NYC Charity Fraud Ordered Off Streets

Following months of "investigation," and years of expose', United Homeless Organization has finally been ordered to remove its sidewalk donation tables from the streets of New York City. State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan, Hon. Barbara R. Kapnick, granted the injunction at behest of state’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, which remains in effect until January, 2010, when the next court hearing in a prosecution case is scheduled.

Dubbed "The Lowest of the Low" by outraged critics, despite a "nonprofit" organizational status, founder Stephen Riley and UHO director  Myra Walker are alleged to have misappropriated almost all donated monies for their own personal use, allowing the individuals operating the tables to personally keep $15 each per shift. These donation stations have often been operated by actual homeless persons. Annual cash revenues of between about $50K+ to over $70K have allegedly gone to Mr. Riley's and Ms. Walker's personal and even lavish use in the meantime, with suspect record-keeping, reporting and organizational irresponsibilities.

We often see dialogues, discussions and scrutiny` toward what individual panhandlers or beggars might be actually doing with the relative pittances they're collecting, yet scams like this have gone on at magnitudes so many times larger -- and all too often, for quite some time. In recent years we've also seen similar large-scale exploitations of the homeless and public such as the collusion fraud cases in Los Angeles, in which major hospitals and medical institutions and their executives conspired with even police officers and others to use homeless people for fraudulent billings to public welfare funds.

Yet, a blatant scam that's been going on for years right out in the open, is being pursued as a civil case, not criminal. Others, such as a similar fraud and embezzling by Jubilee Restoration, a non-profit housing organization, in Berkeley, CA, received a relative slap on the sleight-of-hand, too.

Meanwhile, substantial amounts of money given in good faith by countless numbers of well-meaning people have been despicably diverted in these ways -- away from those they would help. These crooks are truly among the Lowest of the Low on the streets.

Image: NY Times Blog