Jodie Nealley, recently fired from Tufts for allegedly embezzling around $300,000, will mount an affirmative defense should she go to court, according to her attorney Howard Lewis.
Still, no charges have been filed yet, as an investigation is still ongoing, according to Middlesex County district attorney's office spokesman Corey Welford.
"I don't want to speculate on the course the investigation will take," he said. "We will follow the facts wherever those lead."
But Lewis, of the local firm Lewis and Leeper, LLC, conceded that Nealley will almost certainly face charges. If the case goes to trial, Lewis said Nealley will plead not guilty by reason of a yet undisclosed factor.
"Once this plays out, I think you'll see that there's a reason how this could have happened," he said.
Even as the investigation is unfolding, Lewis said he has gotten several encouraging phone calls from Nealley's acquaintances.
"I've never had a case [where] I've represented somebody pre-indictment [and] had so many calls from her co-workers and her friends that have offered support," he said. "It's just very pleasant that there are so many people she worked with and so many friends that could have felt upset by what happened but still are very, very supportive and understanding."
As such, he said that testimony regarding Nealley's character may play a part in advocacy for her.
Last week, Nealley admitted to university officials that she embezzled from the university, and Lewis said he is prepared to challenge her concession if necessary. "I'm not sure if we're going to have to, though," he said.
While the trajectory of this case has not been determined, local criminal defense attorney Elliot Savitz said that most embezzlement charges never make it to trial.
"Most cases are negotiated before ... the trial stage," he said.
He also said that prosecutors generally request full restitution from the guilty parties. "You're going to look for restitution because you want to make your victim whole," he said. "That's very important."
But Savitz said that in many cases, the perpetrator has already spent the money. "You don't always see restitution because it may not be practical at all," he said. "Usually, the people who [embezzle] don't have the money to give it back."
Still, as he was unfamiliar with the specifics of Nealley's case, and since she has not even entered a plea, he could not comment further on her future.
"You don't know what's going to happen until you know all the circumstances and what the defense is going to be," he said.
As the Daily reported yesterday, Nealley was fired after an audit uncovered evidence that she embezzled university funds. Officials confronted her with a number less than the $300,000 they currently estimate she stole, and she admitted to taking it. Further investigating by the Audit and Management Advisory Services (AMAS) Office brought the total to $300,000, which is still subject to change.
It is still unclear when Nealley began taking money, but Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said that a large chunk of the embezzlement may have occurred recently.
"We believe that a significant portion of funds were misappropriated in this fiscal year," she said in an e-mail. The current fiscal year began on July 1.
University officials currently do not have complete details about which accounts Nealley stole from and about the exact pace at which she embezzled.
Regardless of the specifics, though, Associate Economics Professor David Garman is not surprised that the auditing system identified the misappropriations.
"I think embezzling large amounts is relatively hard to do," he said. "I would expect any large deviation from normal spending patterns to get noticed within a reasonable amount of time."
But he conceded that less pronounced, more spread-out deviations - which Nealley's could have been - can sometimes not raise any red flags.
"There's enough flexibility and enough discretion in spending small amounts of money that it would be relatively easy to divert [it] every budget cycle over a period of time," he said.
Nealley had several revenue-generating operations under her control, including the student activities fund. Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman has promised that if Nealley dipped into the fund, any affected student organizations will be reimbursed using university money.
Garman said that this is an achievable goal because once university officials know a given individual has stolen funds, it is easier for them to make sense of discrepancies that previously could have been overlooked.
"Once the person has been flagged, then it's easier to go back and look at the pattern of small expenditures," he said.
This already happened to a certain extent when the AMAS Office found enough concrete evidence for the administration to confront Nealley.
Still, the office had help along the way. Nealley was scheduled to be audited this year, but her audit was pushed up after someone tipped off EthicsPoint, a third-party service employed by the university, about potential issues in the Office of Student Activities.
While Tufts had not previously received a lot of information that way, EthicsPoint's General Counsel Amanda Mayhew said the organization receives several thousand tips per month pertaining to its 1,600 clients.
Tufts, like other clients, uses EthicsPoint so that its employees can have an external outlet to express their concerns.
Specifically, a third-party system can also better guarantee anonymity, as workplaces tend to be rather insular, and tips made by employees about their peers are often not secure.
"Quite obviously, anonymity might not be possible in an internal system," Mayhew said.
