Well over 50 elementary school students in Melrose, Massachusetts signed up for a program called “Chess for Children” which was run by a man named Christopher Hackford. Hackford offered the six week, extracurricular program at a middle school and charged the children $63.50 for the class. The elementary schools in the district sent home fliers with the students which advertised the class. The fliers instructed parents to sign up their children at a website,www.chessforchildren.net where they paid their fee using Google checkout.
The school district only required Hackford to complete a facility use program form and did not charge him for the use of the school, nor did they require a background check to be run.
Hackford was apparently 20 minutes late for the first session and then did not appear again for the subsequent classes. After receiving complaints from parents, police began investigating the scam and Hackford was arrested on Saturday, February 23, 2008. Interestingly, he was not arrested based on the possibility of a chess scam, but because of an active warrant for his arrest stemming from charges of receiving stolen property.
Hackford had been arrested four times since October of 2007. Each time he gave the same address, but upon investigation, police discovered it was an address for a UPS store where Hackford rented a mailbox. He had three pending cases against him: a drug possession charge in Weymouth, Massachusetts; a breaking and entering and malicious destruction of property at a Lowe’s store; and finally the receiving of stolen property in Boston, Massachusetts.
State law allows school districts to decide which individuals should be background checked that will be on school premises after regular school hours. The school district did not run a background check on Hackford. When asked if this incident would change school policy, Superintendent Joe Casey stated, “It’s not so much the policy as the procedure.” Casey said he will be working with other city leaders to determine who should be background checked and when.
In the meantime, Casey has encouraged parents to file fraud claims with their credit card companies and has offered to assist with the refunds parents were not able to receive. One parent, Tony Rhudd, was upset and concerned that the school failed to background check after learning about Hackford’s prior criminal record. He said, “Stealing from Lowe’s is bad, but he could have committed crimes against kids. He was alone with the kids teaching chess after school.”
Had the school district performed a background check prior to allowing Hackford on their property, over 50 families would have avoided their monetary losses, and the school district would not be facing the negative publicity this incident has caused.
