Alleged major chutzpah: Woman under indictment for embezzlement gets job at new company under married name and starts embezzling there as well, feds charge
According to the FBI agent's affidavit, in March, 2019, six months after her indictment in that case - and nine months before she agreed to plead guilty - Descarbeau applied for a job at the Brookline non-profit under her married last name, Coulibaly.
Her maiden name was Lescarbeau (per FBI affidavit), not Descarbeau. So she's is Nicole Lescarbeau Coulibaly.
Her first job was as Nicole Lescarbeau (maiden name) and second job was as Nicole Coulibaly (married name).
Birth name, former name, previous name all work, and they don't imply that women are born with the intention that they marry a man and remain a virgin until doing so. (Nor that people don't change their names for other reasons; there are so many forms that only allow someone to have had a different name if it was for the reason of being a women who had a previous virginal name.)
The term is so broadly used (e.g. maiden voyage, maiden racehorse) that I don't think it really conjures up that notion in the minds of most people who use or hear it.
The Boston non-profit where I work also had a Nicole embezzle money!! So clearly the lesson is, if you're a non-profit in the Boston area, don't hire anyone named Nicole to deal with your finances.
Touchy-feely boards who have no conception about internal controls. Nothing approaching private sector employee accountability. That's why so many former members of the political class seek refuge there.
I worked for a tech start-up where the head of IT defrauded us out of $1m by order equipment and selling it to a couple guys in Craigslist then forging invoices to comparable dollar amounts for equipment we would actually use.
After being caught/arrested by IRS and Postal Inspector, then fired, he got a job while awaiting trial at another tech start up and defrauded them for almost 500k.
Interestingly, neither the IRS, Postal Inspector nor the vendor gave us a heads up even after they had direct evidence so he just continued to spend 100's of thousands of dollars.
I do not understand how the second non-profit hired her. If she had access to their finances they should have done a basic background check. Using her SSN, it should/would have caught this regardless of the name she used. The second non-profit needs to take some responsibility for this - but that's for their Board to address.
Maybe not the most important feature of this story, but there are too many "non-profits" around controlling too much money and responsible for too much important work. The government should really be filling many of these functions. I'm perfectly aware that fraud and embezzlement happens within the government as well, but at least there tends to be more oversight. Many non-profits seem to be little more than jobs programs for white collar do-nothings, letting them give themselves a fancy-person title and collect a fancy-person paycheck while doing little other than directing money to other, equivalent people in other non-profits. It's such a waste.
one thing I can agree with you on: yes, government should be responsible for A LOT of what non-profits do. only thing is, the reason that you see so many non-profits, NGOs, etc.. doing that "really important work" is because local, state, and federal governments have been abandoning their essential duties for the last four decades. it's not like non-profits wrested control of those tasks away from government: civil society has been forced to do it.
I do actually know people who work in the non-profit sector, yes, and almost all of them are good people trying to do good work. Many of them work on issues relating to poverty, in organizations that struggle to produce results while paying multiple administrators six figures.
Absolutely true that non-profits are stepping in to a void We The People have chosen to create. Still, thanks to tax incentives and the demographics of the people who tend to work at non-profits, especially the larger institutional ones, the non-profit sector has become another tentacle of late capitalist finance. Increasing the flow of money through their accounts seems to be the most important function for many (not all) of these organizations.
I'm really not trying to say non-profits are bad, or are even behaving in an unexpected way. My point is that non-profits are not a viable substitute for the government, and some of them need to go if we want to get our society back on a more just track. No ax here. Just disappointment.
If someone wants to start a non-profit with what to me looks like a ridiculous purpose, say for example providing cute handmade outfits to the squirrels on Boston Common, while paying the staff of the nonprofit what to me looks like a ridiculously high salary, say $350,000 per year for the president, I'm free to ignore their fundraising appeal. If some other fully consenting adults freely want to donate their own money to said nonprofit... as long as everyone is operating transparently and nobody is misrepresenting anything to anybody, who am I, or the state, or anybody else to say "you can't do that" to them?
With that said, I agree that there's a lot of redundant administrative bloat in the nonprofit world.
Comments
AND THAT'S WHY IT SHOULD BE
AND THAT'S WHY IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL FOR MARRIED WOMEN TO USE THEIR MAIDEN NAMES!!!
- Some conservative pundit, I assume
Well done...straw man
Good hate by you.
Headline is reversed - second job is under married name
Hi Adam,
A couple of errors. You wrote:
Thanks for catching that
Clearly, I can't keep two names straight for a second. Fixed!
But why is anyone saying "maiden name" in 2020?
Birth name, former name, previous name all work, and they don't imply that women are born with the intention that they marry a man and remain a virgin until doing so. (Nor that people don't change their names for other reasons; there are so many forms that only allow someone to have had a different name if it was for the reason of being a women who had a previous virginal name.)
