He got the ultimate time out.
The operator of three Brooklyn day care centers was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday for scamming the New York City Administration for Children’s Services out of more than $50,000 by falsifying records and bribing a city employee.
Supreme Court Justice Guy Mangano slapped 44-year-old Owen Larman of Prospect Lefferts Gardens with the maximum sentence possible because his scheme put children in harm’s way, according to acting District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
“He showed utter disregard for the safety of children in his care,” Gonzalez said. “Today’s sentence holds the defendant fully accountable for his crimes and for the magnitude of what he did.”
Larman opened three day care centers in Brooklyn between 2007 and 2011 that served infant, toddler, and school-age children and operated primarily off of grants from the children’s services administration.
He first drew city inspectors’ attention when they discovered he packed 78 kids into an understaffed Flatbush day care center — 71 more bodies than the space allowed for.
The city’s health department issued a permit that limited the day care’s occupancy to seven tots, but Larman continued to dupe the agency by cramming kids into busses when inspectors came to check on him.
The busses themselves were overcrowded, Gonzalez said, sometimes with three toddlers in one seat, and older children holding younger tykes on their laps.
But the real scam occurred after the New York State Office of Children and Family Services issued Larman a permit to operate a separate day care center in an East Flatbush building — which he never had a lease for — and he successfully conned the city’s children’s services administration into giving him 11 grants worth $51,667 for kids being served by the non-existent facility.
Larman accomplished the scam with help from a children’s services administration employee, who faxed the con forms that normally would have been mailed to the East Flatbush location — which, of course, did not exist.
The inside man received regular cash prizes of $100 to $300 from Larman for his help, but cooperated with authorities and testified at trial after being arrested for his role in the scheme.
