On Sunday, Tieqiang Ding, the owner of Putnam Science Academy (PSA), a private high school long mired in allegations of fraud, embezzlement, and financial mismanagement, announced PSA’s closure. Before the school’s closure, Ding and his wife, Julia Fang, accrued millions in unpaid debts and property liens, were ordered by the State Banking Department to pay $5 million in restitution for fraud, laid off the vast majority of their staff, and saw their school stripped of its academic accreditation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC).
“It is with great sadness that I write to inform you that as of this letter, Putnam Science Academy will no longer be operating as a school,” wrote Tieqiang Ding, the school’s owner, in a letter to staff. “This is very regrettable and I want you to know that I value your contributions to this institution and your service to our students. Should you need a letter of recommendation, please let me know and I will be happy to write one for you.”
In May, three former PSA employees took to WINY Radio to discuss the school’s rapid dissolution. They said they were among the thirty employees terminated around that time and among approximately 40 staff members who hadn’t been paid since April. They alleged a chaotic situation; staff often went weeks without pay, and their healthcare had been terminated. Now, students are being left without degrees or academic credit, due to the NEASC stripping the school of its accreditation last November, leaving diplomas for the class of 2026 to not be recognized by the state. Todd Giroux, a former teacher, grant writer and business development director at PSA, said at that time that PSA’s administrators had not been transparent to students about the status of their degrees.
“We had one employee who sent a general email to alert the students of how deep the problem was,” said Giroux. “So, we’ve had a few courageous people be truthful to students, and the administration has not been.”
Yesterday, PSA’s Dean of Academics, Nichole Phelps, addressed concerns regarding the lack of accreditation in a letter sent to parents and faculty. Giroux said that “there have been students that have been rejected from college” due to this fiasco.
“They’re not issuing report cards to students, they’re not getting transcripts, and with so many international students, their I-9s will cancel and they won’t make it to their next school,” said Giroux. “So this is jamming up, you know, people we’ve written recommendation letters for. We’ve taught them all year, they paid for a degree, you know, courses and credits, and they’re not even letting these students move on to the next school — it’s truly a terrible situation.”
Phelps’ latest letter is the first time a school official has publicly admitted the school’s lack of accreditation.
“In November of 2025, the school was notified that NEASC revoked the school’s accreditation,” said Phelps. “Therefore, due to a loss of accreditation, the school also lost its status as a state approved school. This means that students who graduated in May of 2026 received a diploma that is not recognized by the State of Connecticut. It does not mean that your student’s diploma is invalid. Your student’s diploma will most likely be accepted by many employers and institutions of higher learning, there is the possibility that some domestic and international universities, some state universities, and some government employers such as police and fire departments, may not accept this diploma alone and might require your student to take additional tests, transcript review, or the GED exam in support of their diploma.”
Phelps did not respond to Inside Investigator’s request for comment. Kirsten Jussaume, a former art teacher at PSA, said she has been left unable to claim unemployment after discovering that PSA failed to pay its payroll taxes, thus improperly accounting for her as an employee.
“They told me that there was no report or form for me, from my employer, saying I worked in the state in the last three quarters, so I’m not eligible for Connecticut unemployment, because there’s no proof I worked in the state of Connecticut,” said Jussaume. “live in Massachusetts, and I’m not eligible for that either, because now it looks like I haven’t worked at all in the past year.”
Jussaume also said that despite having money for paid medical leave subtracted from her checks, Ding denied her leave several times, saying, “we don’t offer PFML.” In addition to the confusion regarding PSA, Giroux noted that there is “this other issue with the Bright School,” an online-only school that Ding operated with the assistance of two former NBA players. Giroux said that Ding’s involvement program, which received $5,000 in taxpayer funding, made it so that PSA’s teachers also had to teach online courses to “students that, honestly, their heart is not in education, they’re just paying for access to play ball.”
Despite the school’s closure and lack of accreditation, Phelps latest letter to students and parents said that the school still intends to see its athletic commitments to fruition. Last month, Tom Espinosa, PSA’s basketball coach and athletic director, announced that the school would be competing in Overtime Elite, a prestigious high school basketball league which draws the attention of college scouts.
