New York Paralegal Blog

INDIANAPOLIS – Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS), the company under contract with the State of Indiana to operate many of Indiana’s public benefits programs, will pay $55,000 to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The EEOC had charged in its suit (Civil Action No. 1:11-cv-00015-PPS-RBC in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division) that ACS and Alpha Rae Personnel, Inc., the staffing firm that supports the company, violated federal law by refusing to accommodate an employee’s known disabilities and by terminating her assignment to ACS instead. Such conduct violates the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement. A consent decree agreed to by the EEOC, ACS and Alpha Rae and entered by the court requires that for...

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and ROSE GILL HEARN, the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation("DOI"), announced today that LATIF ABDULMALIK, a retired project manager for construction projects with the New York City Administration For Children's Services ("ACS"), pleaded guilty today in Manhattan federal court to being involved in a bribery scheme in which ABDULMALIK used his position as a project manager to assist a company called Synergy in securing over $1 million dollars in construction contracts from ACS. According to the Indictment and statements made during today's guilty plea proceeding: During 2005 and 2006, ABDULMALIK, in his position as an ACS project manager for construction projects at ACS child care facilities with federal Health and Human Services ("HHS") Head Start programs, received thousands of dollars from representatives of Synergy in exchange for assist...

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the arrest of a former New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) worker for falsifying public records in order to cover up her failure to perform required home visits. According to the complaint, Stephanie Sabouni, 27, of Brooklyn, was employed by ACS as a Child Protective Specialist from October 2005 through June 2007. At the time of the allegations, Sabouni was working in the Educational Neglect Unit of ACS, which handles neglect cases relating to chronic school truancy. When assigned a case alleging neglect, Sabouni was required to visit the child or children at home within 48 hours. Sabouni allegedly failed to make the required visits in several of her assigned cases. To cover her tracks she made false entries into the ACS computer system reflecting that she had made home visits to several families with whom she never actually met. “Covering up misdeeds by faking official computer records is a serious crime, and this...