An Eastchester man accused of bleeding his family’s philanthropic foundation nearly dry has been ordered to pay at least $138 million to resurrect it after his mother and sister accused him of using it for years to benefit himself, his wife and kids and associates.
David Pope was accused in their lawsuit of damaging the Tuckahoe-based Generoso Pope Foundation through excessive salary and improper self-dealing by donating to causes and other non-profits from which he benefited.
The judgment last month was issued by state Supreme Court Justice Charles Wood, who found that David Pope’s conduct was “willful, wanton, reckless and indicative of a high degree of moral culpability” and ordered him to pay compensatory damages with interest of $82.8 million and another $55.4 million in punitive damages.
The judgment was first reported by the New York Post.
The foundation was established in 1947 by its namesake, David Pope’s great-grandfather, a sand and gravel magnate who also owned the Il Progresso newspaper and a radio station. Its purpose was to benefit educational, health, cultural and other civic institutions.
Generoso Pope was president until his death three years later. His wife then helmed the foundation for nearly five decades. Their son Anthony took over in 1998.
Over the years the foundation made contributions to multiple medical centers, including Blythedale Children’s Hospital, Lawrence Hospital and White Plains Hospital in Westchester, cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim, colleges like Fordham and New York University, and scholarship programs in Tuckahoe, Yonkers and other school districts. It gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Tuckahoe Police Department and bought a new boat for the Yonkers police Marine Unit.
When Anthony Pope died in 2005 his wife Edith became president until David Pope soon convinced her to step aside in favor of him, according to the lawsuit.
The foundation had assets of approximately $32 million at that time but by 2019 that was down to $4 million. The plaintiff’s lawyers, Andrew Tomback and Marc Luccarelli, believe there is even less now, primarily the value of the foundation’s building in Depot Square, which was formerly Tuckahoe Village Hall.
They said that Pope’s mother, Catherine, and siblings, Ted and Marie-Therese, who had been removed from the board in 2007 and 2010 after questioning its decisions, have been returned to the board. They will use whatever they can get through the court judgment, and likely sale of the building, to resurrect the foundation and return it to its original purpose, the lawyers said.
There are also questions swirling about the ownership of the building as David Pope engineered a transfer of it to a separate entity, Generoso Pope FDN LLC in 2019. The new entity received mortgages totaling $1.25 million that were eventually defaulted on and the siblings’ lawyers are seeking to void the transaction or at least limit what the foundation must pay.
At a court hearing last month, David Pope said the loans were needed for the foundation to fulfill charitable obligations and cover debts. On questioning by Luccarelli he acknowledged that as soon as the initial $750,000 loan was in the new LLC’s account, that account transfered $300,000 to a personal bank account of his.
When Luccarelli asked why that would be done if the foundation had financial obligations, Pope said he was “taking the 5th”, as he did multiple times on follow up questions.
He insisted moments later that he was invoking his 5th-amendment right against self-incrimination not because he believed he would incriminate himself but because he didn’t have a lawyer with him and wanted to protect himself.
The siblings’ lawyers contend that he used some of that money to help his son start up a Fit Body Boot Camp franchise in Norwalk, Conn. They base that on a $49,600 payment from Pope’s account to AJP Development – labeled “franchise fee” – 10 days later. That company is the business name for the fitness camp.
The lawyers said their efforts to get the Westchester District Attorney’s Office and state Attorney General’s Office to pursue criminal charges against David Pope starting nearly a decade ago went nowhere. An Attorney General spokeswoman said the office has tracked the civil litigation but never received a formal referral that would have allowed it to conduct a criminal investigation.
The AG’s Office has also been looking into the 2019 transfer of the property. At a court hearing last month, a lawyer for the office suggested that the transfer had been illegitimate. She said she could not understand how the mortgages were lent and the title transfered when there was no record of the Attorney General’s Office or a judge signing off on the transfer, as is required for charitable assets.
In a statement released by the lawyers, Marie-Therese Pope bemoaned that her and Tomback’s efforts to have law enforcement authorities hold her brother accountable failed.
“The Foundation served worthy causes for years until David seized control and stole millions of dollars for himself and his family,” she said. “I am pleased to finally have control of the Foundation so we can salvage what is left.”
David Pope did not return multiple phone messages and emails seeking comment. John Pappalardo, a lawyer whose firm previously represented Pope, said they had not since early last year and he could not comment.
The lawsuit details the millions of dollars David Pope is believed to have directed to himself and his family over the years, including salaries totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for his wife and two sons for what the plaintiffs contended was little to no work.
Anthony Pope was paid $60,000 a year for guiding the foundation. When David Pope took over, the president’s salary jumped initially to $98,000 and incrementally for the next several years until it reached $224,000 in 2016. The lawsuit contended that all the raised salaries were far above the value of any services Pope was providing the foundation.
The salary was only drawn back starting in 2017 after it was learned a criminal investigation was underway, according to the lawsuit. Over a 15-year period, Pope was paid nearly $2.4 million in salary – a figure that would have been $900,000 had his grandfather’s salary been maintained.
In 2001, five years before David Pope took over, Blythedale and Lawrence hospitals got two of the biggest donations, $175,000 and $135,000 respectively. In 2019, the two largest grants were to the Tuckahoe Tigers Youth Football & Cheer program that Pope’s children had participated in ($199,800) and Fairfield University ($98,250), where his kids went to college.
The youth football and cheer program, of which Pope was a cheer coach, traveled to national competitions each year and received more than $900,000 from the foundation over a 10-year period. The Tuckahoe school district received more than $740,000 during the years Pope’s children were students there.
Donations to hospitals and other causes the foundation had supported were significantly curtailed.
“Like any other foundation there’s nothing wrong with giving to causes where you know the person (isn’t benefiting from it) but helping homeless people get jobs is different from supporting your child’s cheerleading career,” Tomback said.
Under Pope’s leadership, the foundation dramatically increased its donations to the Westchester Italian Cultural Center, which was based in the foundation’s building. In 2004, the group received $15,000 from the foundation. The contribution was $205,000 the following year, nearly $1.2 million in 2008 and $3.4 million between 2009 and 2019, according to the lawsuit, for a total of more than $6.5 million over 15 years.
During that time, the cultural center paid David Pope more than $300,000 of that money as salary to serve as its director, according to the lawsuit.
Over a six year period during which Pope’s three children attended Fairfield, the university received nearly $1.1 million from the foundation. The foundation also made contributions totaling more than $225,000 to Vanderbilt, Pace and Iona universities and Fordham Prep at the time that the foundation’s lawyer, accountant and another board member had sons applying to and attending those institutions.
A key development in the case came last year when Luccarelli deposed the accountant and he acknowledged spreading around to different categories money that had appeared to have been spent on questionable “miscellaneous” expenses.
By the time Wood held an inquest hearing to determine damages in December, Pope no longer had a lawyer representing him and he did not show up to court.
The massive nine-figure judgment against Pope is not the only one he faces in Westchester. He filed an affidavit in November acknowledging that he still owes his estranged wife $448,000 of the $900,000 he promised her from the sale of two homes near each other in Mount Vernon and Eastchester.
The properties were sold last Spring for $2.1 million. At a home in Hartsdale where online public records suggest Pope lives, a woman who answered said he didn’t live there. When asked if she was related to him, she said she was his soon-to-be ex-wife. As of Friday, Westchester court records showed no divorce filing for the couple.
Luccarelli suggested that Pope’s admission of owing his wife could have been an effort to undercut the judgment he knew was forthcoming in the foundation case.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Eastchester man accused of using family charity for personal benefit
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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