[MSN] Fiscal storm at Philly port museum: Ex-head charged with $2.4M fraud

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Fiscal storm at Philly port museum: Ex-head charged with $2.4M fraud
Associated Press
Posted Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 8:21 am

PHILADELPHIA — A city port museum filed a lawsuit in state court in Massachusetts seeking to freeze assets of its former president and accusing him of defrauding the museum of $2.4 million, a newspaper reported today.

The Independence Seaport Museum accused John S. Carter, 56, of Osterville, Mass., who was fired last year, of using the money to pay for a “lavish lifestyle” including expensive boats, paintings and furniture and trips to France and New Zealand, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Carter was paid $301,000 a year, more than the head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but still charged $594,000 on three seaport museum credit cards from 2003 through early 2006 without providing supporting documents for much of the spending, according to the lawsuit, which said the FBI was investigating.

The lawsuit requests that Carter’s assets be frozen so the museum can recover money it claims was lost due to “gross malfeasance and potential criminal acts,”
The suit, filed in state court in Massachusetts, seeks to freeze Carter’s assets in his hometown so the museum can recover money lost to “gross malfeasance and potential criminal acts.”

Carter’s attorney, Mark Cedrone, confirmed that Carter was under FBI investigation, but declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying he had not seen it.

Among the larger items, the lawsuit claimed that Carter had the museum at Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River pay more than $500,000 to buy and maintain boats including a 38-foot sailboat, a sport-fishing boat and a power boat “for his personal use and enjoyment.”

Carter collected more than $200,000 in improper expense reimbursements, including bills for museum landscaping that was never done, and spent $178,000 on artifacts now unaccounted for, including a $1,250 print of Admiral Dewey, the lawsuit claimed.

http://www.delawareonline.com