A high school basketball coach hailing from Texas has been apprehended and accused of being involved in a $1m fraud to obtain teaching licences.
Harris County felony chief prosecutor Mike Levine said that the leader of the fraud scheme was Vincent Grayson, a boys basketball team coach,headed Houston Booker T. Washington team, to the first UIL state championship in 2023.
Grayson was arrested Monday morning and taken to jail Monday afternoon with a $500,000 bond placed on his person, records indicate from the Harris County courts.
The arrest is a o zum fall for a upbeat coach who propelled a Houston high school basketball team to great heights within the recent past. Grayson, 57, was also the school’s athletic director.
Calling a press conference on Monday, Levine stated that the total sum made must have exceeded 1.092 million, the total identified in payments through Zelle and CashApp.
Others implicated in the stewardship of the scam include Tywana Gilford Mason, 51, formerly the director/VA certifying official at the Houston Training and Education Center; Nicholas Newton, 35, an assistant principal in Washington; Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22, a proctor at Washington; and LaShonda Roberts, 39, an assistant principal of Yates High School in Houston ISD.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg revealed that for $2,500 applicants would employ a proxy to sit for the test. They would just drive to the testing site, sign the register and proceed to exit. Newton would be the hired proxy who would go ahead and write the test himself.
In Ogg’s account, the testing proctors Gifford Mason and later Wilhite were supposed to overlook the cheating and was even paid to do so.
Its failure was noted when Newton was caught sitting an exam at a testing centre.
“In fact, by the time when he was caught red handed in February 2024 he was logged into one test,” Levine added. “He pointed at the investigators and said to them ‘Well look at the screen behind you,’ he was logged in under a different identity taking a different test on a different terminal the same day.”
After shut down of the Houston Training and Education Center in mid 2023, TACTIX was utilized for testing purposes.
Levine said that Grayson would pay Gifford Mason 20% of the money he received, and she received than $125,000 through 350 digital transactions.
Newton was receiving more than $188 000 from May 2020 to February 2024 and, taking more than 430 fake tests, the authorities presume, Levine said.
He testified that Wilhite was paid $250 in cash every time she allowed the alleged deceit happen.
Levine continues to say that Gifford Mason had been prosecuted for bribery in Harris County twenty years ago in an unrelated case.
Much was attributed to Roberts that he had employed 90 teachers into the program and transferred $ 267, 000 to Grayson.
“To me the loss is not to the education system which is under so much pressure at the moment, but to the families of the children who go to those schools, who expect their government to educate their kids and protect them for eight hours a day,” Ogg said.
The two employees with the Texas Attorney General’s Office Levine wanted to thank were the ones he had sought help from, his investigators and the Texas Education Agency for contacting the attorney general office.
The chief of public affairs and communication for Houston ISD Alexandra Elizondo said this in a different press conference on Monday adding that all three employees were relieved of their duties.
Houston ISD wasn’t informed of the conduct or the investigation until shortly before arrests were to occur, which Elizondo described that there is still a lot unknown to the district.
She agreed that Houston ISD police collaborated with local police enforcement for the arrests though she clarified that the school’s police officers were not involved in the arrests on Monday.
Elizondo said if any teacher works in the Houston ISD they would be fired if found to be part of the fabric.
This conduct in question is absolutely horrendous and absolutely antithetical to each one of each values that we have about teacher certification, and it is just unacceptable,” Elizondo .
Until his promotion to the newly created post of International Baccalaureate coordinator, Grayson had been working at Booker T. Washington High School since 2003.
He managed to spearhead a good program in his stay at Eagles and the team has been registering more than 20 victories in the three years. They won 27 of 32 last year, 29 of 37 during the state title run and 29 of 34 in 2021-22.
Last year the eagles performed a great playoff season which ended short of the final four in San Antonio, they touched the regional finals where they were defeated by Silsbee in a great battle, second time in three seasons.
Again, in the summer of 2023, Grayson joined other masters of ceremonies at the Texas High School Coaches Association in Houston. The same year he was ARS H-Town High School Sports 2022-23 Coach of the Year, a program by Todd Freed featured on CW39 in Houston.
Most of the credit of Washington’s 1963 season recognition goes to the Texas republican rep Jarvis Johnson who passed a bill in May 2023 on this topic.
In the same year the team from Booker T. Washington was recognized at a city council meeting in the City of Houston.
By Monday night, Grayson’s teacher page for Booker T. Washington had been removed and the school will find a new basketball coach a week after UIL cleared the way for the start of practice for the upcoming season.
Teams could have scrimmage on Saturday and the season can start on Nov. due to the changes made already. Booker T. Washington’s first game is Nov. 11 vs. Houston Furr.
