Carla Coleman is no stranger to the public spotlight. In three years as FAU’s foundation chief she raised over 200 million dollars. Last year she was given a 40 thousand dollar raise despite the fact that FAU ranks in the bottom 40th percentile in faculty pay nation wide. This summer she’s out on $4,500 bail on allegations of corrupt intent to benefit herself or another, a third-degree felony.
Last year, Anthony Catanese announced he was stepping down as president of FAU and Coleman thought that they should give him a parting gift. Apparently Catanese has a thing for sports cars (and here I am thinking he’s too old to have a midlife crisis), so Coleman took up a collection to buy him a 2002 red Corvette. Despite her impressive money-raising skills, she couldn’t quite raise the 42 thousand needed for the red phallus… er car, so she did what any law-abiding citizen would, she took it from the foundation.
As if this wasn’t enough, all the money to pay for the car went through the tax-exempt foundation and was given in check form to pay Catanese’s wife, Sara, as a decorating consultant for the Eleanor Baldwin house. The problem with that was that Sara Catanese never worked as a decorating consultant on the house. In fact, the Cataneses never lived there, maybe because someone would notice the Corvette in the parking lot of the house that sits across from the administration building.
So while Coleman practices the fine art of washing dirty money, she sticks to her claim that she intended on doing nothing wrong. Even after Catanese returned the money, these two think nothing illegal transpired. Then again, why would a four-month criminal investigation resulting in the voluntary arrest of Coleman and a sentence of 30 hours of community service for the decorators who facilitated the funneling of funds make them think that this gift was anything but legit?
It’s quite sad, though, that while the criminal investigation seems complete, the man who started this mess gets off with a simple apology for something he thinks just looks bad. He accepted money from a tax-exempt charity in a manner that was clearly intended to be kept hush-hush, or at least so he can cheat the IRS, and yet he thinks it just looks bad. Keep in mind he made $191 thousand a year at FAU and went to Florida Institute of Technology expecting to earn nearly $300 thousand a year. It sure looks like he needed FAU’s help in buying a car — otherwise it might cost him roughly 22 percent of what he made at FAU. Besides, who cares if the car costs more than what a starting teacher at FAU makes, so long as Catanese can feel young again, free from criminal prosecution that might land Coleman in prison for up to five years.
