A former Yale University administrator was sentenced to 9 years in prison Thursday for stealing more than $40 million from the school of medicine through a long-running scheme in which she bought computer equipment using school accounts and secretly resold it for her own profit.
The U.S. Attorney’s office called the scale of Jamie Petrone’s theft and the lavish spending that followed “particularly shocking” and “unique” among crimes that have come before the office. She is accused of thefts from 2013 until 2021, when they came to the school’s attention.
Among other things, Petrone admitted spending more than $4 million on travel, slightly less than $4 million on entertainment, more than a million on real estate and cars and $2.5 million on retail goods – including $200,000 at Saks Fifth Avenue, according to filings in federal court.
“For nearly a decade, Jamie Petrone lived a life most cannot even fathom,” prosecutor David Novick wrote in a memo to the court. “She paid cash for several homes in Connecticut and Georgia. She drove expensive cars, including a Range Rover worth more than $100,000, and bestowed them on friends and family. She spent millions on fancy vacations for herself and others, luxury personal goods, VIP concert tickets, and spa treatments.”
Petrone worked for the medical school and Yale New Haven Hospital since 1999. She went to work for the medical school’s department of emergency medicine in 2008 and held a variety of administrative positions since. She became lead administrator and director of finance and administration for the department of emergency medicine in 2019.
As part of her responsibilities, Petrone was authorized to approve and make purchases. So long as the purchases were below $10,000 she needed no additional authorization, federal prosecutors said.
In the government’s description of Petrone’s crimes, she is described as a computer wholesaler. She would place large orders for high-end laptop and tablet computers, cameras and camera equipment, typically breaking the purchase into several orders below the $10,000 authorization cap. She often ordered equipment in response to requests from companies to which she was selling.
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To cover herself from detection by others in the Yale purchasing hierarchy, federal prosecutors said Petrone created phony purchase orders and doctored emails from researchers to create the appearance that she was buying equipment for legitimate purposes, such as medical studies.
In a 2021 transaction, in response to an order from one of her customers, a computer reseller, Petrone placed an order with a vendor for 100 computer tablets. The order was placed through 17 purchase orders to keep each below $10,000. Yale paid $145,000 for the tablets and the reseller wired $90,000 to an account in the name of a business in which Petrone was a principal.
In at least one case, prosecutors said Petrone told her customers that she sold computer equipment at a discount because her affiliation with Yale gave her access to educational discounts and overstock supplies.
Petrone admitted that her thefts was responsible for a $40.5 million loss for Yale. Federal prosecutors said more than $25 million of that was stolen from 2019 to 2022, a year in which the emergency department’s grants from the National Institutes of Health was about $18 million.
Petrone previously pleaded guilty to fraud and filing a false tax reform for cheating the government out of more than $6 million in tax revenue by under-reporting her income.
In her plea bargain with the government, Petrone agreed to make restitution of $40,504,200.08 to Yale University and $6,416,618.00 to the IRS, forfeit $560,421.14 in a bank account, as well as six automobiles – two Mercedes Benz, two Cadillacs, a Land Rover and a Dodge Charger.
She also has agreed to allow the government to sell three homes in Connecticut and one in Georgia.
