A forensic audit of the Blue Hills Civic Association’s (BHCA) handling of grants between July 1, 2022, and March 31, 2025, found at least $208,000 in “unsupported disbursements that either violated conflict of interest best practice standards or were used to pay for services that were not performed.”
The amount of funds mishandled by BHCA, a Hartford-based community nonprofit, may be greater, but auditors were “unable to reach a conclusive determination regarding the majority of grant funds” the nonprofit handled due to flawed record-keeping and financial practices.
The audit, performed by CliftonLarsenAllen LLP (CLA), was initiated after BHCA delayed reporting that a $300,000 wire transfer it was sending to another nonprofit had been intercepted. While the theft occurred in December 2024, BCHA did not notify its governing board until March, and state officials in May.
The Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) then froze all grant money going to BHCA, holding it in escrow until an audit of the nonprofit’s finances was complete. Shortly after, BHCA laid off its staff.
CLA’s audit, which was initially due to be released in September 2025 but was delayed twice, also found BHCA’s policies did not “meet state requirements for record retention and auditability” and that BHCA’s “board oversight and transparency in sub-recipient grant awarding were lacking.”
“Monitoring activities, such as site visits and financial reviews, were not consistently performed or documented by BHCA, and discrepancies in subrecipient reporting were not adequately addressed.” auditors found.
As part of the audit, CLA reviewed the theft of the $300,000 wire transfers and found BHCA did not have any policies in place to limit potential exposure to fraud.
“Legislative grant subrecipients were directed to submit ACH authorization forms containing bank account details via unencrypted email, without any supplementary security protocols to safeguard the transmitted information. Subsequently, transfers from BHCA were executed to the accounts provided by subrecipients, with no procedures in place to verify the accuracy of the recipient account information.” auditors founds.
Auditors also attempted to reconcile BHCA’s use of grant funds received from DECD and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and determine whether expenditures were properly classified in accordance with grant requirements. However, they found BHCA did not have invoices or other supporting information from some grant subrecipients, which limited auditor’s ability to reconcile the use of funds.
CLA was also unable to determine BHCA’s processes for awarding grants. In interviews CLA conducted with former BHCA employees, staff either said they were not involved in awarding grants or did not believe any formal process was in place.
In one instance, auditors found a materials packet from a board meeting that stated Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, had identified organizations slated to receive funds “based upon his experience and knowledge of each agency” and had determined the amount of funds each organization was to receive.
McCrory is the focus of an ongoing federal investigation into his alleged relationship with Society for Human Engagement and Business Alignment (SHEBA) head Sonsarae Cicero. SHEBA received millions in state funds, both from DECD and through intermediaries like BHCA.
BHCA was named in a grand jury subpoena federal officials sent to DECD in July 2025. The subpoena sought documents, communications and other records related to BHCA and some organizations it had sent grant money to.
CLA also found that grant recipients were being awarded funds prior to entering into a memorandum of understanding (MOUs) with BHCA and before proposed budgets were received. For organizations that received grants from funds BHCA received in fiscal year 2024, CLA identified 11 different organizations that signed MOUs after they began receiving funds. In seven of those cases, CLA was not able to locate MOUs for $490,000 worth of funds awarded to subrecipients.
Auditors also found additional evidence that McCrory was responsible for awarding BHCA funds to grant recipients.
DECD asked CLA to expand the scope of the audit to match the timeframe of the subpoena.
In an email sent on February 26, 2025 regarding subrecipients for a fiscal year 2025 grant BHCA received from the legislature, former BHCA executive director Vicki Gallon-Clark wrote “You should have emails that represent funding decisions that were made by Senator McCrory yesterday and today.”
CLA also found some organizations, including SHEBA, were “designated to receive their allocations through passthrough arrangements from other subrecipients.”
An October 15, 2024, email reviewed by auditors revealed Upper Albany New York Collaborative “would be serving as a passthrough for $615,000 to SHEBA, and Wilson Gray YMCA would be passing through $25,000 to St. John’s Gospel Full Deliverance Church.”
According to CLA, BHCA provided no context as to why the passthrough was occurring. In an October 9, 2024, email, Gallon-Clark wrote, “Senator McCrory has allocated funds to the YMCA that are designated for St. John’s.”
CLA also found that after McCrory told BHCA what subrecipients would be receiving funds from the 2024 and 2025 legislative grants, BHCA did not do “any due diligence into the selected organizations.”
Auditors further found that BHCA did not appear to have required grant subrecipients to provide documentation for their expenses or to have followed up when subrecipients provided expense forms that were incomplete or had “questionable responses.”
CLA reviewed a 2024 year end grant report from SHEBA that BHCA’s financial consultant Matthew Burry found contained a $100,000 shortage of the grant amount.
When CLA reviewed the budget spreadsheet SHEBA provided to BHCA, they found several irregularities. While a grant report indicated $50,000 was spent on 50 $1,000 scholarship grants, CLA’s review of SHEBA’s bank account details found transactions equaling $49,916.59 for other irregular transactions, including “over counter checks.”
“The absence of documentation identifying scholarship recipients, combined with these questionable disbursements, strongly suggests that the funds were not used for their intended purpose.” auditors found “This pattern reflects serious misrepresentation and potential misuse of public grant funds, raising significant concerns about compliance and accountability, and without inspecting the books and records for SHEBA, it is not possible to determine the ultimate recipient of purpose of the checks.”
Other questionable transactions CLA flagged included five charges made to Netflix that fell under the category of “Marketing, Publicicy and Advertising;” over $120,000 in checks to unknown recipients, including charges to Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy; and an apparent $7,748 payment on a Discover credit card.
CLA recommended that DECD require organizations that receive legislative grants to “implement formal, documented procedures for grant awarding and monitoring, strengthen internal controls, ensure transparency and board oversight, and maintain accurate and complete records.”
Auditors will now review documentation from organizations that received state grant money from BHCA, including “detailed support for all expenditures reported to BHCA, copies of programmatic and financial reports submitted, evidence of funds received, and any applicable agreements or attestations maintained by subrecipients.”
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McCrory will shrug and say he did nothing wrong by funneling money to his girlfriend’s non profit. Bye bye Doug