“We will continue our amazing athletic program under the guidance of Tom Espinosa and Josh Scraba,” read Phelps’ latest letter. “Our invitation to OTE and other amazing opportunities still stands for Putnam Basketball. Our coaches will be reaching out to players once they have finalized the next steps for your student athlete.”
Giroux said he hoped the state’s Attorney General’s Office would step in.
“We need the Attorney General to unravel this very complex matter,” said Giroux.
Elizabeth Benton, spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, confirmed to Inside Investigator that the office has opened an “active consumer protection investigation” into the school. Putnam’s mayor, Barney Seney, said that the State’s Department of Labor, the IRS, the Banking Commission, and the FBI have all been investigating the school, but that officials from those agencies have largely left the town in the dark. Seney says he has long wondered when the authorities would finally shut the school down.
“I wrote the Banking Commission and Attorney General two years ago, telling them it was a Ponzi scheme, and the banking commission investigated and found that there was issues in regards to, basically the same thing, borrowing for one thing and paying off another,” said Seney. “The IRS has a $1.5 million lien on it for the last couple of years — where are these people, you know? I just feel sorry that this has been going on this long, and that no other action has been taken by different officials.”
Inside Investigator first uncovered the school’s sordid financial situation in November of 2024. Former PSA employees and investors told Inside Investigator that Ding and Fang persistently lied about their credentials as educators, and misrepresented the school’s financial situation to investors, most of whom were Chinese or Chinese-Americans. Ding inflated values to spur investment, and was alleged by one former employee to have even claimed that the school was a publicly traded entity whose shares could be purchased. Ding and Fang were accused of coercing on-the-fence investors into giving the school money before providing proper financial documentation, then avoiding communication with the investors when it was time for their loans to be repaid. Former PSA employees told Inside Investigator that Ding frequently raided funds from the school’s accounts to pay for his own personal expenses, such as his daughters’ tuition, frequently leaving staff members without pay. This culminated in the school first having its accounts frozen by the IRS sometime between 2017-2018, and then being ordered by the State’s Banking Department to pay $5 million in restitution last September.
“As a result of the information obtained during the Investigation, the Commissioner has reason to believe that Respondents have violated certain provisions of the [Connecticut Uniform Securities] Act,” read the Banking Department’s order. “The Division’s Investigation found that Respondents engaged in an affinity fraud by preying on Chinese nationals residing in China, Chinese nationals living in the United States, and Chinese Americans, and convincing them to invest in the Putnam School.”
The Banking Department’s investigation confirmed the allegations of fraud and embezzlement previously made to Inside Investigator, and a hearing was originally scheduled for November 2025, but has since been postponed to this coming September. The Department also found Ding and Fang to have committed four violations of the state’s Uniform Securities Act, which mean the may be ordered to pay an additional $400,000 in fines.
At the time of Inside Investigator’s original story, the school owed a total of $7 million; $6.54 to RaiseCrest Education Inc., a Boston-based private education company, and $560,000 to four others who had invested in the school. Presently, the school appears to have accumulated even more debt; earlier this month, Lifetime Funding LLC, a business lender, filed an ex parte pre-judgement remedy for $456,188 against PSA. The school’s various properties have since had several new liens placed against them by additional defrauded investors, as well as the IRS. Seney estimated that there are “almost $10 million worth of liens” placed against PSA’s various properties. Last Saturday, the town held a foreclosure sale for 55 Gilman St, one of PSA’s properties, but after bidders were made aware that a $1.3 million lien on the property from 2002 had been discovered in its title, the property went unsold, a matter Seyer called “very confusing.”
“That’s beyond my scope of knowledge,” said Seyer.
Seyer hoped that once the properties are auctioned off, “that another school would come in, but if that’s not the case, the property would have to be developed into apartments or reused for other forms of housing.”
Ultimately, the fiscal confusion and academic dilemma caused by PSA’s implosion were predicted by Jack, one of its former employees, back in November 2024.
“When a hammer comes down, and he [Ding] takes off, there’s going to be a standing school with an obnoxious amount of debt, and everyone needing a check,” said Jack.
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