Charity Ex-Chief Enters Guilty Plea in Theft of 43K
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A former executive director of a Harlem-based nonprofit that aims to teach public school students how to play string instruments, Katharine Ogonek, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $43,000 from the charity for personal gifts such as designer clothing and limousine services.
The Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep sits on the board of directors of the charity, Opus 118.
In the 1999 film “Music of the Heart,” Ms. Streep portrays Opus’s founder, Roberta Guaspari, a violin teacher who challenged the Board of Education in order to preserve her position instructing students in Harlem how to play string instruments. A publicist for Ms. Streep did not return calls yesterday.
According to prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, Ogonek, 44, used the nonprofit’s corporate credit card to ring up more than $10,000 in personal expenses, such as shoes, airline tickets, limousine services, and meals, along with other unauthorized purchases at stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Fairway, and The Sharper Image.
According to the felony plea deal entered on Wednesday – in which Ogonek agreed to pay back $37,879.23 of the stolen funds immediately and receive five years’ probation – Ogonek also inflated her salary by more than $13,000 without authorization from the charity’s directors and used the nonprofit’s checking account to pay off parking tickets. In some cases, Ogonek, who earned about $63,000 in salary in 2002, according to tax records, wrote the nonprofit checks to cash and then deposited the money into her personal bank account, prosecutors said.
More than $4,000 of the nonprofit’s money was also used to purchase personal computer equipment for Ogonek, and more than $800 was spent for four Palm Pilots.
An attorney for Ogonek, Peter Schmerge, did not return phone calls yesterday.
“This just breaks my heart that someone could jeopardize an organization that does so much with so little,” the secretary of the Opus board of directors, Mia Anderson, told The New York Sun yesterday, adding that at the time of Ogonek’s unauthorized expenses the nonprofit was losing a substantial amount of donations and was headed toward bankruptcy.
Ms. Anderson, 65, said she first discovered evidence of financial improprieties after Ogonek had been fired for subpar performance in March 2003.