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Manuel Duran, 70, of West Roxbury admitted on Thursday, Sept. 29, to four counts of perjury, three counts of stealing more than $1,200, and two charges of falsifying corporate books, the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office said. Along with his year in prison, Duran must also complete 250 hours of community service and repay the money he reportedly took. The court will decide the exact amount he owes at a hearing in December.
Duran was the executive director and board president of Casa Nueva Vida, which housed more than 150 mostly Spanish-speaking families at 14 locations in Boston and Lawrence. He had control of the nonprofit's $7 million annual budget, the Attorney General's Office said. According to the annual reports he generated, Duran had well allocated that money to help some of the cities' neediest residents.
But an anonymous tip to the Attorney General's office said that was a lie, and a subsequent investigation found that he'd falsified those reports to hide that some of the money went into his pocket.
The Office of the Inspector General found that Duran used some of the nonprofit's funds to lease four properties and a fifth that a relative owned. He hid this by using LLCs to obscure his stake in the deals and lied on legal forms saying he would not profit from them, investigators said.
The Inspector General said that Duran used multiple schemes over the years. Those allegedly included:
- From 2014 until 2021, he inflated the rent payments for a Lawrence shelter location and pocketed $1.1 million in overages. The homeowners did not know he was doing this.
- From 2012 until 2020, Duran created fake vendors and paid them for jobs they didn't do, such as lead removal and renovations. He had people he knew cash those checks worth more than $242,000 and give him the money.
- From 2014 to 2019, he wrote paychecks to a seasonal employee who was in Puerto Rico at the time. He deposited more than $140,000 into his own bank account this way.
“Manuel Duran’s schemes and blatant abuse of power led to the destruction of a valuable charitable organization and basic services for our state’s most vulnerable residents,” AG Maura Healey said. “We are pleased to deliver accountability in this case.”
Heading Home, one of Boston's largest emergency housing groups, now runs Casa Nueva Vida's shelter programs.
The Attorney General's Office won a civil judgment against Duran earlier this year that required him to pay $6 million and banned him from serving a fiduciary role in a public charity.
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