The director of a short-lived Harlem private school duped parents out of thousands of dollars by leading them to believe their kids would get the education of a lifetime, a lawsuit filed yesterday by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer claims.
Parents of more than 75 children paid $3,250 in tuition and monthly fees of $350 to Andre McNair, head of the Harlem Youth Enrichment Christian Academy, thinking his school offered college-prep courses, art programs and computer labs.
“He had us believing all kinds of great things,” said Betsy Aridi, who taught kindergarten at the school and whose son attended second grade.
But the school never delivered and, in fact, was never even accredited by the state as advertised, according to the complaint filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Aridi said she knew something was wrong when her first paycheck, for $200, bounced.
“I had a bad feeling,” said Aridi, who claims McNair owes her $4,000. “We had no desks, no chair, no textbooks. It was a mess.”
Not only was the school a fraud, but so was McNair, according to the lawsuit. He had claimed to be a doctor who graduated from Fordham University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and studied at Jersey City Medical Center and Newark’s Beth Israel Medical Center.
But, according to court papers, McNair spent only a few semesters at Fordham and the other institutions show no record of McNair ever setting foot on campus.
“He showed me documents that weren’t real,” said Michele Lawson, who paid $890 a month for her two sons to attend the school. “I thought it was a real school.”
“He conned me out of thousands,” she said.
McNair could not be reached for comment, and his last known lawyer said he did not know where McNair could be found.
The academy, which opened in September 2001, abruptly closed in February 2003 after a gypsy-like existence in a Salvation Army building, a community center and a YMCA.
Despite its short life span, the academy saw its share of scandal in 2002, when a teacher was arrested for beating a 10-year-old student.
Spitzer is seeking an unspecified amount of restitution to parents, financial penalties and an order requiring McNair to post a bond for $250,000 should he ever try to open another school.