Chestnut Hill/Mount Airy Co-op Faces Financial Scandal — Again

For the second time in little more than a a decade, the Weavers Way co-op in Chestnut Hill and West Mount Airy faces financial scandal. The nonprofit grocery’s chief financial officer has resigned amidst questions of his handling of $25,000 of the co-op’s money.

The resignation was reported at the co-op’s May 18th membership meeting, and in the June issue of The Shuttle, the co-op newsletter that was published this week.

“We now know that our CFO betrayed our trust by using the Weavers Way business credit card to pay for personal expenses, starting in July 2012,” Glenn Bergman, the co-op’s general manager, wrote in his newsletter column. “We are still investigating, but our best estimate is that he fraudulently charged between $25,000 and $30,000. We have reported the theft to the Philadelphia Police and are pursuing prosecution through the District Attorney’s Office.”

A check of Philadelphia court records revealed no charges, as yet, have been filed against the CFO.

Bergman, of course, entered his job 11 years ago when Weavers Way was recovering from a similar scandal that cost the co-op nearly a half-million dollars. The organization had seemingly thrived in the aftermath, reportedly doubling its membership base and anchoring itself in the community.

“We recovered from the one a decade ago; and we’ll recover from this one,” said David Woo, a co-op member who helped steer Weavers Way through the earlier crisis.

Bergman said the co-op will put new financial controls in place to prevent a recurrence. “Going forward, I will be signing off personally on credit-card statements, and someone else will review and sign off on my credit-card usage,” he wrote. (The Shuttle)