Former Controller of New England School of Law Sentenced to 18 Months

BOSTON—The former controller of New England School of Law (NESL) was sentenced today in federal court for stealing almost $200,000 from the school.

Douglas Leman, 44, formerly of Lynnfield, now residing in Malden, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton to 18 months in prison, to be followed by two years of supervised release and ordered to pay $216,467 in restitution. On Nov. 6, 2011, Leman pleaded guilty to one count of accessing a protected computer to defraud and obtain value and one count of making, uttering, or possessing a forged instrument.

Had the case proceeded to trial, the government’s evidence would have proven that between Sept. 2008 and March 2011, when he was terminated, Leman took advantage of his position to enter the school’s accounting system and manipulate entries in order to generate checks payable to himself and his wife. Over the course of the two and a half years of his fraud, Leman created checks totaling $173,106.71. Leman “signed” each of these fraudulent checks using the signature stamps of authorized NESL employees. He would later reenter the school’s accounting system and create additional false entries to conceal his activities

United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz; Richard DesLauriers, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Boston; and Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis made the announcement. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Harman Burkart of Ortiz’s Cybercrime Unit.