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Authorities say while Denise Birdwell was running the Higley Unified School District, she was lining her own pockets with money she got in a kickback scheme involving school construction.
The Attorney General s Office said the four were involved in a fraud scheme tied to rigged contracts that cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Prosecutors accused Birdwell of taking payments for helping a company win a bid for building two middle schools in 2012.
Birdwell also misspent $6 million of public money that she diverted from a restricted fund to help cover construction costs related to the contracts, prosecutors said.
The indictments punctuate years of allegations that followed Birdwell from Higley to Scottsdale unified school districts from 2011 until 2018 when she was forced out of her job.