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The shoe exec and the glamorous Boston TV reporter: He gets nearly six years for embezzlement, she gets her name kept out of court records

A man described by his lawyers as a shy, quiet man whose greatest love was his pug, Sally, was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison this week following his admission that he embezzled $30 million over eight years from the shoemaker where he was CFO, much of which he showered on a Channel 5 reporter who had dreams of busting out of this two-bit burg.

When the Alden Shoe Co. of Middleborough discovered in 2019 that $30 million had been withdrawn from its accounts over the previous eight years, court documents say, Richard Hajjar immediately confessed and began working to recover at least some of the money for the company, including selling his Duxbury house. He immediately agreed to plead guilty when he was charged with wire fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns in federal court in April.

Although the court documents do not name her, past media accounts have identified the woman he sent much of the money to as Bianca de la Garza, a former WCVB lifestyle reporter who tried to rise above Boston, first with a TV show of her own and then with a line of cosmetics.

In its sentencing recommendation to US District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton, the US Attorney's office acknowledged Hajjar's quick confession and action to try to recoup at least some of the lost money, but called for a 74-month sentence not just to punish him, but to send a message to other white-collar criminals that their days of getting away with things are over:

Absent a substantial period of imprisonment, others inclined to engage in this sort of conduct may decide that committing a similar crime is worth the risk and resulting consequences.

The government noted that while much of the money went to "Individual 1," Hajjar also took advantage of the theft himself:

Hajjar abused and exploited the trust Alden placed in him to fatten his own piggy bank and to support his shockingly opulent lifestyle, exemplified by the ultimate status symbol - a Nantucket beach house. Put simply, his crime was fueled by greed.

Nantucket, Hajjar's attorneys wrote, in their request for a more lenient 48-month sentence, is where his downfall began.

Shy and unassuming from childhood, "Uncle Ricky" grew up a loner - but was a devoted brother and uncle, renowned for his participation in family birthdays and Christmas parties. And his pug, Sally, "quickly became a surrogate for 'the children Rick should have been lucky enough to have but never did.' " So when he first met de la Garza, he was smitten, his attorneys - including former Suffolk County DA Dan Conley - wrote. They detailed the progression from quiet man leading a quiet life to embezzler, in great detail:

When the two met, Individual 1 was a local television personality of quasi-celebrity status in the Boston area. Rick, a reserved man without a large cadre of friends – his closest companion being his dog Sally – was immediately enthralled with Individual 1's energy and magnetism. She was everything Rick was not – outgoing, dynamic, and thriving in the spotlight. To Rick, Individual 1 seemed destined for celebrity and success. However improbable, they forged an intimate but non-sexual friendship, communicating daily. Indeed, Individual 1 quickly became the center of Rick's universe. Rick, the person who once preferred to stay home and read a book on his sofa, was seen following Individual 1 around Boston and Nantucket.

Rick recalls that Individual 1's career aspirations required her to put Boston in the rear view mirror and set her sights on a brighter spotlight. This meant, among other things, starting a production company to create an eponymous television show. Launching a television show, however, was unattainably expensive, and Individual 1 needed investment capital. After countless conversations about creating this dream project, as he had done so many times throughout his life, Rick offered to help. Sight unseen, Rick agreed to invest in the fledgling production company; he was ready to pour his life savings into the project. Rick had done well in his professional career and as a stock market and real estate investor, so he thought he could afford a meaningful investment.

What Rick thought was going to be an investment of a few hundred thousand dollars transformed into a need for a million, and then millions more. But Rick did not have millions, and he was in way over his head. Instead of admitting that he did not have the money – that he could not be her knight in shining armor – Rick chose to steal money from Alden's cash reserve accounts to invest in the project and supply to Individual 1. Rick, the CFO of Alden, believed that he could leverage the funds in these reserve accounts without impacting the business or raising suspicion. He had taken comparatively small amounts of money from these accounts prior to meeting Individual 1, believing Alden had not been impacted. These investments were memorialized in a series of formal production financing agreements with Individual 1 and her lawyer. Rick did not have a lawyer because he thought that he was Individual 1's partner and did not need one. This evolving arrangement was further consummated in countless promises between the two friends/business partners.

However absurd it now seems, the idea was simple: Rick was so certain of Individual 1's success that he would take money from Alden's cash reserve accounts to finance Individual 1's production company, her lifestyle, and her brand. When she attained celebrity status and profitability, Individual 1 would repay Rick everything he invested and gave to her, with a massive return on his investment. Rick would then use that to return everything he stole. In the meantime, Rick replenished the stolen funds with a line of credit that Alden maintained, making it appear that the cash reserves were intact. In this delusional thought process, Individual 1's commercial ventures would be so successful that there was really no risk of not being able to repay the money invested in the production company, the millions of dollars Individual 1 used to purchase luxurious clothing and jewelry to support her public persona (all paid for with Alden funds), the $900,000 Rick gave her to purchase a condominium in New York City, and even the money that Rick had kept for himself to support the unsustainable lifestyle he began to enjoy as he started stealing from Alden. It may have even seemed to Rick that this dream was going to work when Individual 1's show was briefly picked up by a network and received a fleeting measure of success.

