NYC special-ed teacher collected $24K in sick pay from prison

A special education teacher tricked her clueless bosses at the city Department of Education into giving her three months of paid sick leave — while she served a federal prison sentence for defrauding taxpayers and stiffing students, The Post has learned. 

Speech therapist Marina Golfo, 49, collected $24,367 in salary last year while sitting in a cell at West Virginia’s all-women’s, minimum-security Federal Prison Camp Alderson, the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools found. 

“You’ve got to admire her nerve, if you don’t admire her stupidity,” said Ellen McHugh, a member of the Citywide Council on Special Education.

In October 2018, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged Golfo and seven other employees with defrauding the Early Intervention Program, which serves developmentally challenged children and is overseen by the state Department of Health.

Golfo, a Long Islander, was accused of bilking taxpayers of $156,000 over the prior three years by submitting fake treatment notes and invoices for more than 1,500 therapy sessions she never provided. Many sessions were scheduled to occur in the homes of children or caregivers.

She pleaded guilty in July 2021 to healthcare fraud, was sentenced to three months in prison and ordered to pay restitution for all the money disbursed, according to court documents. But she inexplicably remained on the DOE payroll.

Weeks after entering the clink in September, Golfo submitted an online request to her DOE managers for paid sick leave. She included a doctor’s note explaining that she was too ill to come into the office and should remain at home.  

Golfo also submitted requests to prison and court officials for “compassionate release” due to health risks she faced from COVID-19, along with her elderly parents’ need for a caretaker, according to court records. She was denied on Oct. 6, with US District Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto writing that neither her health conditions nor her parents warranted a reduced sentence.

On Nov. 1, the brazen educator asked DOE for an extension of her sick leave through Dec. 1, which was two days after the end of her prison term.

Shockingly, the city approved the request, apparently not realizing its employee was a jailbird. In total, she raked in a quarter of her $97,469 annual salary from behind bars.

But the DOE was initially well aware of her criminal case, which was jointly announced in 2018 by the city Department of Investigation and the US Attorney’s Office. A week after she was charged in Brooklyn federal court, DOE even rubber-roomed Golfo — reassigning her to a Committee on Special Education office in the Bronx while awaiting trial, according to SCI and a letter from a former colleague. 

The DOE’s Human Resources division told SCI investigators it was unaware that Golfo was requesting time off from the slammer — despite her 2018 arrest having been widely reported — because she never informed the agency or her managers about her sentencing.

Delivering a lesson in unabashed chutzpah, Golfo told SCI investigators she did not know she had violated DOE sick-leave rules, claiming that she did not think her location mattered because she could not have come into the office, regardless, due to her illness. She suffered complications from shingles, court records show.

Golfo did not return messages from The Post.

SCI said it first received a complaint about Golfo’s improper use of sick pay from a tipster in December 2022. The DOE finally fired her on Jan. 31 — about a month before SCI gave its findings to schools Chancellor David Banks on March 6.

It’s unclear whether Golfo returned to work for the two months between her prison release and her firing. The DOE would not answer any questions.

Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman recommended that DOE require Golfo to return the pay she pocketed while incarcerated. She also said DOE should bar her from any further work with the department. 

“Her actions were clearly more deliberate than she acknowledged to investigators,” Coleman wrote. 

Ken Girardin, a fellow with the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog, blasted the DOE for failing to keep track of an employee’s incarceration — and enabling Golfo to collect her salary on top of it. 

“In the private sector, three days of sick leave raises concerns. Three months should’ve been setting off flashing red lights and sirens,” Girardin said.  

DOE’s wasteful spending on Golfo’s salary outraged special education activist Fatimi Geidi, who ripped the city for failing “the students that need the most support” — even as it warns of cuts in public-school spending. 

“Everybody involved needs to be ashamed,” said Geidi, 37, the mother of two developmentally challenged students, one of whom attends public high school. “We’re arguing about the budget and you’re literally throwing it at somebody that committed fraud.”