CU Professor Pleads Guilty To Federal Charges

DENVER, CO – A University of Colorado Boulder professor in the Mechanical Engineering department faces 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to mail fraud and aiding and abetting July 10, the Denver office of the Department of Justice said.

Oleg V. Vasilyev, PhD, 50, was indicted in September by a Denver grand jury for a scheme to defraud the university and the Department of Energy (DOE) by means of an end-run around the university's protocol for managing grants. The indictment said Vasilyev deposited grant money in a secret university bank account from which he withdrew more than $204,000 for unauthorized expenses. The case was investigated by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General.

In 2006, Vasilyev applied for and obtained a multi-year grant from the Los Alamos National Laboratory for $234,000 without "knowledge or approval" of the University of Colorado's Office of Contracts and Grants, which would "customarily oversee such contract," the DOJ said in a statement. The contracts and grants office also receives a portion of funds from grants it oversees.

Vasilyev then got a staff member to open an auxiliary internal discretionary bank account at the university. He submitted invoices to LANL purportedly for a salary for himself and a graduate student. About a dozen payments between $9,000 -$30,000 were deposited in the hidden account. He then submitted vouchers, totaling more than $200,000 to be paid from the account. The university and federal investigators said a portion of those vouchers were for more than 20 unrelated personal international trips totaling $140,000 that had nothing to do with the Los Alamos research. Other unallowable expenses were dues, subscriptions, conference registration fees and out-of state travel, the DOJ said. The scheme continued until 2012.

Vasilyev agreed to make restitution of $185,879, but the university disputes the total loss from the fraudulent scheme that lasted for five or six years.

Vasilyev was arrested on Nov. 20, 2017 and posted $10,000 bond. He surrendered his passport to the court.

CU spokeswoman Deborah Mendez-Wilson was on vacation, but earlier in the week, she told the Daily Camera that said Vasilyev was on unpaid leave starting May of 2016 but then had been put on paid leave since January.

According to documents filed by his lawyer, Vasilyev, while under pre-trial release has been working in Florida.

Vasilyev's sentencing hearing will be held on Oct. 25, 2018, before U.S. District Judge William J. Martinez, the DOJ said.

Image via University of Colorado

Read the Grand Jury Indictment:

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