I wouldn't die on that hill
The term is so broadly used (e.g. maiden voyage, maiden racehorse) that I don't think it really conjures up that notion in the minds of most people who use or hear it.
suspicious
The Boston non-profit where I work also had a Nicole embezzle money!! So clearly the lesson is, if you're a non-profit in the Boston area, don't hire anyone named Nicole to deal with your finances.
Exactly -- or else she'll
Nicole and dime you to death.
Hahaha!
Hahaha!
Good One!
@Turalura Lipschitz :)
Nonprofits are an easy mark
Touchy-feely boards who have no conception about internal controls. Nothing approaching private sector employee accountability. That's why so many former members of the political class seek refuge there.
Yeah, sure...
Embezzlement NEVER happens in the private sector. {insert eye roll}
How quickly folks forget about Enron and Bernie Madoff...
There's never any embezzlement or fraud in the private sector, especially not in our own backyard.
So
Nonprofits should be on the lookout for Trumps and Fallwells, eh?
Not just non-profits...
I worked for a tech start-up where the head of IT defrauded us out of $1m by order equipment and selling it to a couple guys in Craigslist then forging invoices to comparable dollar amounts for equipment we would actually use.
After being caught/arrested by IRS and Postal Inspector, then fired, he got a job while awaiting trial at another tech start up and defrauded them for almost 500k.
Interestingly, neither the IRS, Postal Inspector nor the vendor gave us a heads up even after they had direct evidence so he just continued to spend 100's of thousands of dollars.
Received a 7.5 federal sentence.
Perhaps this happened at The Puppet Showplace Theatre?
https://amp.wickedlocal.com/amp/42986325
Ah, a second case in Brookline
But the dates don't line up with the affidavit, plus, that non-profit was focused on puppets, not housing.
Background checks??
I do not understand how the second non-profit hired her. If she had access to their finances they should have done a basic background check. Using her SSN, it should/would have caught this regardless of the name she used. The second non-profit needs to take some responsibility for this - but that's for their Board to address.
At least she used "embezzled"
At least she used "embezzled" funds to prevent homelessness.
How do you figure that?
From my reading of the article she diverted funds intended to prevent homelessness to her own purposes....
I think Notfromboston meant
I think Notfromboston meant that she prevented her own homelessness by paying her rent with stolen money.
Her own
I believe notfrom is saying that she used the funds to pay her rent, thus preventing her from becoming homeless.
Maybe not the most important
Maybe not the most important feature of this story, but there are too many "non-profits" around controlling too much money and responsible for too much important work. The government should really be filling many of these functions. I'm perfectly aware that fraud and embezzlement happens within the government as well, but at least there tends to be more oversight. Many non-profits seem to be little more than jobs programs for white collar do-nothings, letting them give themselves a fancy-person title and collect a fancy-person paycheck while doing little other than directing money to other, equivalent people in other non-profits. It's such a waste.
do you actually know any non-profits or..?
just have a big ol' ax to grind?
one thing I can agree with you on: yes, government should be responsible for A LOT of what non-profits do. only thing is, the reason that you see so many non-profits, NGOs, etc.. doing that "really important work" is because local, state, and federal governments have been abandoning their essential duties for the last four decades. it's not like non-profits wrested control of those tasks away from government: civil society has been forced to do it.
I do actually know people who
I do actually know people who work in the non-profit sector, yes, and almost all of them are good people trying to do good work. Many of them work on issues relating to poverty, in organizations that struggle to produce results while paying multiple administrators six figures.
Absolutely true that non-profits are stepping in to a void We The People have chosen to create. Still, thanks to tax incentives and the demographics of the people who tend to work at non-profits, especially the larger institutional ones, the non-profit sector has become another tentacle of late capitalist finance. Increasing the flow of money through their accounts seems to be the most important function for many (not all) of these organizations.
I'm really not trying to say non-profits are bad, or are even behaving in an unexpected way. My point is that non-profits are not a viable substitute for the government, and some of them need to go if we want to get our society back on a more just track. No ax here. Just disappointment.
A liberty argument comes into play here
If someone wants to start a non-profit with what to me looks like a ridiculous purpose, say for example providing cute handmade outfits to the squirrels on Boston Common, while paying the staff of the nonprofit what to me looks like a ridiculously high salary, say $350,000 per year for the president, I'm free to ignore their fundraising appeal. If some other fully consenting adults freely want to donate their own money to said nonprofit... as long as everyone is operating transparently and nobody is misrepresenting anything to anybody, who am I, or the state, or anybody else to say "you can't do that" to them?
With that said, I agree that there's a lot of redundant administrative bloat in the nonprofit world.