A former Northwestern administrator pleaded guilty April 8 to a charge in connection with embezzling nearly $930,000 over seven years from the McGaw Medical Center, a part of the Feinberg School of Medicine.
Doris Green, the former assistant director of the Buehler Center on Aging, pleaded guilty to computer fraud almost two years after prosecutors with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office accused her of using her position to deposit more than $880,000 in university funds into a private account.
Green also was charged with stealing $46,000 to pay for housing costs for her two adult children and taking $2,262 to buy herself a personal computer.
Other charges brought against Green, which included theft and forgery, were dropped on April 8, according to the Cook County Clerk’s Office.
Green was released on bond after posting $5,000 in bail and is scheduled to be sentenced May 3 at at the Criminal Courts Building in Chicago.
Green’s attorney did not return calls for comment Monday or Tuesday. The prosecutor, Diane Gaster, also declined to comment.
The case shows that NU will cooperate aggressively with law enforcement in instances of staff or faculty misconduct, said Eugene Sunshine, NU’s senior vice president for business and finance.
“(The case) seems to be closing now … in what is a very unfortunate circumstance,” Sunshine said.
NU’s internal auditing department, directed by Betty McPhilimy, investigated Green’s conduct with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“It’s not over until it’s over,” McPhilimy said on Monday. “While she pleaded guilty, there’s still another date in court.”
The university was insured for all the money lost in the incident, McPhilimy said, and was reimbursed in full. Research projects were not compromised by the incident, either.
“In the Buehler Center, changes were made so similar incidents could not recur,” she added, but declined to state specifically what changes were made.
In a university where large amounts of money are frequently changing hands, it can be difficult to weed out a committed, powerful individual if he or she is determined to break the law, Sunshine said. But when serious misconduct does occur, he added, it does not go unpunished.
“You can tighten your financial system a lot, but you can’t guarantee that if someone wants to steal that won’t happen,” he said.
Green was an employee for 11 years at the Buehler Center, which promotes research on health problems related to aging.
