http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4063
The mystery man behind the looting of a Bronx charity to finance the startup of liberal http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4078.
Evan Montvel-Cohen was picked up by border-patrol officers at Guam International Airport on an outstanding warrant from Hawaii. He had been indicted there last month for money laundering and the theft of more than $60,000 from a Honolulu landscaping firm, prosecutors said.
“We at DOI are not surprised to hear that Mr. Montvel-Cohen was arrested on theft and money-laundering charges,” said Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, which probed the looting of the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in Co-op City.
It was Montvel-Cohen who, as development director for Gloria Wise, convinced other club officials in 2003 and 2004 to give $875,000 of taxpayer money to the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1215 where he was a top executive and co-founder.He also received loans from the club of more than $45,000 that were never repaid.
Montvel-Cohen, 43, was never charged here, but two other directors at Gloria Wise pleaded guilty to misappropriating $1.2 million, some of which was used for personal expenses for club officials, including cars and home renovations.
The $875,000 was repaid by Air America only after DOI launched a wide-ranging probe into the transfer of city and state funds meant to help children and the elderly in the northeast Bronx.
But DOI was never able to speak with Montvel-Cohen, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, Hearn said.
“As DOI’s 2006 report into fraud at the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club showed, he was indeed someone of interest to us because of his pivotal role in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars of Gloria Wise funds to a start-up commercial radio station,” she said.
DOI has no immediate plans to pursue Montvel-Cohen.