Chas Lee

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Charles K. "Chas" Lee embezzled over $100,000 from a Boston-area charity in 1991 and 1992, while still a Harvard University undergraduate.

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[edit] About An Evening with Champions

The charity in question is called The Jimmy Fund; it is a prominent organization that raises money for research into pediatric cancer, and treatment for children dying of the disease. Lee was co-chairman for a Jimmy Fund event called An Evening with Champions, an annual world class figure skating event that has been organized by Harvard's Eliot House since 1970. In the past, skaters such as Dorothy Hamill, Elizabeth Manley, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Brian Orser, Brian Boitano, Paul Wylie, Michelle Kwan, Ilia Kulik, Oksana Baiul, and Nancy Kerrigan have all taken time out of their training and competitions to participate. Thousands of skating fans come to see the exhibition every year, and over ten million people view the show on PBS. By the 1990s, the event was raising well over $100,000 for the charity every year.

Under Lee's co-direction, the 1992 event went smoothly; Nancy Kerrigan and Paul Wylie performed, and at the end, Lee was photographed handing the charity's organizers a prop-check as smiling young cancer patients looked on.

[edit] The Crime

During his senior year, Lee bought a multi-thousand-dollar stereo system. He provided expensive liquor and cigars to his friends. If asked, Lee told people that his grandfather had died and left him money. In reality, the money came from The Jimmy Fund; when he handed over the prop-check to the Fund, he never followed up with an actual check that could have been put in the bank. Lee managed to push off queries from the Fund for over a year. He graduated in 1993 with a degree in biology, and stopped responding to their phone calls, at which point they got angry.

"The students said there were some extra purchases made and they weren't ready to close out the books," Mike Andrews, executive director of the Jimmy Fund, said in September of 1993.[citation needed] When nearly another year had passed without receipt of a check, Andrews said he was preparing to raise questions just as the two new student chairmen approached Harvard authorities with their own suspicions. The story hit the press in the summer of 1993 and, though nobody yet knew what had gone wrong, eyes quickly turned to the event's 1992 management.

[edit] The Cover-Up

David Sword, the Harvard Junior who served as treasurer, was convicted for embezzling $7000 from the charity around the same time that Lee was.

Lee had been diligent about destroying records. All of the 1991 donations and part of the 1992 receipts were destroyed. After he disposed of the event's account books, he was able to make two claims:

  • Eliot House had run up unusual expenses while hosting the event, and so it could not meet its pledge to the charity, and
  • Treasurer Sword had been a sloppy record keeper, with a "milk carton full of receipts" that had since been lost.

Harvard's lawyers were by this point involved, and expressed disbelief at these excuses. Harvard auditors completed an initial investigation, then turned the mess over the district attorney. Their investigation revealed that Chas had written himself 83 checks with the charity's money, totalling well over $100,000 (sources vary as to whether it was $120,000 or $160,000). He was indicted in the summer of 1994.

[edit] The Trial

After initially denying that that he had done anything wrong, and suggesting that there were merely accounting problems to be corrected, Chas decided to plead guilty. In his sentencing hearing in February of 1995, Lee's lawyer described him as "truly ashamed" and "naive," and continued by saying that he hoped that Chas would come back from prison "a better man, not a ruined one."[citation needed]

Judge Regina Quinlan was lenient, and suspended all but one year of Chas's four- to-five-year sentence and placed him on probation for 10 years, the maximum time she gave him to pay restitution. He was sent directly to prison. The judge also ordered Lee to perform 100 hours of community service for inner-city youths each year until all the money is repaid.

Harvard did not annul Chas's diploma. He remains an alumnus in good standing. As of late 2005, he was living in Manhattan.

[edit] Sources

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