Contractor Guilty in $700,000 Theft From Boston Clinic

A former financial consultant for a neighborhood clinic in Boston pleaded guilty Friday to stealing $700,000 from the organization, money prosecutors said he used to purchase a riverside condo and a fleet of luxury cars, writes The Boston Globe.

Nzeribe McKenzie was sentenced to two to three years in prison and ordered to pay $762,929 in restitution to the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center in the city’s Dorchester community.

Mr. McKenzie was hired by the clinic to direct payroll and other financial information to a data-processing firm that issues checks to the facility. According to prosecutors he figured out how to have checks issued to himself and others and did so for nearly seven years, a period during which the health center had structural problems and difficulty paying its electric bill.

Globe columnist Adrian Walker writes that under new management, which discovered the fraud, the health center has added staff and services and restored donors’ confidence. “Someone said we’ve cleaned up the place and now we’ve opened the windows,” said chief executive Dr. Chidi Achebe. “That’s exactly how we feel about it.”