Everett’s former information technology director was arraigned Friday on a charge that he used the city’s Amazon account to ship more than $98,000 in goods to his own house over six years. Kevin Dorgan, who ran the department from 2016 until the city fired him in March, was charged in Malden District Court with larceny over $1,200, a felony that carries up to five years in state prison. He was released on personal recognizance and ordered to stay away from Everett City Hall and away from every current and former city employee. Boston 25 News first reported the charge Monday.
What the district attorney says
According to the Middlesex District Attorney’s account, as reported by Boston 25, the case began with an inventory. After Dorgan was fired, the city went through his office “and other spaces” and found stacks of unopened packages. A first look at the city’s Amazon business account turned up purchases with no city purpose: electric razors, bedding, clothing. The office then reviewed every order on the account.
“The investigation subsequently revealed that between 2020 and 2026, among the thousands of items purchased using the City of Everett Amazon Account were over 700 items valued at over $98,000 sent to his home,” the district attorney’s office said. “Also, among the thousands, there were over 400 items that were identified as having no link to his employment.” Those included Blu-ray players, video games and Apple AirPods. Dorgan was arrested at his home. A pretrial conference is set for October 22. A charge is an accusation; he has not been convicted of anything.
Ten years in the job, reappointed in 2024
Dorgan was one of a slate of department heads appointed by Mayor Carlo DeMaria in June 2016, on a three-year contract that ran to June 2019. The years the district attorney describes, 2020 through 2026, cover the second half of his tenure. In January 2020 he was building the city’s first virtual hearing system for parking tickets and code violations, telling the Everett Independent the online calendar “should be up and running in February.” When the pandemic sent the city’s workforce home two months later, his department managed the transition to remote work.
In May 2024 the City Council voted unanimously to reappoint him as Director of Information Technology through January 5, 2026, the end of DeMaria’s term. If the district attorney’s timeline is right, the council reappointed him in the middle of the period in which the purchases were being made. There is no indication anyone on the council or in the administration knew.
The department he left, and the attack that followed
Robert Van Campen took office as mayor in January after beating DeMaria in November. The firing came in March, two months in. Van Campen named Neal Ellis interim director, and by August Ellis was describing what he had found: “many of the systems we’re using today are 15 to 20 years behind current standards.” On August 5 Van Campen appointed Norilyz Valentin as the new director, pending council confirmation. Valentin came from the state, where she was assistant director of information technology for monitoring and observability, and before that from Chelsea, where she held leadership roles overseeing technology for City Hall, public safety and 911. The city’s website now lists her as Chief Information Officer. It lists no other staff.
She had been in the job about a month when, at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 6, the city found intruders on its network. City Hall has been closed to the public since September 8 and stays closed through at least Wednesday. The city has not said what kind of attack it was, whether data was taken, or whether anyone has demanded money. The two stories are separate, and nothing reported connects Dorgan to the intrusion. But the intrusion hit a department that had lost its director of ten years to a firing in March, run on an interim for five months, and by the interim’s own account was running systems up to two decades old.
What Everett has not said
We found no statement from the city on the charge as of Monday night. The questions it leaves open are the ones any city with a corporate Amazon account should be able to answer. Who approved the orders? Who reconciled the account against invoices for six years? Did anyone notice 700 deliveries to a home address? What did the March firing have to do with the purchases, if anything, given that the inventory came after it? And has the city recovered any of the goods or the money?
Chelsea’s IT department is five people under Chief Information Officer Ramon Garcia. The Everett case is a reason to ask, in Chelsea as much as in Everett, who is looking at the purchasing accounts when nobody has a reason to.