Courier-Journal: Ex-dean feared for job, house
E-mails show concern over center’s tax status
Federal agents and prosecutors expect to complete their criminal investigation of the University of Louisville’s former education dean within four to six weeks and are aware of e-mails indicating that he believed months ago that his job was at risk, U.S. Attorney Dave Huber said today.
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Huber said the e-mails were seized about two months ago, during a search of former dean Robert Felner’s office and computer. “We are aware of them and a lot of other things,” he said, declining to elaborate.
In the e-mails, which The Courier-Journal obtained from UofL under the Kentucky Open Records Act, Felner expressed concern that he’d lose his house unless he could show that an Illinois organization to which he had funneled federal grant money could prove it had tax-exempt status.
Felner, who was then dean of UofL’s College of Education and Human Development, doesn’t explain in the e-mails why his house or job might be in jeopardy, or why getting the organization declared tax-exempt would save them.
“We really, really need the tax thing if we are ever going to get out of this hole,” Felner wrote in April to his friend and former colleague, Thomas Schroeder, who was director of the National Center on Education and Prevention in Port Byron, Ill. “I am already needing to relentlessly look for another job as this one I have been told is probably not long,” Felner added.
Records previously released by UofL show that Felner had arranged for it to pay Schroeder’s center $450,000 from a $694,000 federal grant that’s the focus of the federal investigation.
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