Another whistleblower has filed a lawsuit accusing Georgia Tech of wrongdoing, this time claiming the Atlanta school misappropriated more than $250,000.
It comes just months after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the school for alleged cybersecurity violations. In that August court filing, the DOJ and two whistleblowers claim Georgia Tech took on federal contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense but skirted the cybersecurity rules those multimillion-dollar contracts require, thereby risking national security.
All three whistleblowers are current or former Georgia Tech employees who say they were reprimanded after speaking out. That includes Keith Werle, managing director of the Business Analytics Center in Tech’s business school, who claimed in his lawsuit filed this month that he frequently uncovered examples of unauthorized charges, transfers and “missing” funds from the center.
His complaint outlines multiple examples of alleged malfeasance, such as when Werle hand-delivered a $50,000 check and observed weeks later the money wasn’t in the business center’s account. In January of 2022, he said he “discovered another $100,000 of funds misappropriated from the BAC (Business Analytics Center) account.” And two months earlier, according to the complaint, the business school’s director of finance recommended Werle “sweep” certain funds to hide them from forfeiture.
The lawsuit claims Werle was reprimanded for “unprofessional” behavior after bringing the various issues to his superiors, as administrators chose to discipline the “squeaky wheel” rather than the people “caught misappropriating funds.” In total, Werle claims to have identified more than $250,000 of misappropriations.
The audit
Georgia Tech later conducted an independent audit at Werle’s request, uncovering “further misappropriations on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars” across the business school, according to the lawsuit.
The audit was followed by an investigation by Georgia Tech’s ethics and compliance office, which interviewed more than two dozen people while examining allegations of more than $600,000 in misappropriated funds. That investigation, according to a May 2023 report, found “no evidence of intent to deceive” behind the allegedly misappropriated monies.
Georgia Tech spokesperson Blair Meeks said leadership put updates in place to address issues identified in the audit. “We take these findings very seriously,” Meeks said in an email. “It is critically important for us follow closely all procedures established by the State of Georgia and the University System of Georgia.”
Werle, who has worked at Georgia Tech for seven years, was placed on indefinite administrative leave in September 2023 and has not been allowed to return to work since, according to the complaint.
His lawsuit filed in Fulton County Superior Court accuses the University System of Georgia — which oversees Georgia Tech and all the state’s public universities — of violating the Georgia Whistleblower Act. The USG declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Werle’s complaint requests that his employment be reinstated and that he be compensated for damages.
The feds vs. Georgia Tech
Meanwhile, Georgia Tech is still battling a separate whistleblower case originally from 2022 wherein a current and former member of Tech’s cybersecurity team allege it did not follow cybersecurity rules required for U.S. Department of Defense contracts. The federal government joined the case last year, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia filed a 99-page “complaint-in-intervention” in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.
Whistleblowers Christopher Craig and Kyle Koza allege Georgia Tech repeatedly failed to meet security standards that certain researchers found “burdensome.” Those researchers brought in significant federal funding, part of the billions of dollars in federal contracts Tech has entered over the years, primarily with the Defense Department, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit complaint compares those researchers to “star quarterbacks” who used their “power on campus” to skirt cybersecurity rules they found onerous.
Last summer, Georgia Tech said it was “extremely disappointed” by the Department of Justice’s filing and that it would “vigorously dispute it in court.” The school added that there was no breach of information, and no data was leaked.
“This case has nothing to do with confidential information or protected government secrets. The government told Georgia Tech that it was conducting research that did not require cybersecurity restrictions, and the government itself publicized Georgia Tech’s groundbreaking research findings,” the school said.
The lawsuit is still pending.
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