Alberto Carvalho and Debra Kerr’s roots date back to their days together in the Florida education community.

Carvalho was the charismatic leader of Miami-Dade County schools, and Kerr was a well-known figure in the private sector, working for firms doing business with school systems.

Carvalho gave the keynote speech at a summit for superintendents sponsored by Age of Learning, where Kerr worked at the time as the head of sales.

Over the years, Kerr shared Carvalho’s Facebook posts to her own page, congratulating him on winning an award and often using the hashtag “#leadershipmatters.” Three years ago, Kerr posed for a smiling photo beside Carvalho, who had become the superintendent in Los Angeles, during what she described as his “brilliant” opening of schools address.

In 2023, Carvalho and Kerr became linked through another project. By now, Carvalho was head of the Los Angeles Unified School District and Kerr was working with AllHere, a Boston-based startup that promised a revolutionary tool in the form of a chatbot that would provide tailored academic guidance and other help to students and families — putting the district at the leading edge of artificial intelligence in the field of education.

But the multimillion-dollar project failed within months of its partial launch. Then, the company went bankrupt and its chief executive was accused by federal prosecutors of fraud. This week, FBI agents searched the homes of Carvalho and Kerr as part of an investigation that sources confirmed is connected to AllHere. The LAUSD headquarters also was searched.

LAUSD placed Carvalho on indefinite administrative leave Friday, clouding his future helming the nation’s second-largest school district.

Authorities have not provided any details about the scope of the investigation or named any targets. Carvalho and Kerr could not be reached for comment. But a review of court records and other documents offers a window into how a technology project envisioned as reshaping education crumbled amid allegations of fraud.

‘Award-winning solution’

Joanna Smith-Griffin founded AllHere while at a startup incubator at Harvard University in 2016, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. Her stated goal was to use technology to reduce absenteeism in school.

On the startup’s now-defunct website, Smith-Griffin described herself as a former district attendance and family engagement coordinator whose experience “revealed the frustrations that often arise when trying to connect students with the right support at the right time.”

“At AllHere, our mission is to strengthen student outcomes and boost staff effectiveness by offering easy-to-use, technology-powered, evidence-based education support services,” the website read.

AllHere’s tech included an automated text messaging service that would send “nudges” to parents in an effort to improve their child’s classroom attendance, according to an indictment charging Smith-Griffin. She later pivoted the startup’s strategy to using AI technology to develop a “chatbot” that would interact with students and their families.

On its website, AllHere touted itself as an “award-winning solution” and “the only digital application powered by artificial intelligence and built by educators that is independently proven to positively impact stakeholder communication, family engagement, and student achievement.”

Amid the company’s purported success, Smith-Griffin’s public profile also grew. In 2021, she was on Forbes magazine’s coveted “30 Under 30” list of leaders in the education field.

“My goal over the next 12 months is a land grab,” Smith-Griffin told Forbes. “We want to help students get to school every day and put them on the track to success.”

AllHere had client school districts in different parts of the country, but authorities later alleged that AllHere exaggerated its business success.

In late 2022, Miami-Dade County Public Schools awarded AllHere a three-year, $1.8-million contract to create communication software to help at-risk students. The bidding process for the project began in the latter part of 2021, while Carvalho was still superintendent of that district, and the school board approved the agreement in October 2022, about eight months after he left.

Carvalho has said he had nothing to do with that contract. It is unclear what role Kerr played in securing the deal and whether she talked to Carvalho about the project.

The following year, AllHere entered into what became a $6-million work order with LAUSD to develop a new AI chatbot, “Ed,” prosecutors said. The company’s greater value proposition was looking forward, as AllHere was to manage, moderate and continue to develop Ed — and partner with LAUSD in marketing and licensing the product to other school systems.

Carvalho also denied involvement in the selection of AllHere in LAUSD. In an AllHere bankruptcy hearing in September 2024, Kerr said she helped the company close the lucrative deal in L.A.

In a splashy announcement in August 2023, Carvalho claimed “Ed” would be LAUSD’s newest student advisor, programmed to tell parents about their child’s grades, tests results and attendance. The official debut was in March 2024: At a party at the Roybal Learning Center, dignitaries gave speeches, a mascot paraded in an Ed suit and a DJ spun tunes.

