Marymount<\/a>\u00a0has about 1,600 undergraduates, including some from Long Island. Six in 10 students major in the visual and performing arts, according to U.S. News & World Report\u2019s annual guide to colleges. Marymount’s most recent available income tax return shows 2024\u00a0revenue of more than $80 million and assets of $132 million.<\/p>\nMidwest lawsuits<\/p>\n
Five months before filing the Marymount suit in January 2024, Lesko had her then-attorney Thomas F. Wieder bring a case in Michigan federal court against 25 colleges and universities, as well as symphony orchestras and art museums, alleging each had improperly received PPP loans. Two months later, Lesko had Wieder\u00a0file a similar suit in Ohio federal court against 28 more colleges and universities, along with religious schools, orchestras, museums and a zoo.<\/p>\n
“Pat has filed a bunch of these cases around the country \u2014 in New York, in Michigan, in Ohio, and possibly elsewhere,” said Wieder, adding that cases brought under the False Claims Act are confidential until federal prosecutors review the allegations and decide whether to take up the matter.<\/p>\n
Wieder said Lesko\u2019s claims of fraud are based on her review of PPP regulations, a database of PPP recipients, and the federal income tax forms of nonprofits that received PPP loans.<\/p>\n
“She matched up the public information and then looked for nonprofits that had more than 500 employees because that meant they weren\u2019t eligible for the loan,” he said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Lesko, as far as Wieder knows, has no direct knowledge of the defendants\u2019 alleged fraud and no ties to them.<\/p>\n
“Pat wasn\u2019t personally involved. She discovered something that she thought was wrong and filed claims,” he said.<\/p>\n
Motivating factor<\/p>\n
Lesko has spent much of her career in Ann Arbor reporting on higher education and participating in that city\u2019s politics. She founded a book publishing company, a weekly newspaper and a politics blog. <\/p>\n
In 2010, Lesko unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent mayor in the Democratic primary, receiving 16% of the vote. During the campaign, Lesko wrote that she would\u2019ve voted for Satan before the current mayor, according to a July 2010 report in the Ann Arbor Observer.<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s motivating private citizens like Lesko\u00a0to go after PPP fraudsters?<\/p>\n
Partly, Wieder said, the same thing that led him to help her with the lawsuits: money from settlements reached between defendants and federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n
“Under the False Claims Act, the system is set up to reward you for discovering and pursuing a wrong that the government may not be aware of or lacks the resources to bring a case. People are incentivized to file suit because they will receive a good payoff if a settlement is reached,” said Wieder, who also lives in Ann Arbor but no longer represents Lesko.<\/p>\n
Cases dismissed<\/p>\n
There were no payoffs in the two cases that Wieder filed in Michigan and Ohio for Lesko.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorneys in both jurisdictions declined to intervene in the cases without publicly disclosing their reasons. Weeks later, Lesko asked that the cases be\u00a0dismissed, which the judges did after the U.S. Attorneys concurred, according to court filings.<\/p>\n
Rodger D. Citron, associate dean for research and scholarship at Touro University\u2019s Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in Central Islip, said it isn\u2019t unusual for a False Claims Act case to be dropped after prosecutors decide not to become involved. “Without the Justice Department, the likelihood of recovery often is lower, sometimes much lower,” he said.<\/p>\n
In the Marymount case, prosecutors chose not to pursue the allegations made by Lesko against the other nine defendants. Spokespeople for the defendants, all of whom are based in New York State, said they denied the charges or declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Court documents\u00a0show Lesko hasn\u2019t filed an amended complaint against the remaining defendants or requested that the case be dismissed.<\/p>\n
![\"James](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769080702_796_image.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
\n\tJames T. Madore writes about Long Island business news including the economy, development, and the relationship between government and business. He previously served as Albany bureau chief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A private liberal arts college in Manhattan has agreed to pay $8.4 million to the federal government to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[288,36405,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-108439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-business","tag-local-education","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}