UMass Worker's Multimillion Dollar Scam Uncovered After His Death, School Says

When Leo Villani died in January after a car accident, his coworkers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School mourned the loss of a great colleague. They remembered a financial analyst who kept his $46,000 a year job despite getting a big inheritance, someone who was always "singing" and "laughing," as coworkers told the Boston Globe. What they didn't learn until after his death was that the 54-year-old Villani had been embezzling millions for years, according to authorities.

He'd claimed that his 4,000 square-foot McMansion and Porsche were financed with his "inheritance;" but the school said in fact, Villani spent the last five years routing $3.4 million intended for the state Medicaid insurance program to a fake corporation he had set up. The reported scheme was only uncovered after Villani's death when a review of his work uncovered "discrepancies" in the account, which was supposed to be used for administering payments for the state Medicaid program, known as MassHealth.