Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC)
Outcome
Marc Hannon-White, a former Atlanta Regional Commission employee who administered federally funded workforce development programs, was indicted in November 2019 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery for soliciting and accepting more than $15,000 in federal funds from training providers in exchange for directing qualified students to those providers.
Details
Atlanta Regional Commission — Workforce Program Employee Bribery (2014–2015)
Outcome: Marc Hannon-White, a former Atlanta Regional Commission employee who managed federally funded workforce development programs, was indicted in November 2019 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery for soliciting and accepting more than $15,000 in payments from training providers in exchange for directing qualified students to those providers.
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) is the regional planning and intergovernmental coordination agency for the ten-county metropolitan Atlanta area. ARC administered and staffed federally funded workforce development programs during this period.
Between February 2014 and January 2015, Hannon-White used his position managing federally funded workforce development programs to solicit bribe payments from training providers that received federal funds for each qualified student they trained. He arranged bribe payments via text message, sending his personal bank account number to training providers who then deposited money into that account in exchange for receiving additional student referrals from Hannon-White.
In total, more than $15,000 in federal workforce development funds were at issue in the bribery scheme. Hannon-White was indicted on November 5, 2019 on counts of bribery conspiracy, extortion conspiracy, and two counts of Hobbs Act extortion. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery. Sentencing was scheduled for May 2020.
Primary Source: Former Atlanta Regional Commission employee charged with bribery and extortion
How Crucible Prevents This
Hannon-White used text messages to communicate bank account numbers for bribe deposits — leaving a traceable digital record that a Crucible communications monitoring hook would have flagged. A student referral audit control tracking which training providers receive referrals from ARC workforce staff, correlated against any financial relationship between those providers and the staff member, would have detected the pay-for-referral pattern within the first payment cycle. Crucible's conflict-of-interest disclosure enforcement requires workforce program administrators to certify no undisclosed financial relationships with funded training providers.
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