Records Allege ‘Lavish Lifestyle’ By Pomey, Gomes

If all goes according to plan, around 1:30 this afternoon, Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ President Greg C. Padgett ’02 will sit down in a red Corvette next to the Pudding’s Woman of the Year, Sarah Jessica Parker, and parade through Harvard Square amid a swirl of Pudding men dressed in drag.

The colorful annual ritual is supposed to be one of the Pudding’s shining moments each year.

This year is different. This year, few on the Pudding staff are smiling.

This year, on the day when the Man and Woman of the Year were announced last month, a far larger story was occurring behind closed doors at the Middlesex County Courthouse: A grand jury was finalizing testimony and preparing to indict two of the Pudding’s former executives for allegedly stealing nearly $100,000 from the group.

Now, one week after the indictments were made public and two days after both Randy J. Gomes ’02 and Suzanne M. Pomey ’02 pleaded not guilty to a single charge of grand larceny, more details have emerged of how the scheme worked, where the money went and who the accused students really are.

The Money

The scheme began small, prosecutors allege, then as months passed and their actions went undetected, Pomey and Gomes gradually stole larger and larger amounts.

According to court records, Pomey first used the Pudding’s credit card machine to credit her own bank account with $300 on March 21, 2000. Randy J. Gomes ’02 became directly involved in November that year when his bank account was credited with $213.16. From there, the amounts only went up: $500, $1,000, $2,500.

A year ago today Pomey allegedly credited her account with $3,697—just days before she became a minor campus celebrity after being kissed by Anthony Hopkins, last year’s Pudding Man of the Year.

In total, prosecutors documented 28 instances, ranging up to credits of $9,000-plus. On four occasions, both Gomes and Pomey received money on the same day. By early 2001, Gomes was crediting his account with more than $4,000 a month.

By the time Pomey relinquished her position as Pudding producer last year, the duo had allegedly made off with $91,000 in illegal credits; Gomes received about $68,000 of that money and Pomey got nearly $23,000, according to prosecutors.

Under questioning by the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD), Pomey admitted crediting her account “one or two times, but could not remember when she did so,” according to court papers. She said that more often she would give her credit card to Gomes who would then transfer the money.

Gomes told police that he had transferred money to both his and Pomey’s accounts, and withdrew money with Pomey’s debit card from her account, according to the indictment records.

When University officials began to question Pomey and Gomes, both agreed to repay at least some of the funds taken, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Indeed, in an e-mail to alumni last week, Pudding executives said they were confident the money taken would be recovered.

Pomey’s lawyer said yesterday that she has already repaid the $23,000. Gomes’ lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Following the Money

Although extensive in its scope, the case against Gomes and Pomey is simple. Police were easily able to track the credits through the credit card companies and banks, and since in many cases the same credit cards were used to purchase the goods, linking the purchases to Pomey and Gomes was easy.

On Sept. 24 last year, after the investigation had uncovered bank records and missing reports from the Theatricals’ credit card machine and the evidence was building against Pomey and Gomes, they both made statements explaining their actions to HUPD.

The money appears to have gone to fund drug purchases, pay off drug dealers, and supporting a “lavish lifestyle,” the court records allege.

Gomes told police that his drug habit had begun his first year at Harvard with ecstasy and had grown to include crystal methamphetamine, court papers say.

The explanation Pomey gave was that Gomes had used the Theatricals’ money to pay drug dealers, as well as to purchase electronics.

But according to her lawyer Michael DeMarco, Pomey never had a “drug dependency problem” of her own.

Using information gained from the interviews, HUPD recovered some drug paraphenalia from Gomes’ room. Later, HUPD obtained a special nighttime search warrant, backed a police van up to the Winthrop House gate and confiscated numerous items from Gomes’ room including a flat-screen television, 2 CD players, a DVD player D.J. equipment and 91 DVD movies.

Suzanne used her share of the money for shopping trips, spa visits and a $500 cell phone, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Gomes also supposedly sponsored a giant birthday party for Pomey last February at T.G.I.Friday’s, complete with an open bar tab of several thousand dollars.

Spreading the Wealth?

Friends and acquiantances of Pomey had noticed her expensive tastes.

On Oct. 5, 2000, Pomey, then-president of the Harvard chapter of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, rented out the exclusive Locke-Ober restaurant for a joint mixer event between Theta and the Delphic final club, according to Theta members.

“She told members that she was putting something nice together for the sorority,” Theta spokesperson Thayer S. Christoduolo ’04 said.

The explanation Pomey gave Theta members was that her parents had donated the money, Christoduolo said. According to the Delphic, Theta and Pomey were entirely responsible for funding the night’s festivities.

“The bill for that event was covered by Theta,” Delphic spokesperson Gregory D. Henning ’02 said.

According to court records, that same day, Oct. 5, Pomey withdrew $5,000 from the Theatricals’ accounts and transferred the funds to her own credit card. That one day’s total transfer was nearly ten times the amount of any of the six $300-600 transfers to Pomey’s account made between March and mid-Nov. of that year.

Reached at Pomey’s family home in Vine Brook, Kentucky, Pomey’s father Alfred H. Pomey declined to comment on the charges against his daughter or if he had financially assisted his daughter or helped to repay the debt to the Theatricals.

“It’s an inside family matter, and we’d like to keep it that way,” he said.

The Gomes Connection

Another intriguing mystery surrounding the two Pudding defendants is Gomes’ repeated claim that he is related to the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer professor of christian morals and Pusey minister of Memorial Church.

Numerous friends, work colleagues, and members of the Pudding report that Randy Gomes has claimed that he is the nephew of the famed professor.

However, while Rev. Gomes admitted knowing Randy’s family in Plymouth, Mass., he denied they are directly related.

“He’s a dear boy and I know his family and his great-grandparents but he is not related to me,” Rev. Gomes said yesterday. “Not that that makes much difference to me, I care very much for him.”

Indeed, Rev. Gomes’ on-line biography indicates that it would be impossible for Randy Gomes to be the nephew of the professor.

“Peter John Gomes was born May 22, 1942, in Boston, an only child,” the biography reads.

“His father, Peter Lobo Gomes, was born in the Cape Verde Islands in 1908. The elder Gomes immigrated to the United States in the 1920s and settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts,” it reads.

Randy Gomes is also from Plymouth Mass., but the town’s large Cape Verdean population makes Gomes a common name there.

Gomes’ parents, who sat with their son at Tuesday’s arraignment, did not pick up the phone at their Plymouth, Mass. home, where a young man’s voice asks callers to leave a message on the answering machine.

—Staff Writer Joseph P. Flood contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff Writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.