Well, this sure seems worth 40 years in prison. Not!

I am ALWAYS amazed when people are caught embezzling. What are people thinking when they keep putting their hand in the till? Oh, I suppose the first thing they do is borrow a few bucks, thinking they'll do a Wimpie, and gladly pay on Tuesday for a hamburger today. And when no one notices that they didn't pay those few bucks back, it just gets easier to skim a little more. And to skim a little more, a little more often.

My latest favorite embezzler is Thomas Clasby, Jr.,the former long-term director of the Department of Elder Affairs for the city of Quincy, Mass.

Interestingly, Clasby only began reaching into the Quincy cookie jar in the last five years of his 25 year tenure with the city. Unless that's all they've gotten him on so far. (He was implicated a while back in some behind the scenes wheeling-dealing to get his parents into an affordable elder housing unit they weren't entitled to, but that wheelio-dealio was apparently not criminal. Just shady.)

Anyway, during those golden years of career, he manage to skim tens of thousands of dollars that should have been going to helping legit golden years folks get more out of their golden years. 

What's always fascinating to me is what embezzlers spend their easily but ill-gotten gains on.

There was the pee-wee hockey league treasurer who spent a ton on Pandora bracelets and beads. And I seem to recall one high-flyer who stole nearly a million from her company, and used part of it to pay for Burt Bacharach to perform at her brother's wedding. (The look of love may have been in Burt's eyes, but there was definitely some larceny in that sister's heart.)

Thomas Clasby Jr.'s list of spending spree items did not disappoint.

He booked studio time to record himself recording love ballads for his wife. (The sessions - nearly $9K worth - were billed as spending on a "Senior Musical Workshop.") The love songs for wifey may have been kind of awwwwww sweet, if he hadn't used other money to pay for a used Prius for a "longtime female friend." He also had her apartment cleaned to the tune of $325, which was billed as "sanitizing" for the "Council on Aging."

He also used $1,658 to lacquer and frame a self-portrait. Wonder if that went to the wife or the "longtime female friend?"

Not that we know where most of the money he scooped up went, as a lot of it was pure cash grift. He made off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of cash receipts for monies collected at various events, for various purposes, at Quincy's Elder Center, including coffee-and money that came in through the center's cafe. 

Clasby also had a NY friend's phony consulting company bill for all sorts of never provided services. Most of the payments went to Clasby, who acted as his own bagman an picke up the dough "during meetups at a Massachusetts rest stop, a ferry terminal in Bridgeport, Conn., and a location in Queens, N.Y., prosecutors said."

My favorite Clasby expenditure was on steak tips. Lots of steak tips. 

According to the indictment, he used city funds between May 2022 and April 2024 to pay for more than $2,200 in bourbon steak tips for himself that were ordered from a cafe at the Kennedy Center, where the agency is located.

The indictment said the city paid four invoices for the steak tips, which Clasby “took for himself.” Payments were made for 30 pounds of steak tips in May 2022, 45 pounds in November 2022, 30 pounds in August 2023, and 48 pounds last April. (Source: Boston Globe)

Forty-eight pounds of steak tips? Par-tay at the Clasbys!

Because the charges involve mail and wire fraud, and interstate transporation of stolen property - pickups at the Bridgeport ferry terminal - the charges are Federal. And involve hefty sentences and fines. Ten or twenty years, depending on the count; several fines of up to $250K. (Source: US Attorney's Office)

(Imagine what he would have faced if, say, he'd fomented a riot and tried to interfere with the government. Oh, never mind.)

Thomas Clasby, Jr. is 60. He's not going to do 40 years in the slammer. He's not going to pay $750K in fines. But were the self portrait and the steak tips worth whatever sentence he ends up with? I can only imagine he's sitting there thinking not. (Bet if he's singing to himself, it's not Tom Rush's No Regrets.)