Three siblings related to National Enquire tabloid founder Generoso Pope Jr. are fighting over control of their wealthy family’s New York foundation — with two claiming their brother looted millions from the non-profit for his personal gain, new court papers show.
The siblings are the great-grandchildren of Generoso Pope — a construction tycoon whose materials helped build the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center — and grandchildren of the brother of Pope Jr., a media mogul who established the cheeky scandal and celebrity gossip tab.
The Italian immigrant great-grandfather started the Generoso Pope Foundation in Westchester in 1947 to fund educational, health, cultural, human services and civic institutions — and was passed through the family over the years.
Decades later, great-grandchildren Marie Thérèse Pope, 56, and Ted Pope, 58, claim their brother David Anthony Pope convinced his grandmother to make him CEO and president of the foundation around 2006, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit from Friday.
The 54-year-old Bronxville brother then began cementing his control over of the organization “with the goal of using the foundations’ funds for his own, self-interested, and improper, purposes,” the filing claims.
Marie Thérèse said David “has destroyed the Foundation and its ability to achieve my great-grandfather’s vision.”
The suit also claimed David pushed brother Ted out of the foundation in 2007 and removed his sister as an officer by 2010, and when David assumed power, the foundation had $32 million, but by 2019 only $4 million was left.
Marie-Thérèse said her brother, “has grossly mismanaged and looted the Foundation’s funds for his own benefit and self- aggrandizement. He has taken tens of millions of dollars. I am doing all in my power to stop him from continuing this illegal activity.”
Prior to David’s ascension, the foundation had donated to “well-regarded medical, educational, and cultural institutions” including the Met and Guggenheim Museums, several hospitals and renowned colleges including Fordham and New York Universities, the court papers say.
But David changed course for the foundation grants and “began (or substantially increased) funding to organizations in which [he], his immediate family members, and his close friends had a significant financial or other interest,” the suit claims.
In one case, the foundation granted nearly $780,000 too the Tuckahoe Union Free School System — where David’s three children went to school — and granted another $918,000 to the school football and cheerleading squads on which David’s kids participated, the suit claims.
The foundation also allegedly gifted $68,000 to a local theater where one of his kids had acting roles and over $1 million to Fairfield University where they all went to school.
The foundation’s rules barred its funds from being used to benefit members of its leadership and their families.
The court papers allege David began taking a much higher salary than previous presidents did — with his grandfather taking a $60,000 salary for several years before him. David’s salary was $98,000 in 2005 and climbed to $198,193 by 2017, the court papers allege.
In total from 2005 through 2019, David was paid $2.36 million by the foundation, the filing alleges.
In the early 2000s the foundation created the Westchester Italian Cultural Center, an organization meant to promote Italian culture through classes, lectures, and other programs.
In 2004, the WICC was granted $15,000 but David more than tripled the grant the next year; by 2008 the WICC was granted $1.19 million by the family foundation.
In total the WICC received $6.5 million from the foundation from 2005 to 2019 and during that time David was receiving roughly $50,000 annually from WICC for one hour of work a week — on top of his salary from the foundation, the suit claims.
David gave his wife and two sons jobs in the foundation getting paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for doing “little to no work,” the court documents allege.
“Under the stewardship of [David], the foundation became a vessel through which he lined his and his family’s pockets at the expense of the charitable organizations the foundation had previously (and properly) served,” the suit charges.
“The self-serving course he set for the foundation would have outraged Generoso,” the filing claims.
Marie Thérèse and Ted are asking a judge to remove David from his role and place them at the helm of the family institution. They ‘re also seeking restitution payments for any funds that weren’t used “with the intent of donor Generoso Pope,” the court papers say.
“It is a tragedy that a direct descendant of a man who funded the Foundation so generously has wrongfully taken almost all of its assets — well in excess of $30 million — and deprived the community of its resources,” Andrew Tomback, a lawyer for Marie Thérèse and Ted, said.
“We seek to hold David Pope, and others who aided his looting, accountable for their wrongdoing,” the lawyer said.
The Pope family has seen controversy in the past, with Generoso Pope Jr.’s son Paul Pope fighting in court with his mom Lois Pope for years claiming she broke a promise to pay him $1 million annually for life.
Paul went on to write a book in 2010 titled “The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today.”
David didn’t immediately return a request for comment Friday.
