Ex-Dean of St. John’s, on Trial for Stealing Over $1 Million, Is Found Dead at Home

[BlueInPhilly]

Last edited Wed Nov 7, 2012, 03:28 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: New York Times

Edited to change the main article report from the NY Post to the NY Times:

Hers was the kind of rise through the academic ranks that could have epitomized the American dream, if not for the way she crashed. Fresh from Taiwan in 1975, she enrolled at St. John’s University as a student in Asian studies, becoming a dean in just five years and, soon after, winning the ear of the university’s top echelon as she raised more than $20 million for the school.

But the dean, Cecilia Chang, fought her way up driven by the same ambition and greed that would pull her down, accused of stealing more than $1 million from the school and using foreign scholarship students as her personal servants, prosecutors said during a three-week trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

Hours after Dr. Chang took the stand in a desperate attempt to try to explain her actions, she was found dead in her multimillion-dollar home in Queens, one of the prizes of her swift ascent. Investigators said they believed she had committed suicide.

Dr. Chang’s lawyers had tried to reach her on Tuesday, and when they could not, they called her son and suggested he call the police. He did, and officers entered the home and discovered her body.



below is the NY Post article:

On Monday, she dug her own grave. On Tuesday, she jumped in it.

Disgraced St. John’s University dean Cecilia Chang, 59, was found dangling by the neck from a stereo cord tied to the attic folding stairs in her Jamaica Estates home yesterday.

Her shocking suicide came one day after the accused embezzler catastrophically took the stand in her own defense against forced-labor and tax-evasion charges in Brooklyn federal court, defying the advice of her own legal team.

Instead, Chang essentially conceded to jurors that she’d lied on tax returns and to the FBI about some $1 million she was accused of embezzling from the Queens Catholic university — and her sometimes loud, defensive testimony was repeatedly interrupted by the judge’s admonitions, courtroom laughter and her own contentious shouts of “No!”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/end_of_her_rope_KcrqqXRFyinJMo9bNUWKLO

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/nyregion/cecilia-chang-ex-dean-of-st-johns-found-dead.html

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Sad end, no matter she what had done.

+RIP Dean Cecilia Chang

[Behind the Aegis]

1. What a disgusting article!

This is what passes for journalism?!

[LibertyLover]

2. It is for the New York Post. -

sadly.

[BouzoukiKing]

3. It's owned by Murdoch.

You were expecting something with the journalistic integrity of The Enquirer?

[Chakab]

4. It's the Post.

That's the kind of garbage that they print.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

5. I agree. Incredibly poor taste. n/t

[Blue_Tires]

7. That's pretty normal for the Post...

I have very little sympathy for her, since she played fast and loose with other people's money, and saw foreign students from Asia as slave labor to humiliate under the threat of visa removal, I'm really hoping the probe into St. John's administration gets wider...I think she felt like she was being made into a fall guy when all her colleagues testified against her...

[BlueInPhilly]

6. A dean of a major Catholic University committed suicide!!!

Whether it's from the Post or the Guardian, it doesn't matter.

It is news to me, and I am saddened that she gave up instead of facing the consequences of her actions.

[Texin]

10. Well, as the juror said, "she punished herself more than we could" have.

Seems like she paid for her crimes - and there were a lot of them them to pay for.

[Pachamama]

8. Disgusting article...

Ms Chang may not have been a very nice person. She lied, she stole, she cheated, she abused, she used. But in the end, she is a human being and she is now dead. And in this article, they mock her death. In the end, she was her own jury, but this article from a Murdoch Rag...disgusting not very nice people writing it.

Less they be judged themselves someday....Wow....