New England in brief
Audit finds UMass-Boston at fraud risk
June 30, 2009
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BOSTON
Salary checks paid to an employee who had left the school nine months earlier, undue overtime payments for information technology workers, and missing computers are among the problems state Auditor Joseph DeNucci identified at the University of Massachusetts at Boston in a report yesterday. DeNucci’s office said the school “is at risk of loss, theft, and misuse of public funds due to serious weaknesses in its payroll and inventory procedures.’’ One worker in the Graduate College of Education left the school and continued to receive $34,273 in salary, an error campus officials chalked up to “circumstances, inadequate internal controls, and human error,’’ the audit said. UMass-Boston officials called the audit a “valuable process.’’ (State House News Service)DALLAS
Revere man gets prison for false 911 calls
Matthew Weigman, 19, of Revere, Mass., has been sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison by a Texas court for his involvement in reporting false emergencies to police. According to acting US Attorney James Jacks of the Northern District of Texas, Weigman pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to retaliate against a witness and one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud and unauthorized access of a protected computer. From June 2003 to May 2008, Weigman, who was arrested in Boston in 2008, with several coconspirators, illegally used telephone company information to harass and threaten individuals in Texas, as well as to report false emergencies to Fort Worth police, according to Jacks.WOBURN
Jury convicts gunman in garage slaying
A Massachusetts jury has convicted a hired gunman of shooting a man to death in a Newton parking garage. Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said yesterday that the jury found Scott Foxworth guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the shooting death of Edward Schiller. Foxworth was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a trial lasting almost a month. Authorities say James Brescia hired Foxworth, a previously convicted killer, to kill Schiller, who was dating Brescia’s estranged wife. Brescia was convicted of first-degree murder in a separate trial in June 2008. Police found Schiller shot in his car in a garage in January 2006. (AP)PEPPERELL
Voters OK a $646,797 tax override
Pepperell residents voted last night in favor of a tax override to save the town’s library, senior center, and community center. Voters approved a $646,797 Proposition 2 1/2 override by a vote of 2,222 to 868. Turnout was 39 percent. If the override had failed, all three facilities would have shut down at the end of July. The override will add $169 to the average homeowner’s tax bill, bringing it to $3,770.75.NEWTON
OxyContin in mower bag leads to arrest
A Newton man was charged yesterday with drug trafficking after police found more than 700 OxyContin pills, worth more than $50,000, hidden inside a lawnmower bag at his home on Friday, Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said. Dimitrios Paicopoulos, 27, was charged with trafficking more than 100 grams of OxyContin and was ordered held on $100,000 cash bail by Newton District Court Judge Dyanne Klein. Police said they received complaints from Paicopoulos’s neighbors of suspected drug activity and conducted an investigation that culminated in the arrest.BOSTON
DNA said to tie inmate to woman’s slaying
Police issued a warrant for the arrest of a man allegedly linked by DNA to the February murder and rape of a 48-year-old Boston woman in Dorchester. Fitzhugh Newton, 50, of Boston, who is incarcerated at the South Bay House of Correction on unrelated charges, will be charged with murder and two counts of aggravated rape at a future scheduled date, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said. The body of the unidentified woman was discovered Feb. 26 by police in a truck parking lot on Columbia Road after a 911 call.
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