Updated at 4:33 p.m.
A Northfield man wanted for allegedly embezzling more than $500,000 from a nonprofit organization that was working to bring broadband to central Vermont has been charged and arrested after nearly a year on the run, according to court records.
An indictment against John Van Vught, 72, was unsealed Monday in federal court in Burlington charging him with three counts of wire fraud for the purposes of embezzlement, according to court records filed in the case.
The six-page indictment was unsealed as a result of Van Vught’s arrest Friday in Brunswick, Georgia, according to a press release issued Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont. He is expected to appear Tuesday before a U.S. magistrate judge in Georgia.
Prosecutors said in the indictment that the filing has been sealed “to effect the arrest of (the) defendant, to protect the safety of the arresting officers and prevent the flight of the defendant.”
According to the indictment, from 2013 to about July 2022 Van Vught “willfully participated in a scheme and artifice to defraud ValleyNet, and to obtain approximately $560,000 from ValleyNet accounts by materially and false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises.”
Van Vught, according to the indictment, hid the transfers by underreporting the income ValleyNet received in his accounting submissions.
ValleyNet was a nonprofit that operated ECFiber, which services more than two dozen communities in the east-central region of the state.
During the period in question, according to a November 2022 report in the Valley News, Van Vught worked as a contract accountant for the company. He had been reported missing by his family in July 2022 and hadn’t been seen since.
The indictment alleged that Van Vught had used proceeds from the embezzled funds to purchase property in 2018 for $181,419 in Jekyll, Georgia, and $313,992 to purchase property in Cocoa, Florida, on May 10, 2022.
The federal government has filed a forfeiture notice in the case seeking to recover the properties and other ill-gotten gains.
The Valley News previously reported that Van Vught disappeared at the time the embezzlement was discovered. Attorneys for Van Vught and his wife reportedly told the court during a hearing that his family had not heard from him since July 2022 and his whereabouts were unknown.
Van Vught faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the three wire fraud charges.
