Former Employee Sentenced for Stealing $1.3 Million from Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

A former employee for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation was sentenced to prison Friday for stealing more than $1 million from the foundation.

Demetrius Arnold Washington, Jr., 51, of Louisa, was sentenced Friday to 45 months in prison for a mail fraud and money laundering scheme in which he stole more than $1.3 million from his former employer.

Washington was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay full restitution in the amount of $1,341,755, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced Friday.

Washington pleaded guilty on May 13. According to court documents, from April 2011 to June 2015, Washington was the Chief of Information Systems for the foundation, a private non-profit entity dedicated to supporting promising students who exhibit financial need by providing financial assistance through scholarships and grants.

Washington was responsible for selecting outside IT vendors to perform work for the foundation. One such vendor was DAJX-IT Consulting. Washington was, in fact, the owner of DAJX, a company he created around the time he began working for the foundation, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Washington concealed his relationship with DAJX from the foundation and used DAJX to submit fraudulent invoices to the foundation for work which was never completed, using names of friends, relatives, and acquaintances who had never heard of DAJX or completed any IT work, authorities said, adding that Washington also doctored invoices of an outside vendor by doubling the vendor’s rates, paying the vendor for her original invoice and then pocketing the difference.

To further conceal his scheme, Washington created a fake identity who claimed he was the president of DAJX and corresponded with the foundation using an email address bearing the fictitious person’s name. In total, Washington embezzled $1,341,755 from the foundation.

Dana J. Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Maria L. Kelokates, Inspector in Charge of the Washington Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service; and Thomas Jankowski, Special Agent in Charge, Washington D.C. Field Office, IRS-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jamar K. Walker and Michael S. Dry prosecuted the case.

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