FTC & DEPT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS CRACKS DOWN ON FAKE VETERAN CHARITIES

FTC & DEPT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS CRACKS DOWN ON FAKE VETERAN CHARITIES:

FAKE VETERAN ORGANIZATIONS RECEIVE MILLIONS ANNUALLY FROM THE VA BUT DON’T HELP VETS.

FAKE VETERAN ORGANIZATIONS ARE GRANTED NON-PROFIT IRS STATUS BUT DON’T HELP VETS.

IT’S TIME FOR CONGRESS TO ORDER ANNUAL AUDITS OF ALL AGENCIES & CHARITIES CLAIMING TO HELP VETS.


Post Sources: Military Times, Forbes, USA Today, Non-Profit Quarterly, WTVA, Youtube


******Here’s how state and federal authorities are targeting sham veteran charities


Federal and state authorities have put sham veteran charities on notice.

“I’m here to warn scam artists: Watch out. We’re investigating complaints. We will track you down, and in partnerships with our [state] attorneys general, we will shut you down,” said John Wobensmith, Maryland Secretary of State, during a news conference announcing the initiative that included other states’ attorneys general, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance..

The FTC ― with law enforcement officials and charity regulators in 70 offices from every state, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico ― announced “Operation Donate with Honor,” which includes the crackdown on sham charities, as well as an education campaign for potential donors. Officials announced more than 100 actions across the country.

FTC Chairman Joe Simons announced action against a charity, Help the Vets, Inc., which was run by Neil G. “Paul” Paulson, Sr., who is reportedly an Army veteran, according to his Guidestar charity profile, and according to an Internet Archive of Help The Vets’ website. His military service couldn’t be immediately confirmed. The Guidestar profile says the charity is closed.

Paulson and Help the Vets Inc. will be banned from soliciting charitable contributions under settlements with the FTC and the states of Florida, California, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon, for allegedly falsely promising donors their contributions would help wounded and disabled veterans. Officials alleged that Help the Vets collected more than $20 million from 2014 through 2017, and that 95 percent of those donations went to fundraising, administrative expenses and Paulson’s salary and benefits ... not to veterans.

Attorneys for Paulson and for Help the Vets Inc. declined to comment, they said, “because there is a lawsuit pending.”

Paulson also reportedly operated charities under the names of American Disabled Veterans Foundation, Veterans Fighting Breast Cancer, Vets Fighting Breast Cancer, Military Families of America and Veterans Emergency Blood Bank.

The FTC has also charged another charity operator, Travis Deloy Peterson, with using fake veterans charities and making millions of illegal robocalls to solicit donations of cars, boats and other property, claiming that the donations would go to veterans charities and that they were tax deductible. Instead, officials allege, he sold the items for his own benefit.

A federal court in Utah has issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Peterson from making unlawful robocalls or engaging in misrepresentations about charitable donations, as the FTC moves ahead with its enforcement action. Peterson is accused of violating the FTC Act and the FTC’s telemarketing sales rule.

Attempts to reach Peterson were unsuccessful.

According to the FTC complaint, Peterson allegedly used the charity names Veterans of America, Vehicles for Veterans, Saving Our Soldiers, Donate your Car, Donate That Car, Act of Valor, and Medal of Honor.

The state enforcement actions involved charities seeking donations online, and by telemarketing, direct mail, door-to-door contacts, and at retail stores, falsely promising to help homeless and disabled veterans, to provide veterans with employment counseling, and to send care packages to service members.

“It’s the sad truth there are individuals and organizations that seek to take advantage of the genuine altruism of potential donors, and seek fraudulently to raise money on the backs of veterans to benefit themselves,” said Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen.

That said, officials noted that the vast majority of charitable organizations do good and important work. The “Operation Donate with Honor:” campaign is providing resources to help donors find those charities that legitimately meet the needs the donor wants to help address.

As part of their education campaign, officials are urging potential donors to be aware that just because a charity’s name includes words such as “veteran” or “military,” it doesn’t mean the organization is legitimate. At www.ftc.gov/Charity, officials have provided materials on donating to charities that help veterans, those that help service members and their families, and donating through an online giving portal.

This isn’t the first time the FTC has addressed the problem.

