Greenfield conference center to receive settlement from former bookkeeper serving time for theft of funds

By ABBE HAMILTON

Monadnock Ledger-Transcript

Published: 03-11-2020 3:37 PM

A former bookkeeper is serving a prison sentence for embezzlement of more than $700,000 from Greenfield’s Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center, according to court documents.

Beverly Morello, 59, of Peterborough was accused of stealing the funds over the course of seven years after bookkeeping irregularities launched an internal investigation in October 2017.

Morello served as the bookkeeper for the conference center and had access to its bank accounts and funds. She was also the treasurer and registered agent of Morello Construction Inc., a business owned and run by her husband, Michael Morello, court records say. Over the course of seven years, beginning in 2010, Morello would identify regular vendors to the conference center as payees on records, but make the actual checks out to Morello Construction, according to court documents, and that she made $703,057.61 in fraudulent payments between Nov. 1, 2010 and Nov. 1, 2017. Morello and her husband claimed that he was unaware of the fraudulent transfers, according to court documents.

Morello had served as a bookkeeper for more than ten years in 2017 and was scheduled to retire by December that year. In late October, the bookkeeper who was being trained to replace her discovered irregularities in the conference center’s records while Morello was away on a trip. The conference center immediately confronted Morello and fired her, before beginning an investigation, court documents say.

The conference center is expected to receive a $300,000 settlement on top of a $680,671.28 restitution ordered by the Hillsborough County Superior Court in May 2019, when Morello pled guilty to theft by unauthorized taking of a sum over $1501. She was additionally ordered to serve a one-year jail sentence, with a recommended 12-month administrative home confinement following 12 months served. She was booked in May 2019 and her earliest possible parole date is May 18, 2021.

“We believe that we have done our best possible diligence toward recovery of funds, and we are confident that, with this settlement agreement in place, the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center can now move forward and flourish in its ministry of hospitality, recreation, spiritual refreshment and Christian formation, which touches and transforms lives throughout our New England Episcopal Church and beyond,” the president of the center’s Board of Directors, the Rev. Natasha Stewart, said in a statement the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts released in November, after they reached a settlement agreement on Oct. 30.

The nonprofit Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. According to its website, the center is named after the first woman bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The conference center is available for nonprofit and group functions, and the summer camp serves children in grades 4 through 12.

The Center’s Board of Directors secured all the center’s accounts and reported the situation immediately after discovering the theft, the Diocese said.

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“I want to emphasize to all who participate in and support the Barbara C. Harris Center’s ministry, and all who continue to be served by it, that the Board has been working over these many months with the staff to review procedures and to make sure that appropriately stringent financial controls are being implemented,” Stewart said.

The settlement money is to be paid over an eight-year period at five percent interest. The Executive Committee of the center’s Board of Directors, its legal counsel and the Charitable Division of the New Hampshire Office of the Attorney General see the settlement as the most realistic and best possible outcome, the press release said.

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