Hillel Accountant Submits Guilty Plea

A former Harvard Hillel accountant was sentenced to serve up to three years in jail after pleading guilty on Friday to stealing nearly $780,000 from the religious nonprofit.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office announced yesterday that William O’Brien, who was hired by Hillel in 2003 through the financial management contracting agency Insource Services, pled guilty to charges of larceny, forgery, and false entries in corporate books.

Annette Ezekiel, chief operating officer of Harvard Hillel, and John H. LaChance, O’Brien’s attorney, did not return requests for comment yesterday.

Hillel discovered the financial reporting irregularities in 2008, according to a letter sent to the organization’s student community by Hillel President and Director Bernard Steinberg and Chair of the Board of Directors Robert Beal that year.

After noticing the irregularities, Steinberg launched an internal investigation that found O’Brien had been diverting the nonprofit’s funds for his own personal use and notified the Attorney General’s office.

O’Brien’s contract was immediately terminated, Steinberg and Beal’s 2008 letter stated.

The Attorney General’s office investigated Hillel’s claims and reached a similar conclusion as the internal investigation.

State investigators found that O’Brien issued checks from Hillel payable to the nonprofit’s American Express account, a business owned by one of his friends, and a vendor that Hillel did business with. He then used those checks to pay his own American Express account and purchased items such as tickets for trips and sporting events with the stolen money.

O’Brien concealed the thefts by falsifying data regarding the transactions in Hillel’s financial books, according to the Attorney General’s office.

State investigators allege that O’Brien’s thefts began in 2003 and continued until Hillel’s investigation in 2008.

A Middlesex County Grand Jury indicted charges against O’Brien on July 2, 2009, and imposed additional charges on Feb. 19 of this year. O’Brien was arraigned on Feb. 25 in Middlesex Superior Court and pled not guilty on all charges. He was released on good faith.

The news of the embezzlement had followed months of rumors that Hillel was facing financial difficulties. When asked that January about such rumors, Steinberg vehemently denied that the organization was facing fiscal hardships beyond those caused by the economic downturn.

O’Brien’s fraud is not the only case of embezzlement at Harvard in recent years. Between 2000 and 2001, two undergraduate officers at the Hasty Pudding Theatricals stole almost $100,000 from the organization. Between 1988 and 1994, a financial officer at Harvard Magazine, the University’s alumni publication, embezzled $190,000.

—Staff writer Tara W. Merrigan can be reached at tmerrigan@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.