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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Rabbi Paul Silbersher said he wanted to scream after reading the scathing findings of a Missouri audit of the Kansas City charter high school he helped found - Hope Academy.

At the time he said the people responsible should be prosecuted for what the auditor uncovered, including lying about student attendance, failing to bid contracts and even charging students to graduate.

Although no one has been criminally charged, the Missouri Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Hope Academy and its employees, demanding that they return nearly $4 million they fraudulently took in taxpayer money.

What happened to the money? The Missouri State Auditor's report, released late last year, and a state Department of Education records point the fingers at two former employees: Superintendent Vonnelle Middleton and her administrative assistant Lisa Sowell-Anderson.

The audit said Middleton ordered employees not to hook up software that would have accurately tracked attendance. Sowell-Anderson then reported those false numbers to the State Department of Education.

FOX 4 Problem Solvers tried to repeatedly speak with both women, but neither returned our calls or came to the door.

Auditors said Hope Academy was paid millions of dollars in state taxpayer money that it never deserved by inflating attendance records. What happened to all that money? According to state records, Hope Academy used much of it to buy and remodel school buildings across the metro -- the majority of which sat empty.

The school also spent more than $500,000 to remodel the upstairs of Zion Grove Baptist Church, which it used as a school for its first two years. Former founder and employee John Schuchart said the start the relationship with Zion Grove was troublesome.

"To my knowledge, there didn't seem to be any bidding done with this contract work," Shuchart said.

Former Kansas City Council Member Michael Brooks is the pastor of the church and was the chairman of the board of Hope Academy when his church was selected to house the school. He resigned from the board shortly afterwards and received a personal service contract with the school for about $26,000, according to school records.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City sponsored the school. Charter School Director Phyllis Chase said an audit paid for by her department discovered there was most likely cheating on 30 standardized tests.

"We discovered that there were similar scores for a number of students and that sent out a big red flag," Chase said.

In 2013 she moved to shut Hope Academy down. When the state closed the school the following year, it had nearly $4 million in the bank, but failed to return most of that money to the state.

"It makes you sick if this was done purposefully that someone would do it," Chase said.

In the end the real losers are the students, Chase said, who trusted the school that never came close to fulfilling the promise of its name.