Museum CFO faces criminal charges

The Where Needed Most blog found an amazing story about the CFO at the Milwaukee Public Museum who was charged with four felony charges.

Prosecutors have charged the former CFO, Terry Gaouette, with theft and fraud in this criminal complaint. He didn't use any of the money himself, but the complaint says that under Wisconsin law transfer from the museum's endowment fund to the museum, a separate corporation, constitutes theft. The claim is that Mr. Gaouette never told the directors of the board or the endowment about the transfers.

There are also three counts of fraud stemming from financial reports that failed to disclose transfers from the endowment fund to the museum operating fund, that included nonexistent balances in cash accounts, that misstated the amounts in other accounts, and that reported large payments to reduce bond funds that had not been made.

I wonder how many other nonprofit CFOs are going to have an uneasy weekend after reading this story.