Another indictment has been handed down in the ongoing Roslyn embezzlement scandal. Last Thursday, Sept. 8, Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon announced the indictment of Andrew Miller.

Miller is a former Partner of Miller, Lilly & Pearce, LLP, Certified Public Accountants, and was the audit partner for the Roslyn School District. He is the fifth person to be indicted in the investigation. The others are Dr. Frank A. Tassone, former superintendent of the school district; former Assistant Superintendent Pamela Gluckin; former Account Clerk Debra Rigano; and Stephen Signorelli, a former Roslyn school district vendor.

Roslyn was not the only district that Miller, Lilly & Pearce did auditing work for. In fact, up to 50 school districts on both Nassau and Suffolk counties had that firm as their auditor.

More specifically, Miller was indicted on 26 counts, including Tampering with Public Records, Falsifying Business Records, Tampering with Physical Evidence, and Offering a False Instrument for Filing. If convicted, Miller could face up to 11 years in prison.

The indictments were laid down following Miller's cooperation with the District Attorney's office. The Tampering with Public Records count, Dillon said, refers to the three altered Cash Disbursement Listings given to the DA's office. Both the Falsifying Business Records counts and the Tampering with Physical Evidence counts pertained to 10 "distinct documents" that Miller gave to the New York Comptroller's Office and the Nassau County DA's office. Finally, the counts for Offering a False Instrument for Filing pertain to three false documents presented by Miller to the comptroller's office in connection to their own audit of the district.

At the press conference, Dillon gave a brief history of the investigation and how it led to Miller's indictment.

"On Feb. 11, 2004 my office opened an investigation into the Roslyn School District," Dillon said at the news conference in Mineola. "On Feb. 23, 2004, Frank Tassone became aware of my office's active investigation into the Roslyn School District. It was at that point that Tassone contacted Andrew Miller, from Miller, Lilly & Pearce and asked for his assistance in 'cleaning up' the school districts financial records.

"On the evening of Feb. 25, 2004 Miller went to the Roslyn School District's Accounting Department and changed the names of 15 vendors on the District's computer system," Dillon continued. "Miller substituted the names of legitimate Roslyn School District vendors to replace the names of the actual financial institutions paid by the district. The actual financial institutions were paid for the various personal expenses of Tassone, Pamela Gluckin and Debra Rigano. For example, Chase Bank was changed to EDC Publishing; Citibank became Nassau County BOCES; MBNA was changed to MacMillen Publishing; American Express became Sargent-Welch, and First USA was changed to Fischer Educational.

"Miller was familiar with the Roslyn School District computer software, which was created by a company called Finance Manager, of which Miller was a founder and a 45 percent stockholder," said Dillon.

"As a consequence of changing these names, any records that were generated from the Roslyn School District computer system from that point forward would show the false names instead of the actual parties to whom the payments had been made, even if they contained historical information appearing to predate the changes," Dillon concluded.

On March 23, 2004, Miller, Dillon said, provided the DA's office with eight false documents, which were generated from the Roslyn School District computer system after the vendors' names had been changed.

There were three Roslyn School District cash disbursements listings for the following periods: July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001; July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002; July 1, 2002 to Oct. 16, 2002.

The district attorney added that the cash disbursement listings were also falsified to indicate that they had been printed on Oct. 16, 2002, which was long before any of the vendors' names had been changed on the computer system. That was the date, Dillon said, on which Miller and his staff audited Pamela Gluckin's expenses immediately prior to her termination and concluded that she had stolen only $250,000.

Dillon further noted that Miller also gave the DA's office what purported to be historical Miller, Lilly & Pearce, LLP documents relating to Roslyn School District audit work, but which reflected the Feb. 25, 2004 alterations.

There were three Miller, Lilly & Pearce Judgmental Expenditure Testing documents for the fiscal years ending July 30, 2001, June 30, 2002, and June 30, 2003 and two Miller, Lilly, & Pearce Statistical Sample Over $25,000 records for the fiscal years ending June 30, 2001 and June 30, 2002.

During the summer of 2004, Alan Hevesi, the New York State Comptroller conducted an audit of Miller, Lilly & Pearce's services to the Roslyn School District. On Aug.18, 2004, Miller provided Hevesi's office with three similar false documents.

More specifically, Miller, Dillon said, gave them a Judgmental Expenditure Testing document for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2002, which also omitted certain entries in the supposedly identical document that he had given to the DA's office.

He also gave them a Judgmental Expenditure Testing document for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2003 that was identical to the false one that he gave to the DA's Office, Dillon said.

Lastly, he gave them a Statistical Sample for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2003 that purported to be the same as one he had given the DA's Office, but that in fact omitted two true entries that had been falsified in the version the DA's Office received, the district attorney concluded.

"It is alarming to me that an accounting firm that was responsible for the auditing of over 50 school districts on Long Island would so flagrantly disregard the law," said Dillon. "Their duty was to protect the Roslyn community from corrupt school officials. Instead Miller helped Frank Tassone, Pamela Gluckin and Debra Rigano hide their criminal actions."

Dillon said his office has estimated that Gluckin is responsible for the theft of approximately $4 million, Tassone is responsible for the theft of approximately $2 million, and Rigano is responsible for the theft of approximately $780,000, all from the Roslyn School District. Signorelli was indicted by a Grand Jury in June of 2005 for padding invoices with the assistance of Dr. Tassone.

Dillon said that once his office started working with Miller, it then discovered that the embezzlement numbers began to reach the $7 million total, something significantly higher than the $250,000 amount thought to be embezzled.

Dillon also said that Miller still had time to cooperate further with the DA's office, but that the window of opportunity for doing so would not exist much longer.

Miller was arraigned on Thursday, Sept. 8 by Nassau County Court Judge Jerald Carter in Mineola. Dillon said that the D Felonies he is charged with are punishable by up to seven years in prison and the E Felonies are punishable by up to four years in prison. The charges are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.