On July 24, former Listen Community Services executive director Kyle Fisher was sentenced to 21 months in prison and three years of supervised release for embezzling nearly $240,000 from the charity, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire.
Fisher, who was initially indicted in May 2023 on four counts of wire fraud, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in February 2024, according to the press release. Fisher was found guilty of embezzling funds from the charity for 19 months during his executive director tenure, which lasted from 2016 to 2022.
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro also ordered Fisher to pay Listen $239,297.09 in restitution, according to the court documents. Within 30 days of the hearing, Fisher must liquidate his retirement account and pay the charity $25,000, followed by monthly installments of $500.
Fisher was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by assistant U.S. attorney Alexander Chen. According to Chen, the prosecution requested a sentence of 26 months of imprisonment, while the defense requested 12 months and one day in prison.
Barbadoro will allow Fisher to “self-surrender to a prison” by 2 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2024, according to court documents. The court recommended that he be placed at the Federal Correctional Complex, Butner, a medium security federal correctional institution north of Raleigh, N.C.
“[Fisher] is currently living in Holly Springs, N.C. and requested that the Judge recommend that he be sent to a prison near his home,” Chen said. “After he’s released from prison, he’ll be supervised by a prohibition office for three years to make sure he stays out of trouble.”
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Listen board of directors secretary Dick Green ’75 wrote that the charity is “grateful” to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI investigative teams for their “diligence.” He explained that representatives at Listen first reported Fisher after discovering “unusual financial activities.”
“We quickly investigated, reported these findings to the authorities and took steps to recoup the funds,” Green wrote. “After learning how Fisher betrayed his position of trust and authority to bypass our financial controls, we made adjustments to further strengthen them.”
Fisher primarily spent the embezzled money on gambling at a casino in Massachusetts, according to the press release.
In a court document, Fisher’s legal counsel Charles J. Keefe wrote that Fisher “suffers from Bipolar II” and was “a severe gambling addict” who used the stolen funds to “feed his addiction.”
Chen said white collar fraud cases are “usually very well-documented,” adding that this case was “no exception.”
“The key evidence was getting records [of] both Listen and Fisher’s personal bank records,” Chen said. “Also records from the casino — those were important because we could match up all the money he was taking from Listen with his visits to the casino and how much he was gambling each week.”
Listen’s PayPal records also provided important evidence, since Fisher used the service to siphon funds for his personal use, Chen said.
During the July 24 sentencing hearing, Green read the victim impact statement to the court. Green — who previously served as the charity’s interim director from mid-September 2022 to mid-March 2023 — drafted the statement with “input from Listen stakeholders, including staff, volunteers, Board members, donors, partners and members of [the] community,” according to a copy of the statement.
In the statement, Green asserted that Listen is “vital” to Upper Valley community members in need. According to United States Attorney for the District of New Hampshire Jane Young, the charity has provided a “safety net” — including food, housing and educational services — for Upper Valley community members for more than 50 years. In 2023, the charity saw 11,033 visits to its food pantry and 32,789 meals served in its community dining hall, Green wrote in the victim impact statement.
In 2023, Listen also helped 1,566 people pay for heating fuel or electricity, helped 732 people with housing, prevented 361 evictions, offered holiday baskets — full of winter clothing and groceries — to 466 children and elderly community members and donated more than $186,000 in clothing and housewares to neighbors in need, according to the statement.
“Quite literally … Fisher’s crimes took food, clothing, heating fuel, electricity, shelter and much more from our neighbors who need help,” the victim impact statement wrote.
In addition to the direct financial losses incurred by Fisher’s embezzlement, Listen was required to spend nearly $78,000 on “auditing, legal and other costs,” according to Young.
The victim impact statement outlined the emotional and reputational impact of Fisher’s actions, emphasizing that the “most significant harm” to the Listen community was the “emotional suffering” that followed Fisher’s embezzlement.
“There is no question that Kyle Fisher’s actions hurt Listen’s sterling reputation that took 52 years to build, and it will take more time for [Listen] to earn the trust of every member of our community once again,” Green wrote in the statement.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Kara Davis ’26 wrote that Listen is “the main place” she tries to “shop ethically in the Upper Valley.”
“I felt good about going there as I believed the funds would go towards helping the surrounding communities,” Davis wrote. “Hearing about this case … I definitely feel less comfortable going there now.”
According to the sentencing memo, Fisher has since “accepted full responsibility” for his crime, feels “extreme remorse” for violating his community’s trust and is “working down a road to recovery and rehabilitation.”
“He is a hard-working, loving man who wants to make this right,” Keefe wrote. “…One may be inclined to view Kyle as evil, or greedy, or callous to have taken money from such an organization, but the above discussion [of Fisher’s struggle with bipolar disorder and gambling addiction] hopefully gives perspective to the fact that an otherwise good person can do bad things.”