In 2009, the FTC and officials in 49 states launched “Operation False Charity,” a crackdown on allegedly fraudulent telemarketers who claimed to help police, firefighters and veterans.

CORRINE BROWN - BLACK CONGRESSWOMAN GOES TO PRISON (FAKE CHARITIES)

CORRINE BROWN SENTENCED TO PRISON (FAKE CHARITIES):

BLACK POLITICIANS ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW.

BLACK MEMBERS OF CONGRESS CAN'T REST ON THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS LAURELS FOREVER.

BLACK POLITICIANS NO LONGER EFFECTIVE & JUST IN IT FOR $$$$ SHOULD RESIGN.

STOP MAKING BLACK PEOPLE IN AMERICA LOOK BAD.

I'M JUST SAYING.


Sources: NY Times, First Coast News, Youtube


***** Corrine Brown, Ex-Congresswoman Who Ran a Sham Charity, Gets 5 Years in Prison


Corrine Brown, a former longtime United States representative from Florida, was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday for operating a fraudulent charity that she used for more than $300,000 in personal expenses, including tickets for N.F.L. games and a Beyoncé concert.

A federal judge handed down the sentence in a Jacksonville, Fla., courtroom, excoriating Ms. Brown, 71, for abusing her powerful position in the House of Representatives for “entitlement and greed” to support a lavish lifestyle. Ms. Brown, a Democrat who represented parts of Jacksonville and northern Florida for nearly a quarter-century, must surrender to the authorities next month.

“Brazen barely describes it,” the judge, Timothy J. Corrigan of United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, said of Ms. Brown’s sham charity.

Ms. Brown was convicted in May on 18 criminal counts, including mail and wire fraud and filing false tax returns. She lost her re-election bid in the Democratic primary in August 2016, a few weeks after she was indicted.

Her lawyer, James Smith, said he planned to appeal the verdict and the sentencing. “The sentence was substantively unreasonable, and it was too harsh,” Mr. Smith said in an interview Monday evening. While sentencing guidelines called for a term of between more than seven years in prison up to nine years, Mr. Smith said that politicians convicted of similar crimes had received more lenient sentences.

Ms. Brown was among the first African-American politicians elected to Washington from Florida and burnished a reputation in state and national politics as a civil rights champion and as an advocate for the less fortunate. Because of that legacy, the charity, One Door for Education, may have seemed to donors as an extension of her passion.

Ms. Brown, along with two other people, collected more than $833,000 in charitable donations, telling benefactors that their money would help students pay for college and allow schools to receive computers. But One Door for Education did nothing of the sort.

Instead, the donations were funneled into Ms. Brown’s personal bank accounts and toward extravagant items. About $330,000 of the charity’s donations paid for events that included a Florida golf tournament, professional football games and a luxury stadium box for a Beyoncé concert.

“Ms. Brown leveraged the authority of her office and the relationships she had cultivated to illegal purpose,” Judge Corrigan said. “She cast aside the very laws that she helped to enact. The rules, she decided, did not apply.”

The One Door for Education charity was run by Ms. Brown, who personally solicited many of the donations; her chief of staff, Elias Simmons, known as Ronnie; and the organization’s president, Carla Wiley. Ms. Wiley started the charity in Virginia in 2011 but raised very little before she recruited Mr. Simmons to help. He brought in Ms. Brown to raise money.

While One Door for Education may have begun as an honest charity, it turned into a slush fund for all three, prosecutors said. Mr. Simmons withdrew $93,536 in cash from A.T.M.s and gave some of the money to Ms. Brown and kept the rest for himself, they said. Ms. Wiley also pocketed $182,730, prosecutors said.

While Ms. Brown pleaded not guilty and went to trial, both Mr. Simmons and Ms. Wiley pleaded guilty and testified against the former representative. The judge also sentenced them on Monday, with Mr. Simmons receiving four years in prison and Ms. Wiley 21 months.

At the hearing, Judge Corrigan noted that Ms. Brown had earned the respect and admiration of many people in her district during her time in Congress and the decade before that in the Florida House of Representatives. But the judge criticized her for showing no contrition for the crimes.

“She cannot be accorded the same sentencing consideration as someone who accepts responsibility for her wrongful action, expresses remorse and promises to make amends,” Judge Corrigan said.