Atlanta Regional Commission
Outcome
Former Atlanta Regional Commission workforce development employee Marc Hannon-White pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery for soliciting and accepting cash payments from federally funded training providers in exchange for steering eligible job-training students to their programs.
Details
Atlanta Regional Commission — Workforce Development Bribery (2014–2015)
Outcome: Former Atlanta Regional Commission workforce development employee Marc Hannon-White pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery for accepting cash payments from training providers in exchange for steering federal job-training students to their programs; more than $15,000 in federal program funds were at issue.
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) is the regional planning and intergovernmental coordination agency for the 10-county Atlanta metropolitan area. ARC administers federally funded workforce development programs under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), connecting job seekers with training providers and supporting employers through the regional workforce system.
Marc Hannon-White, 52, of Atlanta, worked for ARC's division that administered, managed, and staffed those federally funded workforce development programs between February 2014 and January 2015. In this role, Hannon-White was responsible for connecting program-eligible students with training providers that received federal funds per qualified student enrolled.
Hannon-White used his position to solicit and accept cash payments from training providers in exchange for promising to steer additional federally subsidized students to their programs. In at least one instance, he sent his personal bank account number by text message to a training provider, who then deposited bribe payments directly into his account in exchange for receiving additional student referrals. In all, more than $15,000 in federal job-training funds were at issue in the scheme.
A federal grand jury indicted Hannon-White on November 5, 2019, on one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, one count of conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act extortion, and two counts of Hobbs Act extortion. Hannon-White pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery and was scheduled for sentencing before U.S. District Court Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. on May 11, 2020.
Primary Source: Former Atlanta Regional Commission employee pleads guilty to accepting bribes — DOJ Northern District of Georgia
How Crucible Prevents This
Hannon-White exploited the ARC's student referral process — a discretionary function he controlled — to extract cash payments from training providers, corrupting the program's core mission of directing students to the best-fit training. Crucible's conflict-of-interest controls, referral-pattern analytics, and financial disclosure enforcement for employees with vendor-facing roles directly address this failure. Automated anomaly detection on referral concentration (one employee sending disproportionate numbers of students to the same vendor) combined with required ethics attestations would have surfaced this scheme in a matter of months rather than letting it run unchecked.
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