Go Dragons

News from my alma mater, from Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Jeremy Roebuck:

The former head of Drexel University’s electrical engineering department was charged with theft Tuesday, three months after he stuck the school with a $190,000 tab for research money he allegedly misspent at strip clubs and on personal expenses.

Philadelphia prosecutors accused Chikaodinaka Nwankpa, 57, of spending $96,000 in federal grant funds at adult entertainment venues and sports bars between 2010 and 2017. He allegedly squandered $89,000 — funding he had secured for science, energy, and naval research — on iTunes purchases and meals.

I’ll go out on a limb and guess it was mostly on meals, but perhaps in addition to his other hobbies, Nwankpa is quite the cinephile.

Update: I completely blanked on in-app purchases for games. Something on the order of $1,000/month in IAP over this seven-year stretch would only make Nwankpa a low-level “whale” in mobile gaming. He could have easily blown a bigger chunk of the $89K on iTunes than on expensive meals. It’s Vegas, and Apple owns the biggest casino.

(Kind of hard to believe there’s only one hit for “Nwankpa” at The Triangle. A college newspaper ought to live for a story like this. I’d have gotten a month’s worth of columns out of it in my day.)

★ Wednesday, 22 January 2020