Theft By Design

There's book smarts and then there's street smarts. The intelligentsia that runs the Rhode Island School of Design may be thinking of adjusting their curriculum to add a bit more of the latter. At a minimum, one would hope that they've hired on a decent accountant.

Why must those who pull a fast one on a prestigious college go to Ireland to hide? It's a bit of an embarrassment, really, with one extradition request after another sailing over the ocean. And why couldn't the Rhode Island School of Design pay some attention to their employees in the first place, so that all this would have been avoided? Is it that hard to figure out that a million dollars worth of anything never arrived?

Every time I hear of Ballinamore in County Leitrim, I think of the song Ballinamore. Some very funny lyrics about a reputed IRA safe zone, where the hens are laying hand grenades and the sheep are advising there'll be another Rising. With that sort of quasi-independent atmosphere, is it any wonder that Patrick Clyne and his lovely missus, Ibtisama Bradley, chose to conveniently relocate and settle down? And their custom built home must be an architectural marvel, one would presume, seeing as it's the Rhode Island School of Design that inadvertently paid for it.

Back in the days when your man was a college employee, he apparently set up a shell company to bill the school for fire prevention equipment, which was never delivered even though the bills were paid. One million dollars worth of bills, for no actual goods. Mr. Clyne says that he and his spouse told the authorities in the States that they weren't responsible for the wonky billings, and they did nothing wrong. It wasn't us, they claimed, it must have been some other ones.

So there they are, relaxing in the comfort of their home in Ballinamore, and along comes the US attorney with a plan to seize their rural hideout....or is it hideaway? And they'd like to extradite the couple to face charges in Rhode Island, but it's highly unlikely that Mr. and Mrs. Clyne would like to return, after five years in idyllic Leitrim. Particularly as they would face twenty years in prison. Rural Ireland can be confining, but all things considered, the Clynes would opt for Ballinamore in a heart beat.

If it's true that the house they built in Leitrim is paid for by some illegal means, one would hope that the least the couple did was to incorporate the philosophy and tenets of the Rhode Island School of Design. That's only fair, if money was lifted from university coffers, to pay some sort of tribute to the source. It would only add insult to injury, if the house turns out to be some standard box with a wall of garage door facing the road, the epitome of all that is ugly about the suburbs, lacking in taste, proportion and elegance. But costing a small fortune.