to obtain a multimillion-dollar grant for an Indio youth group and school districts throughout Riverside County was sentenced today to six years in federal prison.

Jean Michele Cross could have faced more than 20 years behind bars, but U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips elected to go with the sentencing recommendation of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The defendant’s lack of criminal history afforded her a break, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jerry Behnke.

In addition to the prison term, Phillips ordered Cross to pay a $60,000 fine and spend three years on supervised release after completion of her sentence.

Cross’ attorney, John Yzurdiaga, whom the defendant hired in September after firing her trial attorney, Joel Isaacson, argued for one-year of home detention, 2,000 hours of community service and three years probation for his client, who is in her 60s. But Phillips rejected that proposal.

A seven-woman, five-man jury convicted Cross in June of mail fraud, forgery and making false statements.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Cross filed a fraudulent application for a five-year, $35.65 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education in March 2007. The 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program grant was intended to benefit the Indio Youth Task Force, along with the Riverside YMCA, the Desert Sands, Nuview Val Verde and Perris school districts.

Twenty-first century grants support before- and after-school activities geared to underprivileged youngsters.

Cross, who ran the grant-writing consultancy Cross Resources Inc., entered into a contract with the task force to handle the application process. According to trial testimony, the Paso Robles woman worked closely with Indio police Chief Bradley Ramos, bypassing the task force board of directors in all matters.

The defendant convinced Ramos to make the task force the principal recipient of any federal funds. The money would then be divvied up, with the task force’s portion being used for programs in the Desert Sands Unified School District.

The remaining funds were to buttress programs at western Riverside County schools, as well as a Long Beach private school.

Cross never explained how the process would work to the other parties, who understood that they were being individually awarded grant monies, prosecutors said, noting that the defendant relied on a network of friends and past associates to complete the 80-plus page application.

Ramos said he was led to believe the grant monies would only benefit programs in the desert.

In the case of Desert Sands, the defendant collaborated with an administrator who was tasked with obtaining signatures from principals at each school, which the grant application required, according to court papers.

The administrator did not approach the principals, opting instead to use photocopies of their names from a recently filed application for a California Department of Education After-School Education & Safety grant, according to Behnke.

The administrator faxed the copies to Cross, who simply reapplied the signatures by tracing over them onto the 21st century application, prosecutors said.

In several instances, the signatures of senior officials from western county schools had not been obtained in the time allowed before the application deadline, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“The district superintendents and other school officials testified that the signatures contained in the (grant) application are not their signatures, and they did not give anyone permission to sign for them,” Behnke wrote in his sentencing memo. “Some officials testified that the signatures in the application did not even resemble their true signatures.”

Cross testified that she believed she had been given carte blanche to sign for the other parties.

Her contract stipulated that she would receive a 15 percent commission based on the total grant award, regardless of whether her services were needed after the money was disbursed. That would have translated to more than $5 million in compensation for the defendant, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The DOE approved the grant application, furnishing the Indio Youth Task Force with an initial installment of $3.4 million. However, the group’s board rejected it after learning how the money had been acquired.