North Haverhill
Danielle Goodwin admitted her guilt to eight charges of theft by unauthorized taking during a hearing at Grafton Superior Court and was sentenced to between 3½ and seven years in prison.
Up to 18 months of Goodwin’s minimum sentence was suspended, pending her cooperation with prosecutors and good behavior in prison, meaning she could serve as little as two years in prison.
After the sentencing hearing, she was handcuffed and transported to the New Hampshire Correctional Facility for Women in Concord.
“I would just say, as a result of today’s proceedings, Ms. Goodwin has taken responsibility for her actions and looks forward to moving past this and onto the next phase,” said her attorney, Amy Spencer. She declined to comment further.
Goodwin, 47, ran Project VetCare until 2016, when an investigation by the state’s Charitable Trusts Unit found that she had diverted the organization’s funds for personal use, including contractor work at her Kingsford Road home in Hanover, a vacation on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and payments to family members.
Monday’s sentencing hearing followed a negotiated plea agreement reached in July between Goodwin’s attorney and prosecutors. The deal calls for Goodwin to receive two sentences, the first for her to serve 3½ to seven years in prison on four charges and a second sentence of four to eight years on four other charges that were suspended.
“The sentence was constructed to balance the egregious nature of (Goodwin’s) conduct” because she “has, to a degree, accepted responsibility and cooperated,” Assistant Grafton County Attorney Jack Bell said in appearing before Judge Peter Bornstein. Bell added that “prison time is warranted” for what he called “the truly reckless manner this organization was handled and managed.”
Bell detailed in court a series of personal payments Goodwin made by tapping Project VetCare’s funds, including $15,012 to Irving oil for a new heating system at her Hanover home; $19,355 to a window and kitchen cabinet installer; $4,366 to home improvement store Lowe’s; $2,577 for a cruise trip; $1,209 in property taxes paid to Rockingham County, N.C., for her son and daughter-in-law’s property; $7,005 to her daughter-in-law Sarah Healy Donahue; and $4,995 to her son Alexander Donahue.
In addition, Goodwin paid $45,000 in nine separate disbursements of $5,000 each to herself — which she had earlier described to Project VetCare’s board as “stipends” she had taken in lieu of salary.
The total came to $99,500.54, according to prosecutors.
Bell told the judge that there were other questionable payments that Goodwin had made using Project VetCare’s funds but it would be “difficult to prove” that they were used for personal purposes because of lack of documentation.
When Bornstein commented that the sentences that were part of the negotiated plea agreement did not strike him as “overly severe,” Bell replied that he believed there is a “very real chance of meaningful restitution” by Goodwin of the $99,500 because there is a $350,000 attachment to the future sale of her Kingsford Road residence.
That residence, at 4 Kingsford Road, currently is listed for sale by Coldwell Banker’s Hanover office for $675,000, down from $699,000 last month. The house had an asking price of $899,000 a year ago.
As Bornstein read down the list of charges and how she pleaded, Goodwin, speaking in a low voice, answered “guilty” to each one. At times, however, during the judge’s questioning, she became silent and hesitated with long pauses in her replies.
At one point during the questioning by the judge, Goodwin said she had suffered a heart attack “two years ago” and informed the court that her medication list runs three pages long for treatment of problems that she did not specify.
But when the judge asked if she could understand the proceedings, Goodwin replied in the affirmative.
Project VetCare was founded in 2012 by Goodwin and Robert Chambers, a Vietnam veteran who had earlier co-founded the nonprofit Bonnie CLAC, which became More Than Wheels, a nonprofit that helps low-income people with poor credit buy dependable cars. Project VetCare assisted veterans with a wide variety of needs, such as navigating the federal bureaucracy for medical and disability benefits and obtaining basic necessities such as housing and food.
In 2014 and 2015, the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation gave Project VetCare a total of $880,000, making the nonprofit one of the largest recipients of the foundation’s funding each of those years. The money was used in part to purchase a large house on Lebanon Street for $475,000, which was to serve as a residence and retreat for veterans attending Dartmouth College, although it’s not clear if it was ever occupied.
The state’s Charitable Trusts Unit began investigating Project VetCare after it received a tip in March 2016 from an unidentified source that the nonprofit had paid for fuel deliveries and repairs by Irving Oil at Goodwin’s home. That led investigators to uncover Goodwin’s misuse of other funds.
Following the investigation, the CTU filed a civil complaint to remove Goodwin from her role as executive director and the court put Project VetCare into the hands of a receiver. The organization was wound down and the roughly $240,000 remaining in Project VetCare’s accounts was distributed to the New Hampshire branch of Easterseals to open an office in the Upper Valley and the White River Junction chapter of Disabled American Veterans, as well as fees for its court-appointed receiver.
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
