A long fall from realm of power

Vitale's network torn by charges

The accounting firm launched by Richard Vitale leases its four-story building on Constitution Wharf in Charlestown. (Globe Staff Photo / Yoon S. Byun)

Richard Vitale ran in Boston's power circles, cultivating friendships through business, charitable fund-raising, and on the golf course. His approach was summed up by the motto at Vitale Caturano, the large accounting firm he cofounded three decades ago: "Known by the company we keep."

But it was the company he kept with one of the state's most powerful politicians, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, that proved to be his undoing. His alleged secret lobbying of DiMasi, a close business and golfing buddy, has cost him professionally and put him in the crosshairs of state and federal investigators.

Vitale lived in a $1 million Back Bay condominium, vacationed at his homes in Vermont and Florida, and held memberships at five golf clubs. This year, as his fortunes plummeted and his brief but lucrative foray into Beacon Hill consulting crumbled, he has sold his Vermont house and placed his Boston condo on the market.

The accounting career he built over a lifetime also unraveled. His longtime partners at Vitale Caturano & Co. Ltd. forced him to resign and, his lawyer acknowledges, a dispute is brewing over nearly $7 million that Vitale says his partners still owe him.

All that was before he was indicted this month by Attorney General Martha Coakley. He is charged with 10 misdemeanor counts relating to his alleged secret lobbying on behalf of the Massachusetts Association of Ticket Brokers. He also is under scrutiny by a federal grand jury that is examining why Vitale and other close friends of DiMasi received payments from Cognos ULC, a Burlington computer software firm that won multimillion-dollar state contracts.

As the influence-peddling accusations continue to percolate, Vitale's very name has become radioactive at the State House. His old friend, DiMasi, whose political future is threatened in the unfolding controversy, won't even talk publicly about him.

"Merry Christmas," DiMasi said last week when asked by a reporter how he first met Vitale. "And happy Hanukkah."

Vitale declined to be interviewed for this story. But his lawyer, Martin Weinberg, said Vitale did not violate lobbying laws. While he declined to discuss details of Vitale's friendship and contacts with DiMasi, Weinberg said Vitale has acted honorably throughout the controversy.

"People respond to the relentless pressure of being targeted by law enforcement in a variety of fashions," said Weinberg. "Dick Vitale has responded to this pressure with great dignity and overall care for the interests of his clients and those who trust and depend on him, rather than just on his own interest."

The relationship between DiMasi and Vitale goes back decades. In 2004, when DiMasi became speaker, Vitale was tapped as his new campaign treasurer. Vitale has also been DiMasi's personal accountant and financial adviser - issuing a $250,000 third mortgage on DiMasi's North End condo in 2006.

Vitale runs an annual golf tournament hosted by DiMasi at the Ipswich Country Club, where they both are members. The tournament honors Vitale's brother, Harold, a Saugus police officer who died in the line of duty in the 1980s.

Several people interviewed by the Globe described Vitale as an unassuming professional with two primary passions - his work at Vitale Caturano and golf.

"For him, showing up in that office at 7:30 in the morning, having a fresh bowl of fruit and a cup of coffee - life is good," said Jeffrey Lynch, owner of Enterprise Equipment, a Weymouth engineering and contracting firm, who described Vitale as a close friend and business adviser. "You could call him seven days a week on his cell, in his office. He'd say, 'What's up, what's going on?' This is a guy who will walk in a room and he's got a smile on his face, and he just wants to know what you did yesterday, how your kids are doing."

Vitale, who grew up in Revere, started his accounting firm with fellow Bentley College alumnus Richard Caturano in 1978. Over the past decade, the firm has flourished, moving from office space in Union Wharf in the North End to its own four-story brick building on Constitution Wharf in Charlestown. The firm, which has grown from about 75 employees in 1996 to 370 now, brought in about $63 million last year, according to Inc. magazine's website. It has also been recognized by the business magazine as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the country.

The firm, which displays the work of New England artists in its lobby, has also become known as one of the most employee-friendly in the business, offering free on-site gourmet meals, child care, and even chair massages during tax season.

"The person I look to as a mentor is actually my partner, Dick Vitale," Caturano, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told the Boston Business Journal about two years ago. "He's not all that much older than me, but he's full of great advice and he's a great balancing factor in my life - he's a direct opposite of me."

