Good riddance! Karl White finally off FAMU Board of Trustees

Florida A&M University no longer has the public embarrassment of Karl White’s presence on its Board of Trustees. Last week, the Florida Board of Governors announced that it had replaced White, who was originally appointed in 2007.

FAMU trustees should be individuals with outstanding professional records and proven leadership skills. But White represented the opposite of that.

Back in 2013, the Boston Globe reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had questioned White as part of a probe into what’s been described as a possible Ponzi scheme. When he was the chief investment officer at Fletcher Asset Management, White recommended an investment fund to his former employer, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), that went belly up. The MBTA has now lost the entire $25M that it gave White to invest.

According to the Globe: “White said he does not know what happened to the MBTA’s money after he left [Fletcher Asset Management] in November 2008. But even before that, White said, he never checked to see how the investments were doing. Though he held the title of investment chief, White said he was not in charge of managing the money.”

The newspaper added that: “White now works at a new financial firm he started. He faces tens of thousands of dollars in federal tax liens on his Beacon Hill home.”

No charges or lawsuits have been announced against White.

Globe columnist Steven Syre responded to White’s account by saying that “White sounds like an unsuccessful salesman with a phony title.”

Karl White was a poor selection for the FAMU Board of Trustees back in 2007 and consistently showed that he wasn’t up to the task of making good decisions for the university. Now that he’s gone, FAMU has one less trustee who will be a magnet for negative publicity.