Embattled schools executive Brenda Belton hid hundreds of thousands of federal dollars from the school board, altered an e-mail to inflate a cost estimate and gave no-bid contracts to friends and family, a whistle-blower has told investigators.

Steve Kapani, 36, a financial analyst who worked for Belton, has told the D.C. Inspector General’s Office Belton was so “friendly” with several school contractors — one of whom used school computers and attended meetings in Belton’s stead — that she once changed one of Kapani’s e-mails to inflate a cost estimate from $5,000 to $55,000, sent payments to multiple vendors that were using the same federal tax identification number and that Belton concealed $307,000 in No Child Left Behind Act money from her bosses on the D.C. school board by parking it at a separate school agency.