FBI Tape Shows Hornsby Accepting Money

As soon as he walked into the hotel room, Andre J. Hornsby talked to his longtime associate about the possibility he had been followed. Hornsby, then the Prince George's County schools chief, said he had driven a circuitous route to shake any possible tail and had made a mental note of the make, model and color of cars in the parking lot.

They talked about purging Hornsby's e-mails from school system computers, and then the associate -- who was secretly cooperating in an investigation of Hornsby -- handed over $1,000. As FBI cameras rolled, Hornsby tucked the bills into his shirt pocket.

Details of the videotaped meeting at the end of 2004 were among the key disclosures in an FBI affidavit unsealed yesterday at U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. The affidavit and related documents contain a raft of new information about the corruption case prosecutors have assembled against Hornsby, who was removed from his post in Prince George's last year and indicted in August.

Hornsby's attorney, Robert C. Bonsib, declined to comment on the meeting or other specifics from the affidavit. "Dr. Hornsby maintains his innocence, and, as he has throughout, intends to vigorously defend against the allegations in a court of law," Bonsib said.

The indictment accuses Hornsby of steering a contract to a consulting company linked to the associate and of arranging for a $1 million purchase from the software company LeapFrog SchoolHouse, where his then-girlfriend was a saleswoman. In both cases, it alleges, Hornsby demanded and received kickbacks in return.

The former girlfriend, Sienna Owens, who was a sales representative for Virginia, has pleaded guilty to a tax offense and is cooperating with prosecutors. Owens said in court that she collected $20,000 from the commission on the purchase, a sum she said she split with Hornsby.

The affidavit, signed by FBI Special Agent John M. Sheridan, does not identify the female associate at the hotel, but in the context of the events it describes, she appears to be Cynthia Joffrion, who worked with Hornsby in Yonkers, N.Y., and in Houston before that. Joffrion has previously declined to comment and did not respond to a message left at her home yesterday.

According to the affidavit, the associate appears to have been a reluctant participant in Hornsby's alleged misconduct. In fact, Sheridan wrote, the associate approached the district attorney's office in Westchester County, N.Y., in 1999 to complain about Hornsby, triggering a previously undisclosed criminal investigation in which dozens of meetings or phone calls with Hornsby were taped.

A spokeswoman with the district attorney's office said the status of that investigation could not be quickly determined yesterday.

According to the associate, when Hornsby was negotiating with Apple Computer Inc. over a possible purchase by the Yonkers school system, he required the company to donate computers to the National Alliance of Black School Educators, of which he was president, for the deal to be consummated, Sheridan wrote. Two other vendors were also required to financially support the educators group to win contracts with Yonkers, the agent wrote.

The associate also said that Hornsby ordered her to send computers that belonged to the Yonkers school system to Hornsby's relatives and that he threatened to fire her if she did not do so, Sheridan wrote in the affidavit.

Hornsby hired the associate again after he arrived in Prince George's, Sheridan wrote, ultimately involving her in the consulting contract to help secure funds under a federal program known as E-Rate. Hornsby once told the associate that he expected a kickback of $150,000 in the arrangement, the affidavit says.

In late 2004, in the weeks leading to the meeting at the Bowie hotel, Hornsby had a series of cryptic conversations -- on a recorded line -- with the associate, who by then had contacted the FBI, the affidavit says.

On Nov. 9, it says, several days after reports circulated that the FBI was investigating, Hornsby instructed the associate not to withdraw more than $4,000 at a time from a bank account and then said: "Let's not talk. Have you read the [news]papers?"

On Dec. 3, the associate asked how much money she should bring to pay him. Hornsby replied, "I like my birthday," in an apparent reference to the number seven, the date of his birth, meaning $7,000, Sheridan wrote.

They met at the hotel Dec. 20. At that videotaped meeting, the affidavit says, Hornsby and the associate decided that $144,000 with a down payment of $1,000 was appropriate payment to Hornsby for arranging for the contract award.