OCTOBER 4, 2023 • VOLUME 94 • ISSUE 5
The official student newspaper of Quinnipiac University since 1929
Serial scammer ‘Jeff’ targets QU — again
Eight colleges. Eight years. One scam.
By CAT MURPHY News Editor
A man claiming to represent the nonexistent “Quinnipiac Activities Club” entered classrooms on Quinnipiac University’s Mount Carmel Campus on Sept. 28 to advertise tickets to a New York comedy show. But the perpetrator, who introduced himself only as “Jeff,” is a serial scammer with a regional reputation. He has been duping college students in the Northeast with the same ruse for at least a decade — and he has targeted Quinnipiac students before. Tony Reyes, Quinnipiac’s chief of Public Safety, announced in a university-wide email just before 2:45 p.m. on Sept. 28 that Public Safety officers were searching the university’s main campus for the individual after a student reported witnessing suspicious activity in the Center for Communications and Computing and Engineering building. “We received a report today around 1 p.m. from a student who said an unidentified male was going into classrooms in CCE on the Mount Carmel Campus to sell tickets to a New York comedy show,” Reyes wrote in the email. “The student said he believed the male was attempting to scam him and the other students, and used a tap system device to take credit card payments.” Reyes later notified students, faculty and staff that the university’s Department of PubSee SCAM Page 2
INFOGRAPHIC BY LINDSEY KOMSON, AMANDA RIHA AND CONNOR YOUNGBERG
990 filing shows dip in Olian’s salary, $50M in foreign investments By CAT MURPHY News Editor
Quinnipiac University’s fiscal year 202122 tax documentation revealed the salaries of the institution’s top earners, a 10.5% drop in the university’s endowment and foreign investments totaling more than $50 million. The Internal Revenue Service requires that all tax-exempt entities — including nonprofit universities like Quinnipiac — disclose their annual returns via form 990 tax filings. The Chronicle obtained a copy of the university’s form 990 tax filing for the fiscal period beginning on July 1, 2021, and ending on June 30, 2022. Here’s a breakdown of Quinnipiac’s 202122 fiscal year:
EMPLOYEE SALARIES
Quinnipiac’s 990 tax filing revealed the salaries of the university’s eight highest-compensated employees, each of whom made more than $270,000 in FY 2021-22. President Judy Olian, Quinnipiac’s highestpaid employee, earned just under $984,000 in her fourth year as the university’s chief executive. Olian’s base pay — which accounted for approximately 70% of her total earnings — increased slightly between FY 2020-21 and FY 2021-22, though a reduction in her bonus and incentive compensation meant she earned about $40,000 less in 2021 than in 2020. Five of the state’s 11 highest-paid private
college presidents earned more money in FY 2021-22 than Olian. However, only the heads of Yale University and the University of New Haven earned higher base salaries, and the presidents of Sacred Heart University and Wesleyan University were the only two to receive higher bonuses. After Olian, former men’s basketball head coach Baker Dunleavy was the university’s highest-salaried employee in FY 2021-22. Dunleavy, who resigned in April 2023 to accept a general manager position at Villanova University, earned a $770,000 paycheck in his fifth season at Quinnipiac. Quinnipiac men’s hockey head coach Rand Pecknold, Provost Debra Liebowitz and Chief Financial Officer Mark Varholak each ranked among the university’s top five highest-paid employees. Elicia Spearman, general counsel and vice president of human resources, and Tricia Fabbri, head coach of the women’s basketball team, also appeared on Quinnipiac’s tax filing among the highest-paid employees. And, despite stepping down from his presidential role in 2018, President Emeritus John Lahey rounded out the list of the university’s highest-salaried employees. Lahey, who served as Quinnipiac’s president for more than three decades and who still teaches a 100-level philosophy course online each fall, earned nearly $272,000 in FY 2021-22. Over two decades of Quinnipiac’s 990 filings indicate that the university’s former presi-
dent earned more than $20 million between FY 2001-02 and FY 2021-22, around $2.8 million of which he received after retiring. Olian, meanwhile, has earned approximately $3.5 million as Quinnipiac’s president since her 2018 appointment to the post. However, the sum of Lahey’s university paychecks does not include the compensation he received from Quinnipiac University Online, Inc., a separately chartered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization the institution operated between 2001 and 2019. Lahey served as the chairman of Quinnipiac University Online throughout his final 17 years as the university’s president — and earned nearly $3.9 million for doing so, according to the organization’s tax filings.
BENEFITS
The university’s 990 tax filing also revealed that Quinnipiac provided certain benefits — first-class or charter travel and travel for companions — to at least one of the university’s executives. In and of itself, this is not all that unusual. Each of the top 11 private universities in Connecticut provided at least one executive with housing, travel or personal benefits, according to their form 990s. However, Quinnipiac notably did not “follow a written policy regarding payment or reimbursement or provision of all of the expenses,” per the university’s tax filing. University offi-
cials also did not explain the lack of a formal policy in the filing’s supplemental information section as required by the form. Quinnipiac’s previous tax filings indicate that the university has provided these benefits and othSee 990 Page 2
Highest Paid University Employees 2021-22
Judy Olian
$983,634
President
Baker Dunleavy Head Men’s Basketball Coach
Rand Pecknold Head Men’s Hockey Coach
Debra Liebowitz Provost
Mark Varholak Chief Financial Officer
Elicia Spearman Vice President of Human Resources
Tricia Fabbri Head Women’s Basketball Coach
John Lahey Former President Emeritus
$769,607 $623,002 $588,059 $570,068 $487,607 $395,544 $271,929
INFOGRAPHIC BY PEYTON MCKENZIE