Boston Center for Adult Embezzlement

I am always astounded when I read about people who embezzle from their companies.

I know I’ve blogged about it frequently enough that I should have an “embezzlement” tag.

Most recently, just this past May, I posted about Michael Avenatti - fast-talking TV presence lawyer, defender of all things Stormy Daniels – who has been charged with swindling his clients.

Today’s tale o’ embezzlement is closer to home. Maybe a 10 minute walk away.

It seems that the executive director and the comptroller – because, of course, it helps to have one bad actor covering for another – of the Boston Center for Adult Education managed to syphon $1.7 from BCAE coffers.

Now the BCAE is an organization that I really should like and be involved with. Right around the corner. Lifelong learning. Community involvement. All sorts of good stuff.

But even though I look through their offerings on occasion, there’s never any course that I want to take. The last time I took something there was in the early 1970’s, when I took a seminar on Boston politics conducted by Barney Frank, then a state rep and later a U.S. Congressman. Basically, we sat around while Barney monologued, and it was all very entertaining. But I haven’t been back since.

Still, to read that trusted, in-charge employees had had their mitts so deeply in the till…Wow. Just wow.

Susan Brown was the ED, and her skim /scam was setting up her partner (partner in the romantic, personal sense), Karen Kalfian, with payments for allegedly non-existing marketing services. This was to the tune of $565K. Nice non-work if you can get it!

Mark Mitchell was the comptroller and he was an even bigger greed head.

Almost $900,000 in checks allegedly were written by the comptroller to himself, and more than $300,000 to groups for his personal benefit, including a youth baseball team in Saugus that he managed. (Source: Boston Globe)

Nice to see that Mitchell had such community spirit!

These folks were completely brazen. Not only were the stealing away, and lying about it, they were also falsifying documents to show to their board. Among other things they faked were the 990 forms that nonprofits have to file with the IRS. Because Mitchell and Brown weren’t actually filing these forms, BCAE lost it’s nonprofit status.

Last June, the center’s board members discovered their organization had lost its tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, court records show. Mitchell and Brown told them it was an IRS mistake and in September Brown gave the board a letter that appeared to be from the IRS saying all was well, records show.

It was dated July 25, 2018. Investigators later found the same letter in a Word document on Mitchell’s computer and believe it was falsified, [prosecutor Julien] Mundele wrote.

Mitchell told investigators he and Brown “would often fabricate the financial information” together, Mundele wrote.

We hear a lot about the importance of workplace collaboration. Guess it’s not all for the good!

Brown claims that she had no idea that Mitchell was writing weekly checks to Kalfian. (“Shocked, I’m shocked…”) Kalfian, for her part, claimed that she did strategic marketing work for BCAE, and “that it was the only client her marketing company had.” But when asked to expand on what she actually did for BCAE, all Kalfian could come up with was “marketing.”

She may have had more to say to the investigators who were interviewing her in the home she shared with Brown. But as the prosecutor reported,

“At this point in the conversation, Brown walked into the residence and ended the conversation by stating that they wanted an attorney present

Sounds like that was an excellent idea.

All three have somewhat diversified professional portfolios.

Mitchell was a member of the Saugus (town north of Boston) Board of Selectman. He’s been accused of dipping into campaign funds to cover some $15K worth of personal expenses.

Brown and Kalfian – before they lucked into the BCAE scheme – owned an embroidery business in their town, Marblehead. (Like Saugus, Marblehead is north of Boston. Unlike Saugus, Marblehead is charming, quaint, and affluent. Just the sort of place that could support an embroidery shop.)

If Brown and Kalfian end up doing time, embroidery might be a nice calming pastime to resume. That is, unless the needles are too pointed, the metal hoops are forbidden because you could turn them into a shiv, and the embroidery thread could have been hoarded until enough was saved to make a getaway ladder. (Don’t laugh. There actually was a jail break in which the escapee used a dental floss ladder to climb down to freedom.)

It’ll be interesting to see how this all turns out.

Meanwhile, I checked out the fall catalog of BCAE. Alas, still nothing I’m interested in taking. Maybe I should sign up to teach a course in interesting embezzlement cases…

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A tip of the Pink Slip hat to my sister Kath, who pointed this story my way. Knowing my interest in embezzlement, she also sent me a link to an article on a fellow who, in his capacity as a bookkeeper, managed to steal well over $1M from a mom-and-pop soundproofing business and a pediatrician’s practice. He gambled it all away. As one does.

What is wrong with these people? I know we’re all supposed to have a bit of larceny in our hearts, but honestly…