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The former head of the machine shop at the University of Iowa’s Department of Physics and Astronomy has been accused of pocketing nearly $1 million that should have gone to the university, according to a 305-page state audit released Wednesday.
The shop manager, Brian Busch, allegedly failed to tell his employer that he was the owner of a company called D3Signtech, through which he earned $943,635 between 2017 and 2021 by using university equipment and staff labor to complete projects for an outside firm. The machine shop is able to take contracts for projects to fund its own operations, but the revenue was instead deposited into Busch’s personal and business accounts.
“He would have employees handle the work on university-owned machines while on the university’s clock,” state auditor Rob Sand said at a news conference in his office Wednesday. “At the end of the day, Mr. Busch had public employees and public equipment doing work for him instead of doing work for the university.”
The university placed Busch on paid administrative leave in 2021 before requesting the audit and said in a statement that it hopes to recoup the wages he received while on leave in light of the findings. Busch was fired last week, though he has not yet been charged with any crime.
