I have stopped contributing. Waiting to see if they straighten things out.
While I’ve given to them in the past (as have extended family), there are too many other military-related charities that don’t have the baggage.
I am curious what took them so long???
The Board needs to go as well. How could the Board miss all this for so long, addressing it after the media blew it up out here in the real world.
The only decency left of this bad outfit is their fabulous name, WOUNDED WARRIORS.
You knew they were messing with you, when every hour was full of their million dollar ads. Do you ever see the Red Cross blanketing the globe with TV ads? Or, the Little Sisters of the Poor?
An all to familiar scam on do-gooders sympathy. Read:
After Cody’s disappearance, former acquaintances would occasionally get calls from investigators. They were told he had popped up in Mexico, California and the eastern United States. Chambers recalled being told that Cody had run a commodities scam in San Francisco. In 2004, 20 years after Cody vanished, Lusk said FBI investigators questioned him about the case.
By then, however, Cody had adopted a new identity — Bobby Thompson, founder of U.S. Navy Veterans Association. Working out of a rat-trap duplex in Ybor City, he had fabricated a charity that claimed to have chapters and officers nationwide.
It was all a charade. The chapters were mail drops, the officers nonexistent. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations went to political contributions instead of to veterans, giving the fugitive access to the top echelons of power. While on the FBI’s most wanted list, Cody, aka Thompson, had his photo taken twice with President George W. Bush. At other events, he posed with House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. John McCain and Republican adviser Karl Rove.
A spokesman for the Secret Service said last week that though names of participants at fundraisers are checked, fingerprints usually are not.
Even if the Navy Veterans’ founder had been fingerprinted, it wouldn’t have set off bells. Despite his “most wanted” status, Cody’s prints, taken in the military, had never been entered into the FBI’s system. A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment on the omission.
It was only by luck that a U.S. marshal in Cleveland, determined to learn the identity of the man arrested for the Navy Veterans’ fraud, linked Thompson to Cody. Stumbling across Cody’s wanted poster online in late September, the marshal was intrigued by parallels between the cases, as well as similarities in appearance. Though his hair was thinner, his leg was bad and his tear ducts apparently intact, fingerprints showed it was Cody in custody.
Was involved closely for a time years ago—became disenchanted when it seemed to be a way for old officers from other battles to give themselves tedious testimonial dinners honoring—themselves. I didn’t see a lot if practical help to the young disabled veterans it was supposed to benefit. Just lots of self-congratulatory and extremely boring parties. Just my take.
This whole mess is one darn shame. It stops people from giving to organizations that truly do good work. I know I have to think twice and still wonder.
Too little too late.
L