A former owner of the Hideaway embezzled as much as $20,000 from the now-closed student-run campus bar during several months last spring, perhaps prompting the bar's closure this summer.
The embezzlement was alleged in an April 19 Duke University Police Department crime report and confirmed by Hideaway owners and bartenders this week. Several owners began suspecting early last spring that fellow owner Brian Litt, Trinity '01, had been stealing some revenue he was supposed to have deposited to company accounts.
After noticing several discrepancies between the revenue and the amount deposited, some owners set up a video camera that later showed Litt had stolen money. The police report, composed mid-investigation, lists four incidents of missing money, totaling $1,976, but others confirmed that the final amount was far higher.
The owners subsequently declined to press charges against the accused, instead referring the matter to the Undergraduate Judicial Board, confirmed Maj. Robert Dean of the Duke University Police Department. Neither of the owners who discovered the embezzlement, graduate students James Sherrill and Greg Blair, both Fuqua '01, could be reached for comment. Other owners confirmed that the board has suspended Litt's diploma until he finishes repaying the money.
"I guess I felt just shock that another student and a friend I had known for two years would do that to his friends and colleagues," said senior John Hudson, one of last year's 10 co-owners of the Hideaway. Litt, who was in charge of depositing money and buying most of the alcohol, declined to comment except to say that the bar
The Hideaway closed this summer after the owners, who each held one-year shares in the bar, declined to renew their shares or find new owners. Hudson said he was discouraged from searching for new owners by more stringent alcohol policies and by the structure of the bar's lease with the University, but he said that the embezzlement exacerbated the financial trouble.
"In the end, there was still the way the lease agreement was set up and the debt was to be paid out. The end was inevitable. This just made it happen a few years before its time," Hudson said. "Everything has worked out except for the closing of the Hideaway. The true loser was the student body."
Jennifer Curfman, a junior and former manager of the Hideaway, said that the bar's demise would not have been imminent without the embezzlement.
"Had this not happened, the Hideaway would be open," Curfman said. "The lease agreement was not fair and was not good business, but it would have stayed open until at least the end of the lease agreement."
Neither the administration nor Hideaway owners made the embezzlement public in the spring, nor did they mention the incidents during repeated interviews about the closing of the bar.
Campus police officials regularly send all crime reports to local media, including The Chronicle, but police did not send the report of the Hideaway embezzlement.
"We have nothing to hide from our community as it relates to police investigations," said Dean, who is responsible for distributing crime reports. "It might have been one of those things that by no harm intended, it was not sent in the crime reports, either because it was not finished or because it was sent back to the initial officer who needed to make some corrections or additions. We're all human, and sometimes we make mistakes."
Student Affairs administrators said that the crimes were a separate issue from the bar's closing, and that they handled the situation like any other judicial violation. Universities are prevented by federal privacy laws from revealing details of students' judicial violations.
"We don't have conversations like that about student disciplinary actions because we're governed by laws that prevent us from talking about allegations about students," said Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs.
She added that the administration would only notify the public of an incident if it affected the safety or security of the campus, and even then, circumstances and students' names could be withheld.
Wasiolek could not comment or on other details of the case, but Hudson expressed confidence in the University's handling of the matter. "I don't believe it was intentionally kept quiet, but it's a political matter, and there was a need to keep it quiet for a while before we knew what the true outcome would be," Hudson said. "I have full confidence in the University and their decision with what to do in this case. It's up to them to decide what it means to award someone a diploma and what it means to have a diploma from our University."
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