Two leading executives within the Florida A&M University hierarchy have been indicted on federal charges of stealing more than $135,000 in federal grants reserved for the school over a period of three years.
Eugene Telfair, the president of the FAMU Federal Credit Union, and Robert Nixon, the director of FAMU’s Institute on Urban Policy and Commerce, both pleaded not guilty to the charges and are free on bail until their trial commences in early September, according to hbcudigest.com.
FAMU, one of the flagship institutions within the Historically Black Colleges and Universities system and located in Tallahassee, Fla., was rocked by the indictments. It reads that a four-year period between 2005–2008, Telfair, “conspired to steal approximately $134,253 in grant funds that had been awarded to FAMU in connection with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities program,” the Web site states.
Apparently, Telfair and Nixon, according to federal investigators and prosecutors, wrote each other checks from FFCU accounts that contained the grant funds and, straight mob style, created false companies to “wash the money” or make the stolen money appear legitimate.
The indictment also charges that Telfair created falsified tax documents in order to help cover his trail. Also, he is alleged to have changed the taxpayer identification number on the grant account from the one the government supplied to the school to the taxpayer ID No. assigned to his credit union. –terry shropshire
