A Boston Plumber Got a Call From the Globe and What He Said Just Buried Housing Fraudsters

A Boston plumber picked up the phone and told a reporter he had never signed that invoice.

The man who sent it had just collected $160,000 in taxpayer money under the plumber's name — and he was not done.

What The Boston Globe found next has a $255,000-a-year Maura Healey appointee lawyered up and a multimillion-dollar housing program shut down.

Forged Signatures and Sham Renovations in Struggling Mill Towns

MassHousing created the Gateway Housing Rehabilitation Program to fix up blighted properties in struggling Massachusetts mill towns.

Tony Richards II earned $255,000 a year overseeing affordable housing grants – and funneled $1.4 million to the same two men who sold him a house six months earlier.

In late 2022, developers Gary Acquah and Reggie Woods sold Richards a West Roxbury home for $204,000 below the original listing price.

Six months later, Richards was awarding Gateway grants — and Acquah and Woods landed the biggest slice of the entire program.

The pair collected $1.4 million of a $2.3 million round to rehabilitate four buildings in Worcester and Pittsfield.

What tenants reportedly got instead was unsafe stairways, uneven floors, inoperable fire escape doors, and substandard repairs that state inspectors flagged as code violations after the work was supposedly complete.

Then the Globe started calling subcontractors.

Acquah and Woods had submitted invoices attributing nearly $580,000 in work to outside contractors.

Eight of those contractors told reporters they never performed the work.

Plumber Bruno Balles was shown documents charging $160,000 under his company's name for the Worcester property.

The actual amount he received was far less, the real scope of work was a fraction of what was claimed, and the signature on Acquah's paperwork wasn't his.

"It's not only fake invoices and using my name," Balles said. "He pretended that I signed those papers."

A separate invoice — nearly identical to one submitted for a nonexistent garage in Pittsfield — was matched to a legitimate job the developers had completed in Rhode Island.

Acquah and Woods pocketed at least $139,000 in fees and flipped several of the properties before anyone at MassHousing caught on.

The Innocent Mistake Defense Collapsed When Emails Arrived

Richards never filed a written disclosure about his relationship with the developers — a violation of Massachusetts conflict-of-interest law that ethics experts said was clear-cut.

When the Globe first surfaced that fact, MassHousing's top lawyer had an explanation ready.

Richards hadn't realized that four of the first seven grants went to the same men who sold him his house.

An innocent mistake, the agency said.

Then the Globe asked for the emails.

Less than three weeks after Richards closed on the West Roxbury home, Acquah emailed him about an upcoming industry financing event — referencing a previous conversation between the two.

Days before that, Richards had emailed MassHousing CEO Chrystal Kornegay asking her to approve what he called an "Equitable Business Kitchen Cabinet," a roster of 12 industry professionals he wanted as unofficial advisers.

The agency's position collapsed.

MassHousing announced it was hiring an outside firm to audit the entire program, shifted oversight to its legal department, and confirmed it was reviewing several other grant programs under Richards's control.

Richards — still collecting his $255,000 salary — retained a lawyer and declined to speak with the Globe.

This Is What Happens When DEI Branding Kills Accountability

Taxpayers deserve to understand exactly what kind of program Richards was running.

His official title at MassHousing was Vice President of Equitable Business Development.

His division's stated mission was financing housing production for "socially and economically disadvantaged developers" — framing that made scrutinizing Acquah and Woods feel politically radioactive to anyone inside the agency.

The political connections surrounding this deal ran to the top of state government.

Days after the house sale closed, outgoing Governor Charlie Baker appointed Acquah to the board of the Community Economic Development Assistance Corp. — one of the most coveted seats in Massachusetts affordable housing.

Baker told the Globe through a spokesman he doesn't know Acquah.

When Maura Healey took office, she kept Acquah in that role and named Richards vice-chair of her Advisory Council on Black Empowerment.

Nobody at MassHousing wanted to be the bureaucrat who questioned the equitable housing VP's equitable developer network.

The Massachusetts False Claims Act authorizes triple damages and civil penalties up to $11,000 per fraudulent claim — meaning Acquah and Woods face financial exposure that could dwarf the $1.4 million they collected.

If investigators conclude the invoices were knowingly falsified, criminal referrals follow.

Working families in Worcester and Pittsfield were supposed to get safe, renovated housing.

They got forged paperwork, broken stairs, and two developers who walked away with six figures in fees — all because nobody in Maura Healey's orbit was willing to ask a hard question about a program with the right buzzwords in its name.

Richards is still on the payroll.

And then there’s crap like the clip below.

https://x.com/TheICHpodcast/status/2071670037249921245“>https://x.com/TheICHpodcast/status/2071670037249921245

We don’t know who that is or the legality of anything he is or isn’t doing but we’re sure it’s a bad deal for taxpayers.

Sources:

• Matt Rocheleau and colleagues, "A state official gave a grant to two young developers who sold him a house. Then came the shoddy work and fake invoices," The Boston Globe, June 25, 2026.
• Mike Chen, "MassHousing VP Linked To Questioned Gateway Grants," Hoodline, June 25, 2026.
• MassHousing, "Gateway Housing Rehabilitation Program," masshousing.com.
• Massachusetts Attorney General, "Attorney General's False Claims Division," mass.gov.
• Massachusetts State Ethics Commission, "Conflict of Interest Law Code of Conduct Enforcement Cases," mass.gov.