CAMDEN, Maine — The most valuable of the properties owned by the disgraced former president of a Camden-area charity was sold this week, but the organization that was victimized by Russell “Rusty” Brace’s embezzlement received only a fraction of the proceeds.
The sale of the Brace Management Group commercial building at 21 Elm St. was recorded Wednesday in the Knox County Registry of Deeds. The property was purchased by a newly formed limited liability corporation, 21 Elm Street LLC of Camden.
No additional information on the new owner was immediately available.
The sale price has not been released but the four-story, 17,303-square-foot building is assessed by the town at $1.7 million and the asking price had been $2.3 million.
But after a mortgage to the First N.A. was paid off as well as a lien for unpaid Camden property taxes, United Mid-Coast Charities received $230,000, UMCC President Stephen Crane said Thursday.
The charity and Brace reached an agreement in April in which Brace agreed to repay the organization the more than $4.8 million in donations earmarked for the charity that he stole during his lengthy tenure as president of the board.
Brace, 81, faces up to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty May 29 to one count of mail fraud affecting a financial institution and two counts of tax fraud and making false statements in connection with the thefts that began in 2001 and ended when he stepped down as president in August 2014.
He is scheduled to be sentenced next Friday, Oct. 9, in U.S. District Court in Portland.
Crane said he filled out paperwork for the court a few months ago on behalf of the charity, explaining the damage that Brace’s crimes did to the organization. He said the court documents did not ask the organization for its opinion on what type of sentence Brace should receive.
“They did not ask if he should go to jail for the rest of his life,” Crane said of the forms.
He said he plans to attend the sentencing hearing, but does not plan to talk about whether Brace should spend any time in jail.
He will tell the judge, however, that Brace “did a lot of damage to the organization and the community and ask the judge to take that into consideration.”
The U.S. Probation Office has filed a presentence report but its contents are confidential. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and Brace’s defense attorney Peter DeTroy of Portland will speak at the sentencing hearing next week about what range of sentence is called for in this case.
In terms of restitution to the charity, Crane said he expects UMCC will end up recovering about 60 percent of the money that was stolen. He said the organization received some money from Brace’s bank accounts that had been frozen, and from a boat and a car belonging to Brace that were sold, and he remains confident Brace’s other properties will be sold.
United Mid-Coast Charities has attachments on Brace’s primary home in Rockport, which is up for sale for $795,000. Another home in Rangeley is for sale for $399,800. It is unclear how much mortgage is left to be paid on the Rockport home, but there is no mortgage on the Rangeley home.
In addition, the charity received a settlement from The First Bank but terms of that settlement are not being released. Brace opened an account at The First in which he deposited checks for the charity and then withdrew that money for his own use.
Crane said the charity has recovered from the difficult year since it uncovered Brace’s crimes.
On Wednesday night, the charity handed out checks totaling about $530,000 to 54 nonprofit organizations in Knox and Waldo counties. Crane said the turnout for the event in Rockport was good despite the torrential rains and closed roads around the area.
The amount handed out this year was 60 percent more than a year ago, Crane said.