13 years later, Globe ‘Spotlight’ expose gets results
It took more than a decade, but a questionable figure featured in a story from The Boston Globe‘s “Spotlight” team was sentenced to prison in one of the largest fraud cases in Alaska history.
And all it took was some Googling.
Back in 2003, the Spotlight team—the Globe‘s investigative arm best known for uncovering the extent of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal—wrote about the issue of inherited trustee positions at charitable trusts. These jobs came with lucrative salaries for limited work, Spotlight’s Sacha Pfeiffer wrote, and positions on a board were inherited even when board members weren’t related to the original donor.
That can lead some trustee members to make purchases unseemly for a charitable organization, Pfeiffer wrote.
The story specifically referenced Mark Avery, a then-44-year-old Alaskan who inherited from his father a six-figure salary as a trustee of the nine-figure May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust. Avery then billed his own personal legal firm for services for the trust to the tune of $67,000, Pfeiffer wrote.
“I get sick and tired of people wondering about how much I get paid and why,” Avery said at the time.
Years passed, but that story remained online—and on Google—for all to see.
One of those Googlers was a federal prosecutor in Anchorage looking into potential wrongdoing by Avery.
13 years later, in a follow-up on Tuesday, Pfeiffer wrote that Assistant US Attorney Steven E. Skrocki emailed her to let her know that Avery had been sentenced to 13 years in prison in a $52 million fraud case on Monday.
“We’ve never forgotten the piece you did back then, nor Mr. Avery’s quote,” Skrocki wrote, “and [we] thought you may appreciate the end result so many years after your article.”
According to prosecutors, Avery convinced other trust members to grant him a multi-million dollar loan. He then allegedly spent $52 million over six months by splurging on two aviation companies, jet planes, a patrol boat, a yacht, and vintage World War II planes, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
Avery was found guilty of 11 charges of felony wire fraud and money laundering in February. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison on Monday.
“My first reaction to Avery’s fate was that justice, although delayed, had finally been served,” Pfeiffer writes. “But then I began to feel more pessimistic.”
You can read more of her explanation why at The Boston Globe.
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