But AllHere already was falling apart behind the scenes.

Company collapse

Around May 2024, Smith-Griffin, the sole person providing financial updates to investors and the company’s board of directors, was late sending AllHere’s first-quarter financial report.

According to prosecutors, that prompted an associate at one of the investment companies to contact AllHere’s accountant for the report, which showed AllHere’s annual recurring revenue was millions of dollars below what Smith-Griffin reported to investors in prior quarters.

Two of AllHere’s major investors, along with the startup’s outside financial accountant, began questioning Smith-Griffin on the discrepancy.

Prosecutors allege that in an attempt to conceal the truth, Smith-Griffin in May 2024 created a fake email address for a real AllHere financial consultant and sent additional false financial and client information to investors.

That June, the board of directors removed Smith-Griffin’s access to AllHere bank and corporate accounts and terminated her as chief executive, prosecutors said. The company furloughed the majority of its employees, shuttered its operations and filed for bankruptcy the following month, according to the indictment.

On Sept. 4, 2024, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York served upon the bankruptcy trustee a grand jury subpoena seeking certain information and documents. In November, authorities arrested Smith-Griffin at her family’s home in North Carolina. In the indictment, prosecutors accused her of engaging in a scheme to defraud investors starting around November 2020.

As Smith-Griffin sought millions from investors, prosecutors allege that she misrepresented her startup’s revenue, cash and customer base in marketing materials and financial statements. Smith-Griffin allegedly told investors AllHere earned approximately $3.7 million in revenue in 2020 from 92 total customers. In later rounds of financing, she allegedly inflated the revenue for that year to $6.8 million.

In reality, prosecutors said, the startup generated approximately $11,000 that year. And, according to the indictment, AllHere never had more than 31 client schools and school districts.

Smith-Griffin also allegedly misrepresented which public school districts were AllHere customers. According to the indictment, six of the eight districts she claimed as customers had no contractual relationship with AllHere. The two districts that did paid AllHere approximately $27,000 and $30,000 over the life of their contracts. The eight districts did not include LAUSD.

Prosecutors allege Smith-Griffin fraudulently obtained nearly $10 million from AllHere’s investors. She is accused of using some of those funds to put a $150,000 down payment on a house in North Carolina and to pay for her wedding expenses.

Smith-Griffin pleaded not guilty to charges of securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Her lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

Former FBI Assistant Director in Charge James E. Dennehy said in a statement at the time that Smith-Griffin’s alleged actions “impacted the potential for improved learning environments across major school districts by selfishly prioritizing personal expenses.”

“The FBI will ensure that any individual exploiting the promise of educational opportunities for our city’s children will be taught a lesson,” Dennehy added.

Bankruptcy proceedings

Kerr’s ties to AllHere came to greater public attention during the September 2024 bankruptcy hearing. Kerr is listed in Delaware bankruptcy documents as the company’s largest creditor — owed $630,000 — although that is listed as disputed.

The education website The 74 reported that during the bankruptcy hearing, Toby Jackson, AllHere’s former chief technology officer, said he had no invoices to substantiate the debt. Kerr chimed in during the hearing, stating she never was paid her commission from the first payments that LAUSD made to the startup under their contract, the website said.

“I never did collect any commissions and it’s in the contract based on commission percentages that would have been made on any sales accrued,” Kerr told the trustee, according to The 74.

Neither the FBI nor confidential sources identified Kerr as a target of an investigation. Attempts to contact her were unsuccessful.

In AllHere’s bankruptcy filing, one of the largest assets listed was the LAUSD contract — valued at $2.88 million.

The indictment and collapse of AllHere was an embarrassment for Carvalho and the school system but did not appear to represent a major financial exposure. The school system spent about $3 million with the company for work completed as part of contracts worth up to $6 million over five years. By comparison, the district’s budget this year is $18.8 billion.

In an emailed statement, Miami-Dade County Public Schools officials said the district is aware of an investigation involving Carvalho but declined to comment. A spokesperson did not answer a question about whether the Miami-Dade schools system made any payments to AllHere on its $1.89-million contract, instead routing it as a public record request that will take additional time to fulfill.