Charles K. "Chas" Lee graduated with a degree in biology from Harvard University in June of 1993. He had been a successful student, had a large clique of friends, was co-chairman of one of the most visible charities on campus, and had been accepted into an executive training position at CUC International. Harvard University campus (old map) Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... CUC International was originally named Comp-U-Card. ...

However, Chas had stolen over $100,000 from one of Boston's most beloved charities, and they figured it out about a month after he graduated.

About The Jimmy Fund

The charity in question is called The Jimmy Fund; it raises money for research into pediatric cancer, and treatment for children dying of the disease. The charity is now closely tied to Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Between its founding in 1948 and 2002, it raised over $235 million. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a major affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a Comprehensive Cancer Center designated by the National Cancer Institute. ... 1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1948 calendar). ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ...

A bit of trivia — the 12-year-old cancer patient who was the focus of the charity's initial 1948 fund drive was named Einar Gustafson (they called him "Jimmy" to protect his privacy). In the organization's launching promotion, the entire Boston Braves baseball team visited "Jimmy" in his hospital, as this was broadcast nationally on the "Truth or Consequences" radio program. Contributions poured in from around the U.S. Afterwards, the charity lost touch with "Jimmy" and presumed that he died; the survival rates for juvenile cancer were pretty bad in the 1940s and 1950s. However, in 1998, in time for the charity's 50th anniversary, somebody tracked him down. He had recovered and lived a perfectly normal life. Einar spent the last years of his life raising money for sick children. The Atlanta Braves are a Major League Baseball team based in Atlanta, Georgia. ...

The Jimmy Fund continues to rely on high-profile events. There are five to ten of these a year, often involving athletes, but not always. Concerts, celebrity chefs, and other bedrocks of popular culture play a role. It sometimes seems as though, whenever you turn on the radio in Boston, some Jimmy Fund event is being promoted. The charity enjoys enormous local visibility and support.

Chas Lee was co-chairman for a Jimmy Fund event called An Evening with Champions, an annual world class figure skating event that has been organized by Harvard's Eliot House since 1970. In the past, skaters such as Dorothy Hamill, Elizabeth Manley, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Brian Orser, Brian Boitano, Paul Wylie, Michelle Kwan, Ilia Kulik, Oksana Baiul, and Nancy Kerrigan have all taken time out of their training and competitions to participate. Thousands of skating fans come to see the exhibition every year, and over ten million people view the show on PBS. By the 1990s, the event was raising well over $100,000 for the charity every year. Eliot House is one of twelve upper-class residential houses at Harvard University. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Elizabeth Manley (born August 7, 1965 in Trenton, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian figure skater. ... Scott Hamilton Scott Scovell Hamilton (born August 28, 1958) is an American figure skater and Olympic gold medalist known for his originality and engaging on-ice personalities. ... Kristi Tsuya Yamaguchi (born July 12, 1971) is an American figure skater. ... Orser carrying the Canadian flag at the opening ceremony of the 1988 Winter Olympics Brian Orser OC (born December 18, 1961 in Belleville, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian figure skater. ... Brian Anthony Boitano (born October 22, 1963 in Mountain View, CA) is an American figure skater from Sunnyvale, California. ... Paul Wylie (b. ... Michelle Wing Kwan (Traditional Chinese:關穎珊, Simplified Chinese: 关颖珊, born July 7, 1980), is an American figure skater and media celebrity who has won nine U.S. championships, five world championships, and two Olympic medals. ... Ilia Alexandrovich Kulik (born May 23, 1977 in Moscow, Russia) is an Olympic figure skating champion. ... Oksana Baiul Oksana Baiul (Ukrainian: ), born November 16, 1977 in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, is a professional figure skater and Olympic gold medalist. ... Nancy Kerrigan (born October 13, 1969 in Stoneham, Massachusetts) is a two-time Olympic figure skating medalist. ... The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a non-profit public broadcasting television service with 349 member TV stations in the United States. ...

This is impressive even in the hyper-achieving atmosphere of Harvard University, and Chas Lee took on a serious obligation when he became co-charman of the event as a junior in 1991-1992.

The 1992 event went smoothly; Nancy Kerrigan and Paul Wylie performed, and at the end, Chas was photographed handing the charity's organizers one of those enormous prop-checks as smiling cancer-sick children looked on and the flashbulbs popped.

