Youth aide Mackey charged with fraud

IN JULY 2003, community organizer William Mackey boasted to city youth at a kickoff breakfast at a high school that his nonprofit was set to embark on its "best summer program" ever and had arranged for 100 students to have "internships at law firms, at hospitals, at computer firms."

Mackey was executive director of the City Wide Youth Leadership Agency, which ran summer jobs programs for youth at risk of dropping out of school.

Yesterday, the U.S. Attorney's Office charged Mackey in a wire-fraud scheme dating to 2006 that involved cashing checks made out to others, passing bad checks and related offenses.

Mackey, 49, of Woodhaven Road near Birch, in the Northeast, was charged by criminal information, which typically means that a plea deal is in the works.

Mackey could not be reached for comment yesterday.

City Wide was not named in the charging document.

Authorities said that in 2007 Mackey committed wire fraud when he cashed a $24,000 check from the school district that had mistakenly been sent to City Wide.

The feds said that the alleged crime was part of an ongoing scheme in which Mackey knowingly passed bad checks, cashed checks written to other businesses and nonprofits, counterfeited checks and stole money by writing bogus checks to obtain goods, services and money for himself and his organization.

Authorities alleged that between 2006 and 2009 Mackey cashed or attempted to cash about $157,000 in bogus checks and wire transfers, resulting in losses of more than $180,000.

The charging document said that victims of Mackey's alleged scam included the Urban League, the school district and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, among others.

The charges against Mackey resulted from a joint city-federal investigation.

This isn't the first time Mackey has run afoul of the law.

In 1991, he was convicted of armed robbery of a gas station and sentenced to seven to 23 months in prison.