AG: Dutchess property owners, charity trustees must repay $4M

A more than 70-year-old New York City-based charity with ties to a Dutchess County property has settled with the state for more than $4.3 million after some of its leaders were found to have misused funds.

Investigators discovered the underlying value of the nonprofit Homeland Foundation Inc.’s account significantly decreased to $17.4 million in 2011, down from $39.8 million in 2006.

The trustees involved, the late E. Lisk Wyckoff, who was president of the organization since 1989 and died in 2012, and his wife, Elizabeth Wyckoff, who became president after her husband”™s death, spent millions of dollars of the nonprofit”™s donations for personal gain, according to the office of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Specific abuses of the charity”™s funds included $1.5 million donated to the private schools the couple”™s children attended and $4.5 million to schools Mr. Wyckoff attended. In addition, Mrs. Wyckhoff reimbursed herself more than $700,000 from life insurance proceeds after her husband”™s death, the majority of which was supposed to go to Homeland.

Homeland Foundation Inc. was founded in 1938 by Chauncey Devereux Stillman, who left his country estate in Amenia, originally a dairy farm, to the foundation.

After Stillman’s death in 1989, the property in northeast Dutchess County became a public space. The 1,200-acre property includes Wethersfield Mansion, gardens and a carriage house.

In addition to the $4.4 million agreed to be repaid to Homeland, the settlement requires the foundation”™s board of trustees include two members from the region near Homeland”™s museum and Dutchess County land. The new trustees must also make the foundation”™s focus on the Wethersfield Estate and the Wethersfield Institute, which promotes Catholic teaching and practice.