The Crime

His senior year, Chas lived the good life. He bought a multi-thousand-dollar stereo system. He provided expensive liquor and cigars to his friends. Symbol for stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly called stereo, is the reproduction of sound, using two independent audio channels, through a pair of widely separated speaker systems, in such a way as to create a pleasant and natural impression of sound heard from various directions as in natural hearing. ... Spirits redirects here. ... Four cigars of different brands (from top: H. Upmann, Montecristo, Macanudo, Romeo y Julieta) An airtight cigar storage tube and a guillotine-style cutter A cigar is a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco, one end of which is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into...

This sent up no red flags. There is a lot of wealth around Harvard, especially in Eliot House. If they asked, Chas told people that his grandfather had died and left him money.

In real life, however, the money came from The Jimmy Fund; when Chas handed over that big prop-check to the Fund, he never followed up with an actual check that could have been put in the bank. He managed to push off queries from the Fund for over a year, but when he graduated and stopped responding to their phone calls, they got angry.

"The students said there were some extra purchases made and they weren't ready to close out the books," Mike Andrews, executive director of the Jimmy Fund, said in September of 1993. When nearly another year had passed without receipt of a check, Andrews said he was preparing to raise questions just as the two new student chairmen approached Harvard authorities with their own suspicions.

The story hit the press in the summer of 1993 and, though nobody yet knew what had gone wrong, eyes quickly turned to the event's 1992 management. The people of Boston (at least as represented by their newspapers, tabloids, and politicians) were furious. Newspaper sizes in August 2005. ...

The Cover-Up

Why hadn't the event's treasurer noticed there was something wrong back in 1992? Documentary evidence is thin here, but we know that David Sword, the Harvard Junior who served as treasurer, was convicted for embezzling $7000 from the charity around the same time that Chas was. In many governments, a treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury. ... Embezzlement is the fraudulent conversion of property from a property owner. ...

Chas had been diligent about destroying records. All of the 1991 donations and part of the 1992 receipts were destroyed. After he disposed of the event's account books, he was able to make two claims: In the broadest sense, a fraud is a deception made for personal gain, although it has a more specific legal meaning, the exact details varying between jurisdictions. ...

• Eliot House had run up unusual expenses while hosting the event, and so it could not meet its pledge to the charity, and
• Treasurer David Sword had been a sloppy record keeper, with a "milk carton full of receipts" that had since been lost.

Harvard's lawyers were by this point involved, and thought these excuses were balderdash. Harvard auditors completed an initial investigation, then turned the mess over the district attorney. A district attorney is, in some U.S. jurisdictions, the title of the local public official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminals. ...

It turns out that Chas had written himself 83 checks with the charity's money, totalling well over $100,000 (sources vary as to whether it was $120,000 or $160,000). He was indicted in the summer of 1994. In the common law legal system, an indictment is a formal charge of having committed a serious criminal offence. ...

The Trial

There wasn't much of one. After initially denying that that he had done anything wrong, and suggesting that there were merely accounting problems to be corrected, Chas decided to plead guilty. Guilt is primarily an emotion experienced by people who believe they have done something wrong. ...

In his sentencing hearing in February of 1995, Chas's lawyer described him as "truly ashamed" and "naive," and continued by saying that he hoped that Chas would come back from prison "a better man, not a ruined one."

Judge Regina Quinlan was lenient, and suspended all but one year of Chas's four- to-five-year sentence and placed him on probation for 10 years, the maximum time she gave him to pay restitution. He was sent directly to prison. Probation is the suspension of a prison or jail sentence - the criminal who is on probation has been convicted of a crime, but instead of serving prison time, has been found by the Court to be amenable to probation and will be returned to the community for a period in... Restitution is the name given to a form of legal relief in which the plaintiff recovers something from the defendant that belongs, or should belong, to the plaintiff. ...

The judge also ordered Lee to perform 100 hours of community service for inner-city youths each year until all the money is repaid.

Harvard, for what it's worth, had representatives at the trial as well, making sure that the assembled press was aware of how seriously the university condemned what Chas had done. In the words of Allan Ryan, a Harvard attorney,

When a student steals money we’re very determined to make it right. There's a sense of betrayal and outrage that a Harvard student could do something this crooked. We're very happy with the plea agreement, because it means he's going to spend 12 months in jail, and he deserves every day of it. Everyday instance of theft: the bike which fits on this wheel has disappeared. ...

However, Harvard did not annul Chas's diploma. He remains an alumnus in good standing. Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. ... An alumn (with a silent n), alum, alumnus, or alumna is a former student of a college, university, or school. ...

Where is he now?

As of late 2005, he was living in Manhattan.

Sources

The Bergen Record February 17, 1995; Pg. A37
The Boston Globe July 31, 1993, Pg. 15
Swing Magazine June 1995
http://www.jimmyfund.org
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~ewc/