A San Antonio-based foundation has sued its former executive director and finance officer, saying the two hijacked critical passwords and computer accounts to make it impossible for the group to do its work helping Green Berets and their families, the website expressnews.com reports.
The federal lawsuit says the foundation’s executive director, Jennifer Paquette, and its finance director, Melissa Pucino resigned as the board was preparing to fire them, but then moved to freeze the group’s access to its records, including an email account containing 40,000 contacts, and to steal client and donor information.
It says Paquette and Pucino “have willfully and maliciously interfered with GBF’s ability to perform its basic mission” as part of a “coordinated campaign to paralyze and destroy” the foundation.
The nonprofit has provided direct financial assistance to thousands of Green Berets and their families since it was created in 2009.
It helps members of the Army’s elite special forces and those moving into the civilian world. It has spent between $1 million and $2 million per year from 2013 through 2017, with about 90 percent of it going to services and programs until 2015, when that share began dropping to 82 percent in 2017, according to the group’s website.
The group announced the departure of Paquette and Pucino on Sept. 23, saying it was part of “the ongoing evolution of the Green Beret Foundation.”
But the polite facade already was dissolving.
A confrontation at the group’s headquarters a day earlier, involving the ousted executives and two of the group’s remaining employees, had drawn police to the scene.
Paquette’s husband had called 911 to say an unauthorized former employee was inside, but the foundation’s development manager told an officer she had arrived to find the newly resigned Pucino in the office and asked her to leave, the police report states.
“After speaking to all involved, I could tell that the situation was not a burglary in progress but instead a much bigger civil issue,” the reporting officer wrote.
In court documents, Paquette has denied the allegations in the lawsuit, originally filed in state District Court in Bexar County but moved to federal court Oct. 4.
Paquette has been the group’s executive director since 2011. The suit said her “performance had deteriorated significantly” in 2018 and “her behavior became increasingly unprofessional, erratic and destructive.”
She and Pucino submitted “similar resignation letters” Sept. 19 that “included unreasonable demands for payments, benefits and even the removal of half of GBF's board and their replacement with Paquette's candidates.”
After their resignations, the two “have improperly and illegally accessed and misappropriated GBF’s confidential and proprietary information, withheld passwords to critical databases, … disabled GBF’s email and electronic document repositories, deleted content, removed content, and copied confidential and proprietary information,” the suit says.
Paquette, reached at her home, said “pretty much” all of the allegations in the suit were untrue.
“I mean, it’s full-on lying,” she said. “They’re claiming that I locked them out of accounts and stuff when in reality they have access to all of those accounts. It’s all just silliness and drama.”
She said “there are “some good ones” on the foundation’s board, “but a portion of them, four of them, have discounted, not responded,” to key constituents of the foundation, including the mothers of fallen soldiers, major donors and wounded troops.
“And that’s something I just won’t tolerate. I’ve been around long enough to say, I’m not only the hair club president, but I am a member of the hair club and there are certain things that I’m just not going to tolerate.”
Her husband, Roland Paquette, lost both legs to a roadside explosive while serving as a Green Beret medic in Afghanistan in 2005, according to published reports.
Pucino did not return calls. Foundation leaders would not comment. Its board chairman, retired Army Maj. Gen. Simeon G. Trombitas, declined to discuss the situation.
In announcing their departure, Trombitas had praised both women, saying: “They have been integral to our work and during their tenures more than 3,500 families have benefited. … We wish them the best of luck as they pursue new opportunities.”
The lawsuit, however, says Paquette regularly threatened and intimidated foundation employees and quoted Paquette as telling them and others “that she was ‘going to burn GBF to the ground’ after she left, and that ‘if she can’t kill ’em, she’ll sue ’em.’”
The suit saus the foundation board had “ample grounds” to fire Paquette and Pucino.
Reportedly, Pucino re-entered the foundation's offices at 14402 Blanco Road on Sept. 22, the day the board accepted their resignations, despite being asked to leave. A locksmith reportedly was prevented from from changing the locks at the office, prompting the foundation to hire a security firm.
It says the foundation repeatedly had asked the defendants and their attorneys to “return all misappropriated GBF property, cease and desist in all actions intended to disrupt, destroy and harm GBF’s business and reputation, and provide essential information such as access codes.”
And the lawsuit accuses the defendants of embarking on a “misinformation campaign” and “spreading falsehoods, smearing GBF” and making “defamatory personal attacks.”
Angie Fennen, after taking the helm as interim executive director, wrote in a Sept. 24 message on the group’s Facebook page that “we have regained control of our main social media channel,” and thanked Paquette and Pucino “for their years of work that helped make our organization what it is today, not to mention, their ongoing commitment to our U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers and their families.”
It was not clear what social media channel she meant, but the lawsuit says one of the items Paquette and Pucino controlled was a Box.com account that includes the foundation’s personnel files, donor lists, personal service records and other confidential information.
The suit says a user activity report showed Paquette and Pucino had accessed the Box.com account “numerous times after their resignation” and had downloaded documents from it after they were no longer with the foundation.
“Paquette changed the permissions on the Box.com account to limit access and freeze GBF out of its own account,” preventing the foundation from seeing the records, the suit states. “Because of defendants’ actions in changing permission and access, GBF is frozen out and incapable of running its business and serving the Green Beret community.”
The suit says Paquette, as the “super administrator” with exclusive access to the foundation’s Google G Suite account, has made it impossible for GBF employees to access company email. The lawsuit says the foundation, moreover, can’t access open case files for wounded Green Beret veterans that include services ranging for paying for prescription drugs to mortgages.
“It is not an overstatement to say that stopping defendants’ unlawful actions is a matter of life and death for those GBF clients who depend on GBF for funds to pay for food, health care and medications,” the suit states.
The suit also accuses Paquette of changing the passwords to Fennen’s foundation email account about two hours after being told her resignation had been accepted Sept. 22.
One person responding to Fennen’s Sept. 24 announcement on Facebook, Adnarim Yoccm, asked, “What does the statement ‘now that we have regained control of our main social media channel’ mean? Were GBF accounts hacked? Quite shocking to hear that Jen resigned. Will there be an additional statement of explanation? That will matter to many donors.”
Another person, David Marshall, wrote: “Stay the course everyone as the mission is the greatest part of this foundation.”
