A Different Kind of Fraud at the Brooklyn Museum

Mr. Don and I spent May 17th exploring the Brooklyn Museum - wish we'd had two full days dedicated to doing that instead of only one. Now I came across this sad story at The New York Times. Geez! Arts, Briefly Former Brooklyn Museum Employee Arrested By ROBIN POGREBIN; Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF Published: June 5, 2009 A former payroll manager for the Brooklyn Museum stole more than $620,000 from the institution by issuing fake paychecks that were directly deposited into his bank account, according to court papers made public on Thursday. The former employee, Dwight Newton, 40, faces up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud if convicted. Mr. Newton worked at the museum, right, from 2002 until he resigned in 2008. Starting in 2005, the complaint said, he created a payroll profile for a fictitious employee with the name “Brooklyn Museum” or “Brooklyn” and subsequently issued checks that went into his personal account. The theft was discovered during a routine annual review of payroll documents, the museum said. Mr. Newton was arrested and charged on Thursday and was released on bond. He was not available for comment on Friday. A woman who answered the phone at his home in East Brunswick, N.J., said, “No comment.”

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This Newton is no known relative of mine! According to family lore, our Newton family name was translated from the French words for "new town" sometime in the late 18th century or early 19th century when my great-great-great-(great?)-grandfather was working as a lumberjack near what is now Antigo, Wisconsin (Wisconsin wasn't a state back then and Antigo probably didn't exist) and the locals couldn't wrap their tongues around the French pronounciation of our surname. Well, that's the family lore, at least. That same family lore further reports that the ancestral Newton came over to Louisiana, which was then French territory, some time during the 1700's - no reason given for leaving France behind but, based upon his descendants, it probably was not due to religious persecution :) Family lore further reports that said Newton, with his family (no mention of family coming over from France, so I assume said Newton Pater married or, at the very least, procreated, upon arrival in the New World), worked their way up the Mississippi River, presumably leaving Newton family seedlings all along the way, until finally settling down to work as lumberjacks in the Antigo (Wisconsin) area. I am given to understand that I have third or fourth or fifth removed cousins still in and about Antigo whom I've not met, and am unlikely to do so. Wait - I believe those are cousins on the side of my Grandmother Ida Newton, whose maiden name was Bellanger (my dad insisted that the name was pronounced in the French way, Be-LAUN-shay), whose second cousin of a second cousin (or something like that) was the mother (or father) of a famous major league pitcher whose last name was Bellanger, only I don't remember his first name and I don't remember what team he pitched for, but it had to have been sometime in the 1950's or early 1960's. The person I remember most from all of the behind-the-hands talk about ancestors is my Uncle Jack Bellanger, who almost never showed up but I do remember as a handsome "old man" with sparkling blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, tall and lean, and always dressed in a suit and driving a big car. I realize now, as I did not as a child, that Uncle Jack was actually my Grandmother Newton's brother - don't know if he was an older brother or younger brother. I don't remember what color hair he had, only that he wore a big ring with a blue stone on one of his hands (I don't remember which hand) and he was always smartly dressed. And he seemed to always have money, or at least, what passed for money in our family, which isn't saying much. By all accounts (whispered around the dining table after Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners) Uncle Jack was a real lady-killer and he may have been married several times. I don't exactly remember, but I have a vague recollection that Uncle Jack died either shortly before, or shortly after, my Grandmother Newton died, I think that was about 1960 - I was 8 or 9 and you don't think about such things at that age. Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe I heard a story somewhere along the line that it may have been Uncle Jack who introduced my dad to his first wife (something I only heard about in half-whispered conversations when I used to hid under the dining room table after meals). I think her name was Victoria - or else that was the name of my older half-sister born of the marriage. Anyway, it didn't last long and ended in divorce (or maybe an annulment). And then my father met my mother and the rest, as they say, is history -- four daughters and two sons later. Eek! With such illustrious antecedents, no way am I related to a dude in East Brunswick, New Jersey named Dwight. Anyway, we don't have such a dweeby name as Dwight in our family line!