The facts
City Solicitor Jim Timmins has a message for anyone upset that former Elder Services director Tom Clasby stole at least $136,000 from Quincy seniors: nothing could have been done. 'There aren't prophylactic measures that can be taken against fraud,' Timmins told councilors at a Sept. 29 oversight hearing. 'It can't happen, especially in municipal government where pretty much every department is understaffed.'
Clasby stole the money between 2019 and 2024 through purchase orders, a scheme involving a fraudulent vendor and thefts of virtually all cash receipts from the senior center. He is now serving a six-month sentence in federal prison. The vendor, Celtic Safety Consultants, was located in the Bronx and owned by Clasby's friend. It billed the city five times between May 2022 and December 2023 for $38,134 worth of classes on nutrition, exercise stress management, hoarding and other topics. The classes never took place. The owner cashed the city's checks and gave the money back to Clasby 'in brown paper bags at highway rest stops and ferry terminals.'
Councilor Maggie McKee put it plainly: 'Hiring a company in the Bronx to teach classes in Squantum should raise a red flag, I think.' The payments also approached but never reached the $10,000 threshold that triggers bidding under state procurement law, landing between $8,500 and $9,200 a pop. Clasby, McKee noted, appeared both to submit purchase orders and verify the goods were delivered. 'I think it's ideal to separate that out into multiple people so it's harder to have something like this happen again,' she said.
Asked about the city's whistleblower policy, the city solicitor said: 'I don't know about that ... That's for the HR Department to answer. This is about Tom Clasby. It's not about whistleblower policies.' Council President Anne Mahoney asked whether the independent whistleblower hotline the city was said to be developing had 'actually gone anywhere.' Timmins responded by attacking the paper: 'Quoting from The Ledger is part of the game plan up here and The Ledger is not always accurate.' Mayoral chief of staff Chris Walker, who exited the room just before the hearing began and declined to say why, later said the city would be open to a hotline.
Here's the problem with Timmins' theory: the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General lists whistleblower hotlines as effective preventative measures. 'Organizations with fraud hotlines were nearly twice as likely to detect fraud than those without,' its advisory states. And U.S. Attorney Kristina Barclay's sentencing memo said Clasby acted with 'a sense of impunity rooted in his close relationship with Mayor Tom Koch,' writing: 'Clasby had no shame, flaunting his theft among the Kennedy Center employees because he knew they would be too scared of his relationship with Mayor Koch to report him.' Timmins called that 'Totally untrue' and 'Totally wrong, totally false', then in the same hearing admitted that 'Particular employees were intimidated, both by Clasby's relationship with the mayor and the fact that Clasby was their direct supervisor.'
Our take
Let's get this straight: the city's highest-paid legal cunt stood before a council and declared that stopping fraud is as impossible as stopping the tide. Jim Timmins, a man whose job description is literally 'prevent the city from getting sued into a fucking crater,' looked at a scheme where a friend in the Bronx billed for ghost classes on 'hoarding' and then handed over the cash in brown paper bags at ferry terminals, and his learned legal opinion was: 'It can't happen.' No, you absolute prick, it DID happen. For five years. While your understaffed, helpless little government department apparently just watched the money walk out the door and into a fucking paper sack at a highway rest area.
Then, when asked about the city's own whistleblower policy - you know, the thing that might have stopped this shit - this useless bastard said, 'I don't know about that.' You're the city solicitor. You don't know the policy for reporting crime inside the city you're paid to legally advise? What the fuck do you know? The price of a good fucking brown paper bag? Because that seems to be the only piece of fraud-prevention equipment in your entire playbook. A councilor points out that maybe letting the same guy who submits the purchase order also verify the delivery is a bad idea, and the city's response is a shrug so profound it should qualify for its own pension. 'I think it's ideal to separate that out,' she said. No shit, lady. That's not an ideal, it's Accounting 101 for anyone who isn't a complete fucking moron or a crook.
But the real comedy gold is Timmins arguing with his own goddamn face. He calls the U.S. Attorney's claim - that employees were scared of Clasby's relationship with the mayor - 'Totally untrue' and 'Totally wrong, totally false.' Then, minutes later, the same fucking mouth admits that 'Particular employees were intimidated, both by Clasby's relationship with the mayor and the fact that Clasby was their direct supervisor.' So which is it, you hypocritical asshole? Is it totally false or is it a fact you just stated? His entire defense is a wank of contradictory bullshit, a performance so pathetic it makes the bagman at the ferry terminal look like a fucking financial mastermind. At least that guy showed up to do his job.
Meanwhile, the mayor's chief of staff fucked off out of the room before the hearing even started, which is the most effective fraud-prevention measure this administration has ever taken: not being present to answer for anything. And when pressed on the city's long-promised fraud hotline, Timmins' big-brained rebuttal was to attack the local paper. That's your strategy? Blame the fucking messenger while your own lawyer admits he doesn't know the policy and the state's watchdog says hotlines work? You're not a solicitor, you're a human fucking prophylactic failure, arguing that condoms don't exist while your dick is dripping with a $136,000 STD stolen from old people. The only thing that 'can't happen' here is you keeping your job after this clown-show testimony.
