Keith Taylor, the founder and former chief executive officer of Modest Needs Foundation, a charitable organisation, has been sentenced to eight years in prison.
He was jailed by U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon for defrauding the charity and its donors by stealing millions in donations meant for low-income families and spending them instead on personal expenses, including rent in a luxury apartment building in midtown Manhattan and lavish meals at some of New York City’s most expensive restaurants, and evading more than $1 million in federal income taxes.
Mr Taylor previously pleaded guilty to these charges on August 18, 2025.
According to the superseding indictment, the underlying complaint filed in this case, as well as other publicly available information and prior court filings, and recent court proceedings:
In or about 2002, Mr Taylor founded Modest Needs, a 501(c)(3) charitable organisation that used a crowd-sourcing funding model to help low-income workers pay for unexpected expenses like medical bills or repairs of broken appliances.
Its mission was to provide short-term financial assistance to individuals and families who were living paycheck-to-paycheck and were faced with an unexpected crisis or expense that they could not pay.
Since at least 2015, Mr Taylor embezzled more than $2.5 million from the charity and its donors and used that money to fund his lavish personal spending.
Mr Taylor regularly dined at some of New York City’s fanciest restaurants, including Per Se, Jean-Georges, Masa, and Marea, sometimes as often as twice a day, spending more than $320,000 of charity funds at New York City restaurants and steakhouses.
Funds donated to the charity paid over $300,000 of Mr Taylor’s rent for a luxury apartment on the 30th floor of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper.
Mr Taylor also used charity funds to buy expensive electronics, pay over $100,000 to food delivery services, and pay his own medical expenses. Mr Taylor put over $270,000 of charity funds directly into his personal brokerage account. Mr Taylor also routinely paid his other personal expenses from the charity’s bank accounts.
Mr Taylor continued to defraud Modest Needs and its donors, even after his arrest in June 2024 in this case.
Even though he purportedly resigned his employment with Modest Needs and no longer was supposed to have access to Modest Needs’ bank accounts, as a condition of his pretrial release, Mr Taylor continued to use Modest Needs’ funds for his personal expenses, including to pay for meals, medical expenses, and rent for his luxury apartment, all in violation of the conditions of his pretrial release in this case.
Mr Taylor attempted to hide his embezzlement of charity funds by creating a fake board of directors and claiming it approved his personal spending and provided oversight of the organisation. Mr Taylor used the names of his acquaintances and falsely listed them on the charity’s tax forms and website as board members.
Mr Taylor’s acquaintances who were listed as the charity’s board members included a bartender, a friend, and his house-cleaner, none of whom ever attended a board meeting or even knew that they had been listed on the charity’s website or tax forms as board members.
For at least the calendar years of 2017 through 2024, Mr Taylor did not file personal income tax returns or pay income taxes on the millions of dollars in income he received from the charity, evading more than a million dollars in federal income taxes.
In addition to prison, Mr Taylor, 59, of New York, New York, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $3,118,237 in forfeiture and $4,144,645 in restitution.
