JULY 1, 2008 -- A Middlesex County grand jury today indicted Jodie Nealley and another former Office of Student Activities (OSA) administrator for allegedly embezzling close to $1 million from the university.
Nealley served as the office's director from 1996 until 2007, when she was fired after the university accused her of embezzling approximately $300,000. The indictment accuses her of stealing $372,576.
Ray Rodriguez, the former OSA (now known as the Office for Campus Life) budget and fiscal coordinator, was charged with pilfering $604,873. He had not been publicly accused of embezzlement until today.
Tufts' Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler would not say how long the university has been aware of Rodriguez' alleged involvement. "When a matter is going to come up in the courts, we're just not in a position to comment on it in any level of detail," she told the Daily.
Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said in a statement that Nealley used a bank card tied to the OSA funds to make purchases at locations ranging from Whole Foods to the Foxwoods Resort and Casino, and that Rodriguez used his share to pay for trips to destinations such as Paris and Montreal, and to buy concert tickets. Rodriguez also wrote himself a check for $100,000 and bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of "luxury items" at locations such as Gucci and Bloomingdale's, according to the statement.
Jessica Venezia, a spokesperson for the office, would not comment on when Rodriguez' alleged involvement had been uncovered, only noting that it was during the course of the investigation into Nealley.
"It was a very thorough investigation and it uncovered additional crimes against Tufts and its students," Venezia told the Daily.
Previously, it had been speculated that Nealley took advantage of a leadership vacuum left by Rodriguez' departure before the start of the 2007-2008 academic year to embezzle from the university. Leone's office has not alleged any connection between Nealley's and Rodriguez' embezzlements, calling them "two separate schemes."
When asked if Rodriguez left the university under any suspicion, Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said he "left on his own."
According to Venezia, an arraignment date has not been set for either suspect. Venezia would not say what type of bail conditions her office would seek. "It depends on the person's record and background and the seriousness of the crime," she said.
Nealley's attorney, Howard Lewis of the firm Lewis and Leeper, LLC, said that Nealley's indictment did not contain anything unexpected. Lewis maintains that he will be able to mount an affirmative defense to explain his client's actions.
"When the time comes, Ms. Nealley still does have a defense to this," he told the Daily. "No one is running away from this and we're going to do everything we can to give her story proper credit in court."
Lewis declined to go into detail about the specifics of that story. "I would not be doing my client a service by disclosing her defense at this early of a date," he said.
Nealley was fired in November after admitting to university officials that she had embezzled some funds. In the following weeks, student groups such as the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate and Tufts Student Resources (TSR) uncovered evidence suggesting that she had dipped into their funds.
"Potentially, the funds that we gave her were not all deposited into our student account, or she overstated the amount that we owed," Michael Meucci, then a junior and the co-president of TSR, told the Daily in November.
The university's Audit and Management Advisory Services (AMAS) office uncovered Nealley's alleged embezzlement after an anonymous source submitted a tip. The AMAS office conducted a protracted investigation, the results of which it has shared with Leone's office, according to Thurler.
With the introduction of another suspect and the increase in the amount of money reported stolen, Thurler said that one thing has remained constant: the level of disappointment felt by university officials.
"The issue of abuse of trust I think remains the same," she said.
Read the press release from the Middlesex District Attorney's Office
For background on this story, click here to see the Daily's embezzlement scandal timeline.
[Check back on TuftsDaily.com throughout the summer for more updates.]