The unrelenting cascade of Individual 1's business related expenses overwhelmed Rick, but he felt like he could not say no with success seemingly within reach. So Rick chose to continue stealing from Alden. When the cash reserve accounts were depleted, Rick surreptitiously took out additional lines of credit on behalf of the company to continue the charade.

When the television show was placed "on hiatus," Rick held out hope that it would have a swift return, but that was not the case. While still attempting to revive the show, the dream of success and celebrity status mutated into launching a high end cosmetics company. Much like the production company, the cost of launching a cosmetics company was immense. With the Alden cash reserves long since depleted and the first lines of credit drawn down, Rick doubled-down on his gamble. He took out larger lines of credit to pay off the prior lines. That was how Rick was able to continue wiring money, without question, in response to Individual 1's monthly requests to the effect of "[d]id my July tally. Can you wire 234,956." Rick also received reassurances that everything was going to work out and that a "huge payday" was on the horizon so that Individual 1 would make Rick "whole."

The cosmetics endeavor, like the production company, never attained a modicum of the success that Rick was certain it would. In the fall of 2019, Alden learned of its CFO's crimes. To any reasonable person, particularly at that point, any possibility of that investment yielding a return was doomed. But even after Rick was in the process of liquidating nearly everything he owned to pay restitution, he still believed, at least initially, that one of Individual 1's companies would attain success and steady the financial turbulence his crimes had caused.

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Comments

That woman sure reeled in that big, fat, dumb fish.

I hope this doesn't put Alden at risk. It's one of the last remaining American heritage footwear makers of serious quality. Its shoes are truly great, albeit pricey. (I have a pair I've owned for twenty years and they still look nearly new.)

I'd be pissed if this pathetic hornball brought the company down.

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According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca_de_la_Garza

De la Garza met Richard Hajjar, then CFO of the Alden Shoe Company, at a 2012 party at Bill Belichick’s house and the two were a fixture on the Nantucket social scene for several years; De la Garza has repeatedly denied any romantic involvement.

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...there was a tale with no winners, this is it.

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got her patsy to finance her failed pipe-dream entertainment and cosmetics ventures at no personal cost to her (other than abandoning a successful career as a small-time broadcast personality), only had to return some of the leftover stolen money, faced no criminal charges, and apparently didn't even have to sleep with the schmuck, to hear her repeated denials of any romantic involvement with him.

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or if he kept up the facade well enough.

(Adam, there's also a stray "xxx" in the big blockquote, unless you meant to link to success.xxx which is probably an adult site...)

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Thanks. No XXX links intended! Sometimes when I cut and paste out of the PDFs filed in federal court, the text comes out formatted funny, so I use "xxx" as a placeholder for where paragraph breaks should go. I missed one.

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The story was reported in the Globe with her name all over it but in today's article about the sentence, her name was (as noted) elided.

Is that standard journalism? The story is the entire crime event, which she was clearly linked to (not in a criminal sense, just as part of the situation) - why wouldn't she be named in today's piece?

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Ergo, not named in the reporting of the court documents.

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He was stealing ths money? Impossible to prove unless Hajjar says she knew, we have to guess.
She used this guy bad, I mean who just up and funds someone like that? She used her looks and knew she could string him along ....so sad.

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The brassy Bianca de la Garza was one of the most talentless, unappealing local "celebrities" ever. I don't know what this guy saw in her. But he doesn't seem like much of a prize either.

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Lots more details in this Boston Magazine article from July:

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/07/13/richard-hajjar-bianca-de-...

"If people wondered where the CFO came by his extraordinary wealth, they didn’t ask. This was Nantucket, after all. Hajjar was a successful businessman, a smart investor—maybe even had generational wealth like many of the island’s blue bloods sporting Nantucket red. The money he lavished on his home and his lifestyle, as well as on de la Garza, the woman who quickly became the object of his largesse, spoke for itself: a $158,000 diamond ring, a $96,000 pair of diamond earrings, a $51,000 private flight to St. Maarten, and another to Anguilla for $63,000. He gave his Amex to a personal shopper at Neiman Marcus, where for years de la Garza purchased designer clothes and handbags, sometimes spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a month. “Bianca would come into work and tell me about flying here and there on a private jet. She needed a car, and then the next day she shows up at work in the most expensive Mercedes SUV,” says Randy Price, her former cohost, who is now retired."

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its just like in superman iii.

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... dear penthouse forum,
...

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it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair

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that a former d.a. would write a humanizing mini-novella appealing the court for a 48-month sentence (reading between-the-lines (or between-the-sheets) blaming it on a woman that doesnt have anything to do with it).

but for a fone thief from mass-and-cass, they would not get any benefit from a glamorous story and get 5 to 10 years and probation.

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The prosecutor argues one side, and the defense attorney argues the other side. Conley is entitled to earn a living after leaving public service.

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What's going to happen to Sally????

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Though presumably of old pug age, not of a broken heart (if you scan the defense sentencing recommendation, it discusses Sally's death).

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This was the mniseries that only Megan Johnson can write.

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I was thinking it was a script for a Coen Brothers movie.

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