Rio Rancho High teacher summoned in $60,000 robotics embezzlement case

A Rio Rancho High School teacher was criminally summoned after investigators said robotics equipment worth more than $58,000 was taken to Big Brother’s Bricks for appraisal without school permission. The allegation, now described as second-degree felony embezzlement, places a high-value student program at the center of a school accountability case with taxpayer and student consequences.

Publicly visible reporting identified the teacher as Denny Marquez, 58, of Albuquerque. Court records show he was summoned on May 17, and the equipment tied to the case was valued at nearly $60,000. What may have looked at first like a property dispute became more serious once Rio Rancho Public Schools investigators told police the robotics materials were removed and taken out for appraisal without authorization.

The case matters well beyond one classroom because robotics is not a side activity at Rio Rancho High. Rio Rancho Public Schools lists Robotics as part of its Career Technical Education and STEM offerings at the high school, alongside PLTW engineering, PLTW computer science and PLTW biomedical science. That means the equipment at issue sat inside a formal academic pathway, not an informal club shelf. When hardware used for that kind of program disappears or is moved outside the normal chain of custody, the damage can ripple through coursework, student projects and competition preparation.

That is especially true in robotics, where teams often rely on specialized parts, tools and controls that are costly to replace and difficult to duplicate on short notice. FIRST, which runs Robotics Competition for students ages 14 to 18, describes the program as one in which high-school teams design, program and build industrial-sized robots. In a district the size of Rio Rancho Public Schools, which serves nearly 17,000 students and employs about 2,300 staff members, the stewardship of specialized equipment is part of the promise families expect when they invest trust and tax dollars in public education.

Rio Rancho High School, at 301 Loma Colorado Dr. NE, enrolls 2,554 students, making it one of the district’s largest campuses and a visible center for STEM education in Sandoval County. The district office is at 500 Laser Rd NE in Rio Rancho. The case also lands in a community with deep robotics roots, including the legacy of Russ Fisher-Ives and RoboRAVE, and local programs such as R4Creating that work with students across age levels. For Rio Rancho families, the allegation is not just about missing property. It is about whether a valued STEM pipeline was protected, and whether the district’s controls were strong enough to keep a major student resource from being removed without permission.