The founder and executive director of a Boston private school is facing lawsuits and fraud charges after the school board says he hid millions of dollars in debt for years.
Croft School founder Scott Given was suspended on March 7 after he told school administrators that he had been keeping two sets of books to hide about $13 million in debt, the board told families this week.
The truth came out after the landlord of a South Side building tried to honor a letter of credit given by Given and determined it was a forgery, according to a lawsuit the landlord filed Tuesday against Given and the school.
School expansion plan goes wrong
On Jan. 29, Croft announced it would take over the space currently occupied by Foodie’s Markets, a nearby grocery store at 1421 Washington St. that will close in June, to expand its existing South End location. Although the store closing had nothing to do with the school moving in, the news sparked an immediate outcry from community residents who didn’t want to lose one of the area’s few grocery stores.
Croft first opened in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2017, according to its website. The other two locations are Jamaica Plain, opening in 2020, and South End, opening in 2022.
Days later, on Feb. 6, the school changed course and said it would no longer expand onto the property due to feedback from neighbors.
However, the property’s landlord, 1421 Washington Associates LLC, said in a lawsuit this week that Croft had signed a lease in December and that the exit plan violated the lease.
Washington Associates claims in a complaint filed in Suffolk County Superior Court that Given contacted them in July 2025 to inquire about the building. They signed a lease in December, agreeing to a starting annual rent of $1.25 million for 10 years, with an option to extend the agreement for another 10 years.
Although the school would need to seek a conditional use permit from the city to use the building for education, which is not allowed on the site due to zoning regulations, Croft officials assured Washington Unified that they were committed to maintaining the property and did not believe the permit would be an issue, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit alleges that after Foodie’s announced its impending closure, Washington Associates recommended not to announce the school’s expansion plans immediately to give the community time to come to terms with it. But Given said he hoped to make the announcement soon to secure enrollment next year.
Despite community outrage, Croft leaders and Given did not assure Washington Associates until Feb. 5 that they had been anticipating a level of pushback and would not block the plans, the lawsuit says. But around 1:15 pm the next day, the Washington Associates team “out of the blue” received an email requesting a Zoom call in 30 minutes.
During that meeting, Given, chief operating officer Kate Mahoney and chief project officer Erin Walsh-Hagan said they would no longer proceed with the school expansion at the site, Washington Associates manager Ted Lubitz said.
According to Lubitz, Given told the meeting that Croft had held a community meeting with South Side neighbors the night before. During that meeting, Given learned that a community member planned to report the school to the city for operating at its south end location without the proper permits.
“You then told me that the properties currently occupied by Croft were not properly zoned and that you could not risk them being closed,” Lubitz wrote in a Feb. 24 letter to Given and the school. “You believe this threat is a legitimate threat to Croft’s existing business and that it is in Croft’s long-term business interests to leave.”
Lubitz wrote that he asked Croft’s team to delay announcing their decision and reconsider. After the meeting, he tried to call various Croft leaders and received a call back around 3:15 p.m. from Mahoney, who told him the school had sent a statement to the family of the Croft student.
The school also issued a public statement on Facebook that day, stating that the government is “actively exploring other expansion options.”
From that point on, Washington Associates did not receive any written or oral communication from Given or anyone else from Croft for several weeks, according to the lawsuit.
On February 24, Washington Associates sent a letter to Given stating that the school was in breach of contract by withdrawing from the agreement and failing to maintain communication.
“We cannot express how disappointed we are in your and Croft’s actions,” Lubitz wrote in the letter.
Given that on March 2, Given sent back a formal lease termination letter, stating that the announcement was not a termination, Croft still had the right to seek to sublease or otherwise use the property until then. He wrote that city officials told Croft it had “little chance of obtaining a conditional use permit” because of the community’s reaction.
“I received death threats…resistance so extreme that it required the involvement of law enforcement, which is unusual in Boston’s zoning process,” Given wrote. “Croft was prepared for some negative repercussions; however, we were not prepared for the threats to our physical safety – especially when we are entrusted with the care and education of children.”
The landlord responded that day that Croft had no right to terminate the lease and therefore the lease was still in effect.
The truth comes out
As part of the agreement, Given signed a personal guarantee form and provided what he said was a $500,000 letter of credit from Leader Bank of Croft Bank as a security deposit. Because Washington Associates believed Croft was in default, manager Leo Corcoran took the letter to a Leader Bank branch in Seaport on March 6 with the intention of honoring it.
However, when he met with bank representatives, he was told that the letter did not match anything in the bank’s records and that, in fact, Washington Associates was not the beneficiary of any letter of credit from Leader Bank, according to the lawsuit. Bank employees told Cochran they would have to call the employee who signed the letter and ask him to wait in the lobby.
Minutes later, officers from the Boston Police Department arrived and began questioning Cochran about the letter, which the bank believed was fraudulent. He explained the situation and was allowed to leave.
That day, the landlord’s attorney sent a letter to Croft’s attorney seeking answers.
“We take this matter seriously and request a written explanation,” attorney Andrew Goloboy wrote.
A letter sent to parents on Tuesday showed that after the Leader Bank incident, Given contacted the school board and informed them that “he has mismanaged the school’s finances over the past several years” and maintained a false set of financial records in which “revenues were overstated, expenses understated, and Mr. Given’s overall debt obligations far exceeded the amounts disclosed.” He also confirmed that he had fabricated the letter of credit.
The board wrote in the letter that they took steps to ensure the school’s financial security after Given’s closure. After using what little cash was left in Croft’s account to pay employees and receive a $400,000 “contribution” from an undisclosed source, the school was left with about $448,000, the letter said.
Given concealed approximately $13 million in debt borrowed “primarily from the Croft family, investors, friends and business acquaintances” and borrowed approximately $2 million in short-term loans of his own.
The board wrote that Croft needs at least $5 million to cover salaries and necessary operating expenses for the remainder of the school year. The board is currently negotiating with several potential funding sources while covering the next payroll cycle.
“We also want to make it clear that schools are open,” they wrote. “Your child’s teachers and programs are in place, and the board and school administration are working diligently to ensure that the daily experience your child is accustomed to does not change.”
Washington Associates names Given and Croft as defendants in the lawsuit, claiming the situation caused significant losses to the company. Due to community outcry, the city is considering rezoning the property so it can only be used as a grocery store, limiting potential uses for future tenants and reducing its market value.
Washington Associates manager Mark Epker wrote in an affidavit that in his estimation, without the grocery restrictions, the space would have a retail market value of $7.7 million. If rezoned, he estimated that number could be reduced by $4.3 million.
He added that the company would likely need to spend millions of dollars on improvements to the property to market it to new tenants that would otherwise be borne by Croft under the lease agreement, bringing the total expected losses to more than $10 million.
Neither Given nor his attorneys responded to requests for comment, and they had not responded to the lawsuit as of Thursday morning. His attorney told The Boston Globe that he is cooperating with the school’s investigation.
“Scott never used any school funds for personal gain. At all times, he used school funds only for appropriate school-related purposes,” the attorney told the newspaper. “The well-being of the Croft School community has been and will continue to be one of Scott’s top priorities in life.”
In response to MassLive’s inquiry, Mahoney of The Croft School sent a copy of a letter to parents on Tuesday but had no further comment on the situation.
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