THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 1, 1995 TAG: 9507010463
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
More than two years after he fled Hampton Roads, leaving the region's largest AIDS service organization on the verge of ruin and three others in financial distress, David W. Gillooly was arrested Thursday in Florida.
The former executive director of the Tidewater AIDS Crisis Taskforce had admitted in a 1993 letter mismanaging the organizations's funds. He also was charged by police with forging four checks for $6,500.
TACT officials have estimated that as much as $60,000 was mismanaged during Gillooly's tenure.
Gillooly, 39, was detained Thursday on a domestic violence charge stemming from an incident on a cruise ship. A routine computer check revealed outstanding warrants from the Norfolk Police Department charging him with four counts of forgery.
Police said Gillooly - who had presented himself as a gay man who had lost a longtime lover to AIDS when he took the top post at TACT - was accompanied by his wife when arrested. The woman told a Florida pastor that she knew nothing of Gillooly's history and is devastated by the revelations.
Reached at their Melbourne, Fla., home Friday evening, Gillooly's wife declined to be interviewed. ``I've been told to say I have no comment,'' she said.
Gillooly is believed to have arrived in Melbourne about two years ago, presenting himself as a devout Christian. He linked up with a missionary group there and was working in a thrift store, a minister there said. He apparently was married about a year and a half ago.
Gillooly was being held without bond in the Brevard County Jail on Friday night pending a request from Virginia for extradition.
TACT officials, who have picked up the pieces since Gillooly left town in January 1993, have sought to relegate his name to the past. ``At last it will put closure to a chapter of our history we would like to close,'' said Jim Spivey, who was named TACT's executive director three weeks ago.
Closure of a different sort - shutting down TACT - was a real threat in the wake of Gillooly's disappearance.
Gillooly was last seen locally Jan. 14, 1993. He said he was vacationing in Orlando, Fla. He left a phone message at TACT's office saying he had been delayed by car trouble and would be back Jan. 19.
When he still did not return, there were concerns for Gillooly's safety. TACT reported him missing.
As days went by, however, an increasing volume of financial problems left TACT officials believing he had left town.
Just before he left, questions were already being raised about TACT's handling of funds. Requests to Gillooly for financial records and an accounting of funds went unanswered. After his departure, TACT employees found unpaid bills he said had been paid. They discovered funds were missing and that payroll couldn't be met. Making matters more difficult, records were missing or incomplete.
Finally, on Jan. 30, a letter from Gillooly arrived at TACT's offices. It was dated Jan. 13 but postmarked Jan. 27 in Savannah, Ga. In it, Gillooly took responsibility for misuse of monies the Taskforce had been holding for other AIDS-service groups. He said he wanted to resign ``in the best interest'' of TACT.
Efforts to find him failed.
An audit revealed that Gillooly had paid TACT bills by using all but $7,500 of $33,000 in funds being held for the Hampton Roads Walk/Run for Life Committee. Additionally, other funds had been misused, and grants Gillooly claimed to have lined up did not exist.
The audit uncovered more than just Gillooly's admitted mismanagement, however.
Police said that between July 1 and Dec. 10, 1992, four checks worth $6,500 and drawn on TACT accounts were cashed at Cenit Bank. The names of members of TACT's board of trustees were forged on the checks.
As a result, not only were TACT programs threatened, but the other organizations that were to have received shares of the $33,000 - and had already earmarked the money for expenditures - suddenly had almost nothing. The Peninsula AIDS Foundation and CANDII House, which cares for HIV-infected children and their families, had to wait until TACT could generate new monies to replace those Gillooly had allegedly mismanaged.
TACT undertook to repay all debts Gillooly left behind. Fund-raising efforts were intensified, although the incident made some givers reluctant. Staff was trimmed, and office space was cut. Program growth stalled. Services to TACT's 750 clients continued, though some were slowed or trimmed. But debts were satisfied.
Only one bill remains today: money owned to the Internal Revenue Service for federal withholding taxes not paid by TACT during Gillooly's tenure. TACT is on a payment plan and should erase that last bit of red ink within a year.
The extent of damage from the Gillooly affair is not measured solely in dollars and cents, however, TACT officials said.
The incident shook confidence in the oversight, management and internal financial controls of the Taskforce. The organization, which is South Hampton Roads' leading provider of services to people with AIDS and HIV and has extensive education and outreach programs, has struggled for the 2 1/2 years since to rebuild its reputation.
``We have a lot of explaining to do any time we hire someone new or try to raise new funds,'' said Alicia Devine, chairman of TACT's Board of Trustees.
News of Gillooly's arrest spread like wildfire among the tight-knit community of AIDS care-givers.
``We are delighted,'' said Ginny Sealey of the Hampton Roads AIDS Walk Foundation.
``We want him brought to justice,'' Sealey said. ``What he did to the Taskforce and the AIDS Walk is unacceptable. . . . We're still answering questions. Our credibility is always called into question.''
Dr. Alan Wilson, who was TACT's board chairman when Gillooly vanished, was ecstatic. ``If he is extradited, I will be available any day, any time for anyone who is prosecuting him,'' Wilson said.
Kyle R. Taylor, 37, the founder of the AIDS Walk and its current spokesman, said Friday night that he too wants to face Gillooly.
``I am very much looking forward to seeing this man; to complete a circle of damage that was done in my life,'' said Taylor, who has known he was HIV positive since 1988. ``He was someone you thought was working in a compassionate atmosphere for you, but he was actually victimizing.
``I never gave up hope that we would find him. Now I want my day in court to sit there and look at this man and say, `I am still here.' Now I can die in peace, but I'm not near that time yet.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on page B1
David W. Gillooly
KEYWORDS: FRAUD by CNB