Vitale, 63, has devoted himself to the community, serving for the last eight years on the board of directors at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, along with philanthropist Myra Kraft, construction magnate John F. Fish, and Richard A. Voke, former majority leader of the Massachusetts House, among others.

"He wouldn't stand out in a room," said Joe Vinard, chairman of the advisory board of the Chelsea branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs. "He wasn't looking for any notoriety. But if there was something to be done, he lent his expertise. If he didn't have the expertise, he sought it out from his contacts. I can't say enough nice things about the guy."

Vitale regularly donated to the organization, and several years ago helped put together its annual dinner. He hosted meetings at his accounting firm's offices and arranged fund-raisers at the Ferncroft Country Club in Danvers.

In recent years, as he neared his firm's mandatory retirement age, Vitale began looking for other opportunities, said Weinberg. In 2006, he quietly created a separate Delaware-based company called WN Advisers.

Though Vitale had no prior lobbying experience, at least two business interests - Cognos ULC, the computer software company, and the Massachusetts Ticket Brokers Association - hired WN Advisers for help on Beacon Hill.

According to the state inspector general's office, a Cognos sales agent, Joseph Lally, paid Vitale $600,000 over two years. He received $500,000 on the same day in 2007 that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts paid Cognos $13 million for a statewide technology contract.

Vitale, who has degrees in accounting and taxation, had no lobbying experience. What he did have was access to DiMasi, as Coakley noted earlier this month when asked why the ticket brokers hired Vitale to help push legislation deregulating prices for reselling tickets.

"The assumption would be that he either represented - or they believed - that he could assist them with passage of this bill," Coakley said.

Weinberg, Vitale's lawyer, denies that his client is a lobbyist, saying he did not work enough hours to meet the state's 50-hour threshold that would require him to register as a lobbyist.

But Coakley alleged that Vitale deliberately skirted the state's lobbying and disclosure laws with his work on behalf of the ticket brokers. He held secret meetings with lawmakers at his office to conceal his role, the attorney general said when announcing the indictment.

Vitale pushed to secure the bill's passage in the House, but the bill stalled in the Senate, where he had much less sway. As the bill was languishing in a committee, Vitale appeared to be seeking favor with at least one key legislator. State Senator Joan Menard, the majority whip, told the Globe that Vitale threw a fund-raiser for her at his firm's Charlestown office.

She said there were several ticket brokers at the fund-raiser last January, but "they never talked about the issue." Twenty people that day gave her campaign a total of $5,025 - about 10 percent of the money she's collected this year.

About six months ago, Menard said, she gave $300 back to Vitale, because he had given her $500 - $200 over the legal limit for registered lobbyists.

"I had absolutely no idea that he was a lobbyist," she said. "He never identified himself as such."

After Vitale's role surfaced in May - and he was pressured by the secretary of state to register as a lobbyist - he was forced to resign from his firm under pressure from some of his colleagues. His photo and profile were removed from the website, and e-mails sent to his work address bounced back. Even though he left under a cloud, the firm's name remains Vitale Caturano.

Vitale has steadfastly refused to report the $60,000 he received from the ticket brokers association as lobbying fees, which prompted Secretary of State William Galvin to turn the matter over to Coakley for prosecution. Vitale also resigned this year from the Boys & Girls Clubs board of directors, and the local board of its Chelsea branch.

"He's certainly been a very close friend of the organization," said Jan Goldstein, a spokeswoman for the clubs, adding that "he asked to step down."

"He was very, very good to us in many, many ways."

Last month, he sold the three-bedroom vacation home in Quechee, Vt., for $165,000. He's also put his two-bedroom condominium in an exclusive Back Bay high-rise on the market for $995,000. So far he hasn't sold his third home, in Naples, Fla.

"Until recently he wasn't taking much time off," said his friend Lynch, who speaks with Vitale regularly. "He could vacation wherever he wanted to vacation, he could play golf wherever he wanted to play. I kept saying, 'When are you going to take some time off?' Unfortunately he has lots of time now.

"The age that he's at, and after what he's done all his life, this is not the position you want to be in," Lynch added. "Somebody hiccupped and something went wrong, and I don't know all the details. But he will survive. He's looking forward to getting the matter behind him."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com. Andrea Estes can be reached at estes@globe.com.