FAMU Credit Union President and Florida A&M Institute Director Charged with Conspiracy
| U.S. Attorney’s Office July 07, 2010 |
TALLAHASSEE, FL—A federal indictment was filed today charging that the president of the FAMU Federal Credit Union and the director of Florida A&M University’s Institute on Urban Policy and Commerce conspired to embezzle HUD grant funds, announced United States Attorney Pamela C. Marsh, Northern District of Florida.
The three-count indictment charges Eugene Telfair (57) and Robert Nixon (45), both of Tallahassee, with conspiracy, theft from an organization receiving federal funds, and embezzlement of funds intrusted to a federally-insured credit union. Specifically, the indictment alleges that between 2005 and 2008, Telfair, the president of the FAMU Federal Credit Union (“FFCU”), and Nixon, the director of FAMU’s Institute on Urban Policy and Commerce (“the Institute”), 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 indictment states that Telfair and Nixon wrote one another checks from an FFCU account containing the grant funds and created fraudulent personal services contracts to make their taking of the funds appear legitimate. Telfair is also alleged to have created false tax documents, and to have changed the taxpayer identification number on the grant account from the number assigned to FAMU to the taxpayer id number assigned to his credit union.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Florida Department of Financial Services, Division of Insurance Fraud. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Rhew-Miller.
An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed a criminal offense. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.