In the latest revelation stemming from a 2025 audit of Tulsa Public Schools, District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler and Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced the filing of 27 criminal counts against three defendants for conspiracy, embezzlement and kickbacks related to the administration of bond projects financed by local property taxes.
Former TPS director of bond and energy management Chris Hudgins, as well as Allied Engineering partners Thomas McKenna and Gayle Gwinup were each charged with 17 of the counts (embedded below), with the others divided up among the trio that prosecutors say orchestrated a “deliberate and coordinated scheme to defraud the public.”
“Tulsa Public Schools paid [Allied Engineering] $779,317.91 for projects,” Drummond said during a press conference Thursday. “[Allied Engineering] then funneled $736,878.64 of that money to M&G Consulting — Hudgins’ own private architectural firm — for work that was never performed. Hudgins also ran a private business on district time using district resources. This was not a mistake. This was not an oversight.”
A 2025 audit of TPS by State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd, which was requested by Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2022 after a pair of TPS board members wrote him a letter about their concerns, found that Hudgins, 57, conducted business through his personal company — M&G Consulting Services LLC — with a vendor. At the same time, Hudgins was in charge of bond project oversight for TPS. The audit led Drummond’s office to request a forensic audit and further investigation into TPS.
“TPS is full of dedicated teachers, administrators and students. They deserve honest stewardship of their resources. They did not get it from Hudgins,” Drummond said. “My office will continue to follow the evidence wherever it leads. Public corruption, and especially corruption that harms children and betrays voters, will not be tolerated on my watch.”
Asked when TPS employees became aware of the scheme, Drummond argued that other administrators were not to blame owing to the sophistication of the scheme.
“The scheme is remarkable. And I do not believe that any administrator could perceive and recognize the nature of this scheme,” Drummond said. “If you think about it, you have the person in charge of all these issues, Mr. Hudgins, as the director of bond and emergency management. So he is overseeing the distribution of all monies, and he is the one approving contracts. So he approved a contract to an entity that did no work, and yet documented everything up. If you look in the files, they are complete. There are documents, architectural renderings, but there was not work done. And then a kickback scheme where he effectively got 95 percent of all dollars. So I have no criticism for any administrator or leader of Tulsa Public Schools because it was a very well-developed scheme.”
‘Conflict of interest’ outlined
Auditors reviewed Hudgins’ TPS emails and found that he was conducting M&G business with TPS vendors using district resources and emails that indicated “Hudgins spent time working on M&G-related business during regular TPS work hours.”
According to the audit, Hudgins’ role at TPS put him in a position to manage bond budgets and make key decisions for construction projects, including vendor selection. Some work that was awarded to vendors was subcontracted to his firm, auditors wrote.
At the center of the auditor’s findings regarding Hudgins was his relationship with Allied Engineering, which had received more than $8.4 million from TPS between September 2015 and July 2024.
“Hudgins was responsible for managing bond budgets, including projects Allied was hired to complete,” auditors wrote, noting that he also instructed the firm on what to bill to TPS.
Founded in 1999, Allied Engineering is now listed as “dissolved” in state corporate records, and the firm’s simple HTML website — which lacks basic padding and spacing — features an About Page that dubiously proclaims the company’s accomplishments, or lack thereof.
“Numbers speak for themselves,” a heading on the Allied Engineering site states. “0 Clients. 0 Years of Experience. 0 Completed Projects.”
While those statistics reflect webmaster oversights, other content — including a Projects Page that discusses work for FEMA and contains a photo seemingly of Booker T. Washington High School — reveals how the firm led by McKenna, 61, and Gwinup, 72, portrayed itself while subcontracting work back to Hudgins.
“AEG leadership thrives on challenges of both the projects and the education each project brings to our employees,” the site states. “Our success is measured by the client’s next projects. Founding partners brought together in 1999 to form a partnership that has endured time in the industry.”
While auditors wrote that the extent of the work M&G and Hudgins provided for Allied is unknown, they found that in 2019 Allied was paid $812,772 by TPS and “reported non-employee compensation to Hudgins totaling $319,024.” At the time, Hudgins was drawing a $120,000 salary from the district.
That same year, he signed a liability insurance application and listed the same work address for M&G and TPS. He also listed his five largest projects in the previous five years as architect work on TPS locations, for which he received $290,000 in fees.
“The relationship between Hudgins’ role as the executive director of bonds and energy management, his work at M&G as a sub-contractor through Allied, while Allied was under contract doing business for TPS, represents a conflict of interest as defined in TPS Policy 4409. These transactions also raise concern of possible violations of statute,” auditors wrote.
Neither Drummond nor Kunzweiler would confirm Thursday whether the public should expect additional charges stemming from the forensic audit of TPS.
“This is one step in the process, and I am confident that there will be continued investigation,” Kunzweiler said. “But I will tell you right now, as the general would certainly tell you as well, we’re not going to be sharing with you what is going on in regard to the investigation. Just know that your voices have been heard and work was being done, and this is a product of part of the investigation that was really initiated by school board members who had concerns and then followed up through the citizens of our community, and those efforts have produced these charges.”
