A Federal indictment alleges that in a period of over five years Charles and Diana Muir embezzled $1.4 million from the Woodcock Foundation, an Episcopal Church-related charity and scholarship fund founded in 1872 and based in Louisville..
The Foundation awarded scholarships to needy college students for the past 50 years.
With assets that once totaled about $1.5 million, the Episcopal-church affiliated charity gave away nearly $500,000 over the past five years alone to 60 to 70 students a year.
But now the foundation — named after the third bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky, the Right Rev. Charles Edward Woodcock — has only $8 to its name, and students who were awarded scholarships last year never got their money.
The reason, according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court: The foundation’s longtime chairman, Charles Muir, and his wife, Diana Muir, embezzled $1.4 million over five years, wiping it out.
The indictment alleges that Charles Muir, 59, transferred the foundation’s money into his wife’s business account, disguising the payments as loans, and that they withdrew $262,000 from ATMs at Indiana casinos and took the rest out her for business bank account.
The government says at least some of the money was spent on gambling.