“I was interviewed by the FBI,” Vinikoor said. The 2018 civil lawsuit noted that Wood at the time was “the subject of criminal investigations by the FBI and the office of the US Attorney for New Hampshire.” One big question is why it took investigators and prosecutors so long - five years - to bring charges related a financial crisis that nearly crippled the Elks club. Vinikoor said the suspected misuse of money only came to light by auditors when Lake Sunapee Bank, which is one of the banks where the indictment alleges Wood was kiting checks, was being acquired by Bar Harbor Bankshares in 2016, and “they looked at it and said ‘Hey, something’s going on here.’ ” “Every Elk who was in leadership had fiduciary responsibility to watch what was going on even if they didn’t do it day-to-day, they could have reviewed the books,” he said. ![]() “I think they are embarrassed about the whole thing and getting duped by Wood and didn’t want to admit it publicly,” Bob Vinikoor, of Koor Communications, who sold his six radio stations in 2016, said Friday. Scott Merrihew, treasurer of the Lebanon Elks, did not return messages seeking comment about either the indictment of Wood or the civil lawsuit this week. The record further shows that the Elks have never submitted an account to the court of how much money it estimates was misappropriated, which it must do if it wants to seek restitution. The court entered a default notice on Nov. Wood never replied to the allegations in the civil lawsuit, according to the case history of the docket. The Elks have never revealed how much money they claim was misappropriated over the years, but in 2017 it was able to sell a 7-acre parcel of land on the east side of Labombard Road to the owner of Dartmouth Coach for $1.8 million, according to Grafton County Registry of Deeds office. Nonetheless, the lawsuit alleged, Wood, using the name of another individual purportedly representing the Elks, went ahead and entered into the revised lease agreement with Koor and “misappropriated the payments to himself,” the lawsuit said. The original 99-year land lease agreement called for Koor to pay a base rent of $500 per month plus 40% of any gross revenue Koor were to receive by subleasing space on the antenna to any other parties, such as a cellphone operator, the lawsuit said.īut when Wood brought a proposal from Koor to the Elks’ board to renegotiate the lease so that it would pay nearly $15,000 over 25 monthly installments, the board “specifically voted not to modify or change the lease,” according to the lawsuit. ![]() The lawsuit alleged that Wood had secretly renegotiated, contrary to the Elks’ board wishes, a 2004 lease agreement with Koor Communications, then the owner of WNTK-FM and five other radio stations in the Upper Valley, for the broadcaster to operate a radio antenna tower on Elks’ land. In June 2018, 16 months after the Elks Lodge reported to the Lebanon Police Department that a unexplained loss of money had thrown the social club into financial turmoil with unpaid property taxes dating back years, the Elks sued Wood in Grafton Superior Court alleging that he had “over the course of several years … created fraudulent records and diverted to his own use funds due and owing to the Elks.” The federal indictment is the first criminal charge to be filed relating to the alleged misuse of funds at the Elks Lodge that were revealed nearly five years ago, but it is not the first time that Wood has been accused of misappropriating the club’s money. Wood did not return a phone call and email seeking comment on Friday. In Wood’s alleged scheme, deposits were transferred from the Lake Sunapee Bank account into the Merchants Bank account, then back into the Lake Sunapee Bank account “before Merchants Bank received notification that the checks were unpaid for insufficient funds and to his account,” the indictment said. The process artificially inflates the balance in the receiving account, facilitating access to money that’s not really there. ![]() The bank fraud scheme ran from August 2016 to February 2017, the indictment alleges.Ĭheck-kiting is a form of bank fraud that involves moving funds from one bank account with insufficient funds to another bank account. He allegedly transferred funds from an Elks account at the former Lake Sunapee Bank that he was not authorized to use into the bank account of a defunct nonprofit he controlled at Merchants Bank, the indictment claims. Michael Wood, who was the manager of Lebanon Elks Lodge on Heater Road, is charged with one count of bank fraud. LEBANON - A West Fairlee man has been indicted on a federal charge that he defrauded two banks through a check-kiting scheme when he was the manager of a social club and charity in Lebanon, according to an indictment filed this week in U.S.
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