While Kunzweiler did not name any TPS board member by name, former TPS board member E’lena Ashley attended Thursday’s press conference. Ashley and former board member Jennettie Marshall — now a candidate for state superintendent — wrote to Stitt in July 2022 asking him to call for an audit of TPS.
On Wednesday night, with Thursday’s press conference already announced but details remaining unknown, Marshall discussed the fight for “accountability” at TPS during a debate with her Democratic opponent in the June 16 primary.
“What we are lacking in Oklahoma (is) accountability and transparency,” Marshall said. “What happened with Tulsa Public Schools was about bringing a system that was already failing children to a point of accountability and transparency.”
Asked to explain why the charges against Hudgins, McKenna and Gwinup were filed by information instead of by grand jury indictment, Drummond said he wanted to file before a statute of limitations for the kickback charges ran out.
“For example, the kickback statute of limitations is narrower in time than an embezzlement statute of limitation, so what you’ve seen with charges is two through 17 relate to embezzlement, and there is a longer statute of limitation on those. Charges 18 through 27 relate to kickbacks, which has a narrower statute of limitations,” Drummond said. “We didn’t want to lose the statute of limitations on kickbacks, so we filed. Now, we will more likely than not amend for additional charges inside the statute of limitations.”
‘I was grown up under the old man’s word’
Probable cause affidavits (embedded below) for the trio shine additional light on the scheme. Investigators found that Allied Engineering, TPS and M&G have had a relationship spanning more than 20 years. They found that upon Gwinup’s retirement in 2023, McKenna — through Starr Design Group — assumed Allied’s contracts. According to the affidavit, Allied Engineering was selected through competitive bidding processes to provide engineering and architectural work, despite lacking a licensed architect. Engineering services were bid twice, in 2015 and 2021, according to the affidavit. Under those two contracts, TPS spent more than $9 million with Allied Engineering.
Andrew Gouge, an agent with the Attorney General Office’s Multi-County Grand Jury Unit, wrote the affidavit. He alleges that Hudgins used his position and influence to steer contracts toward Allied Engineering.
“Hudgins used his position and influence to ensure Allied was placed in a role that would aid him in personally profiting from the TPS bond projects,” Gouge wrote. “Hudgins conspired with Allied and Starr, to have them subcontract with M&G to mask the payments and take money from TPS for work that was not performed for the projects.”
Investigators pointed to five reroofing projects as examples:
- Council Oak Elementary School;
- Peary Elementary School;
- Lanier Elementary School;
- Disney Elementary School; and
- MacArthur Elementary School.
Gouge found that Hudgins emailed Allied Engineering’s office manager with instructions to send him invoices billed at 100 percent. Four invoices, for Council Oak, Lanier, Perry and Disney, were paid to M&G at $130,836.75. Payment for the MacArthur project was made separately and in conjunction with payment for an HVAC renovation project at Edison Preparatory School, a payment that totaled $224,357.10. An additional payment was made to M&G in relation to a project at Edison for $66,735.
Investigators interviewed Gwinup on May 8. In the interview, Gwinup said Allied Engineering did not have a contract with M&G on file and that they never received deliverables from Hudgins. According to Gwinup, Hudgins would instruct Allied to submit invoices and told them the percentage rates to bill. Allied Engineering would pay M&G 95 percent of TPS payments and keep five percent for themselves, according to the affidavit. Gwinup said that the 5 percent was to account for the office manager’s work creating the invoices. For the roofing projects listed in the affidavit, TPS paid Allied Engineering $137,722.89, of which they kept $6,886.14. The remaining $130,836.75 was paid to M&G.
“The roofing projects were assigned to us to pass through to the architect to be doing the work,” Gwinup told investigators, claiming that the TPS bond office verbally told them which architect to pick and that he had “no choice.”
He further explained to investigators that there were no formal subcontracts.
“I was grown up under the old man’s word is the man’s word and when he tells you, he means it, and you should be able to count all that. So that is the way I have always operated,” Gwinup said.
According to Gwinup, he did not require typical documentation from M&G because “M&G was the head of the bond office.” He recounted that he did not recall the bond office assigning any other subcontractors to him for roofing jobs.
Ultimately, it was concluded that Hudgins abused his position of authority.
“Based upon the information listed above, Hudgins utilized his position as Executive Director of Bond and Energy Management at TPS to create a scheme, in collusion with Allied owners McKenna and Gwinup to award work to his own personal firm M&G and embezzle funds from TPS,” Gouge wrote. “He abused his position of authority to select and assign vendors to be hired under Allied’s Master Agreement contract. He then instructed Allied to submit invoices on work he did not perform or provide project deliverables to Allied and be billed to TPS. These invoices were paid by TPS under good faith wherein Allied transferred, on average, 95 percent of the funds to Hudgins’ company, M&G.”
Read the probable cause affidavits
Read the charging documents against Hudgins, McKenna and Gwinup
