A Texas high school basketball coach has been arrested and charged with masterminding a million-dollar scheme to facilitate fraudulent teaching certificates.
Vincent Grayson, a winning coach who led Houston Booker T. Washington’s boys basketball squad to its first UIL state championship appearance in 2023, was identified as the leader of a criminal enterprise that corralled more than $1,090,000 since May 2020, according to Harris County felony chief prosecutor Mike Levine.
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Grayson was one of five people charged in connection with a teacher-certification cheating ring that led to illegally certified teachers working in Texas schools, District Attorney Kim Ogg said.
Also charged in the scheme were Washington assistant principals Nicholas Newton, 35, and Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22, a proctor, Tywana Gilford Mason, 51, the former director/VA certifying official at the Houston Training and Education Center; and LaShonda Roberts, 39, an assistant principal at Yates High School in Houston ISD.
According to Harris County court records, Grayson was arrested and taken into custody Monday afternoon with a bond of $500,000. Grayson, 57, was also the school’s athletics director, so his rising career is in shambles after this discovery.
During a press conference on Monday, it was reported that Grayson’s scheme probably accounted for more than the $1.09M earnings reported through a police investigation that traced payments on Zelle and CashApp.
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Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg explained how the scam operated, saying applicants would “pay $2,500 for a proxy to take the test for them.”
It wasn’t an advanced or intricate scheme. Rather brazen and disrespectful of the codes of trust in these situations.
They would arrive at the testing site, sign in and then move on with the rest of their day while a hired proxy, Newton, would step in and actually take the test. So basically these were unvetted people with no credentials paying to have access to children.
That was Ogg’s main concern.
“To me, the damage is not just to the education system, which is under great duress right now, but it’s actually to the families of the children who go to those schools, who trust the government to educate their kids and keep them safe for eight hours a day,” Ogg said.
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Quiet cash was at the center of this operation as the testing proctors, Gifford Mason and later Wilhite received bribery payments to act as if they were oblivious and helped facilitate the cheating, according to Ogg.
The scheme fell apart when Newton got sloppy and greedy and was nabbed taking a test at TACTIX, a site that was used after the Houston Training and Education Center closed in mid-2023.
“In fact, when he was caught red-handed in February of 2024 he was logged into one test,” reports said, “He said to investigators, ‘Well look at the screen behind you,’ and he was logged in as a different person taking another test on another terminal that same day.”
County Harris officials say they worked in conjunctions with the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Texas Education Agency to nab the perpetrators.
Alexandra Elizondo, the chief of public affairs and communication for Houston ISD, said in a separate press conference Monday that all three district employees were immediately terminated. She added that any teacher hired by her organization would be fired if implicated in similar wrongdoings.
“The conduct in question is completely unacceptable and completely against every one of the values of what we believe about teacher certification, and it is unacceptable at that,” Elizondo said.
Participants Shared Hundreds of Thousands Of Dollars Gained From Illegal Scheme: Grayson Paid Proxies 20 percent Of Money He Swindled
Gifford Mason made more than $125,000, paid through 350 digital transactions, authorities say.
Newton caked up too, swindling almost $200K, according to reports, from May 2020 to February 2024. The disgraced assistant principal allegedly took more than 430 fraudulent tests, authorities estimate.
The proctor, Wilhite was paid $250 in cash each time she let the cheating occur on her watch, the indictments say.
Roberts was the master recruiter alleged to have pulled at least 90 teachers into the illegal operation and blessed Grayson with $267, 000 in the process.
Grayson Built A Winning Program, Fired Right Before First Scrimmage On Nov. 8
Booker T. Washington High School enjoyed much success under Grayson, who was a Coach of the Year nominee last season. He guided the Eagles to 20 or more wins in the past three years (27-5, 29-8 during the state title run, and 29-5).
Grayson’s voice was also respected among the coaching ranks in Texas. In the summer of 2023, he was one of the respected speakers at the Texas High School Coaches Association in Houston. Later in the year he won the ARS H-Town High School Sports 2022-23 Coach of the Year, a program that aired on CW39 in Houston.
The icing on the cake of a magical season was when the City of Houston honored the Booker T. Washington basketball team at a city council meeting.
Fast Forward two years and Grayson’s legacy has been erased overnight in an embarrassing scandal and educational and institutional failure of epic proportions. Once again proving that anything is for sale.
By Monday night, Grayson’s teacher page for Booker T. Washington had been scrubbed and the school must find a new basketball coach in short order with an opening game against Houston Furr looking on Nov. 11.
Stay tuned for how the punishments and charges are dispersed for the five shameless Texas educators allegedly turned criminal conmen.