John Paul Funes, the former fundraiser for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, will plead guilty to federal charges in connection with the embezzlement of more than $550,000 from the Our Lady of the Lake Foundation over the course of several years while he was president and CEO of the foundation, Daily Report has learned.
Funes reached the deal with the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District earlier this month, after several weeks of negotiations.
The charges will be spelled out in a bill of information that will essentially lay out the government’s case against Funes.
Additional details will be released in court documents at the time Funes formally enters his guilty plea. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Federal sentencing guidelines limit the amount of discretion the judge has in determining a sentence for Funes, who is expected to serve some prison time. But because he is cooperating with law enforcement by pleading guilty, Funes’ sentence will likely be less onerous than if he was found guilty after a trial.
The plea agreement ends, for now, at least, a fundraising scandal that has roiled one of Baton Rouge’s most respected institutions since November, when OLOL officials first announced they had fired Funes for forgery and embezzlement.
After a third-party investigation into the scheme was completed earlier this year, OLOL disclosed that Funes had orchestrated a series of fraudulent transactions that involved the purchase and distribution of gift cards, charter flights and payments to individuals, including forged documents, invoices and signatures.
The probe also revealed two questionable issues related to LSU athletics and the parent of a former student-athlete, according to a statement released that same day by LSU.
Since then, however, no additional details about the scheme have been released.
OLOL officials have said they are addressing the weaknesses in their system that enabled the fraud to go undetected for so many years and have made improvements.
They have declined to discuss what those changes are, however, or how they believe the crime occurred in the first place.
