Free Republic

A Southern California-based nonprofit CEO pleaded guilty Monday to fraudulently applying for millions of dollars in COVID-19 jobless benefits, using stolen identities to steal nearly $1.5 million, officials say. According to the Department of Justice, Reginald Foster Jr., 38, of Westchester, Los Angeles, admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and bank fraud and one count of unauthorized use of access devices. The indictment alleges Foster took advantage of the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, part of the CARES Act passed in 2020 to help people impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Up Next - Special Counsel files...

Jacob Rostovsky, the CEO of the local non-profit Queer Works, has been indicted on 53 felony counts in a fraud scheme surrounding a universal basic income pilot program in Palm Springs, the Riverside County District Attorney's office announced. District Attorney Mike Hestrin said a jury returned a 53-count indictment against Rostovsky on Tuesday. Rostovsky, 33, was indicted on a variety of charges including fraudulent claims, grand theft, misappropriation of public funds, insurance fraud, perjury, and money laundering, according to the DA's office. The indictment includes an aggravated white-collar crime enhancement due to the significant economic loss of the scheme. Rostovsky...

CV NEWS FEED // Earlier this week, 40 Days for Life called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to determine whether Planned Parenthood violated tax-exempt rules for nonprofits by offering free abortions via its mobile “health” clinic at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Nonprofits can’t be politically involved, the pro-life organization noted in its complaint to the IRS, which it filed electronically on August 20. “Political campaigning substantially diverges from the permissible activities and could result in revocation of tax-exempt status and possible imposition of related excise taxes,” the complaint stated. “This deployment by federally tax exempt organizations organized under...

An Israeli hostage who was held in captivity by Hamas after the terrorist group’s surprise attack on October 7 is suing a nonprofit organization that employed the operative who held him as prisoner.The development comes after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a daring rescue effort to save some of those who were taken during the surprise attack. It was later revealed that one of the Hamas terrorists involved in the kidnapping of Israelis was working as a journalist with the Palestine Chronicle.Almog Meir Jan, 22, was held captive by Hamas for nearly 250 days after the Oct. 7 terrorist...

A closer look at the Voter Participation Center reveals how it uses harvested voter data to enhance Democrats’ election machine.In an era of U.S. elections where ballots — not voters — are the favored currency, nonprofit voter registration has become instrumental in determining which candidate comes out on top at the ballot box.While conservatives have largely failed to recognize the necessity of such operations in driving Republican voter turnout, leftists haven’t. Unlike their opponents, Democrats have amassed a well-funded machine that’s accumulated their party massive electoral wins in recent cycles, even as the head of their party remains widely unpopular...

Nonprofit on boards in the city of Seattle are facing huge bosses because tenants in the city are not paying rent. Following the pandemic eviction moratorium, a lot of tenants became used to someone else paying their bills for them and continue to not pay to this day. This has hurt the revenue of the nonprofits

https://atlantablackstar.com/2024/03/05/nonprofit-housing-director-federally-charged-in-deed-fraud-scheme/ A director of a Detroit housing nonprofit geared toward helping homeowners at risk of foreclosure was federally charged for her role in a fraud scheme designed to steal dozens of homes from low-income residents – and she lives in one of the stolen properties, according to the United States Attorney’s Office. Before Zina Thomas, 60, was arrested on Feb. 28 and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft, she was the director of Homeownership Programs for the United Community Housing Coalition in Detroit, joining the organization in 2021. “This scheme targeted...

FIRST ON FOX: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a Catholic non-governmental organization operating in the state and wants to have its registration revoked, alleging that it is encouraging illegal immigration and operating a stash house for those entering illegally.Paxton has sued Annunciation House — a Catholic nonprofit set up in the 1980s — and is seeking to revoke its registration to operate in Texas.Annunciation House describes itself as a volunteer organization that "offers hospitality to migrants, immigrants, and refugees in El Paso, Texas."

CHICAGO - A Chicago nonprofit has recruited migrants to help other migrants stay fed this winter. Fight2Feed operates out of the industrial kitchen at McCormick Place East, and prepares 1000 hot meals each weekend. For the last 10 years, those meals have been going to underserved Chicagoans, but this winter, the agency has pivoted to include feeding new arrivals. The nonprofit has recruited new arrivals from Venezuela to do everything from meal prep to cleaning, organizing pantries, sorting, and packing food.

The Chinese scientist who ran controversial experiments at the laboratory suspected of triggering Covid held a secret meeting with the US government to seek backing for a project that would go on to supercharge coronaviruses – shortly before the devastating outbreak started in her native Wuhan. The June 2017 meeting at America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) held by Shi Zhengli – known as 'Batwoman' because of her work on sampling and sequencing the animals' viruses – will bolster fears of Western collusion in a Chinese cover-up after Covid resulted from a reckless laboratory experiment. A new cache of documents,...

The left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America is being bankrolled by some of the biggest Democratic megadonors in the country, according to a new report. The Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday that Media Matters, a liberal nonprofit often cited by legacy news organizations as a media watchdog, might have “mistakenly” identified some of its biggest donors in a November filing to the New Mexico attorney general’s office. According to the filing obtained by the Free Beacon, Media Matters’ biggest donor was Deborah Simon of the shopping mall giant Simon Property Group, who gave $4 million to the nonprofit. As...

The Linux Foundation has released their 2023 Annual Report... and it is an absolute doozy. The first big headline? As of 2023, The Linux Foundation now spends just 2% -- that's two percent -- of their revenue on their namesake: The Linux Kernel. "Ask yourself this: If there is a foundation named after a specific thing... what percentage of that foundation's revenue would you expect to be spent on said thing? Let's say... "Save the Orange Trees Foundation". How much of their revenue should be spent on, you know, orange trees? 100%? 50%? 10%? If "Save the Orange Trees" only...

Lisa Page, the Trump-bashing ex-FBI lawyer who had an affair with a senior official she worked with investigating Russiagate, has split from her husband of 15 years, DailyMail.com can reveal. Divorce papers filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court show the 44-year-old's divorce from non-profit executive Joseph Burrow, 46, was finalized on June 29. Page blamed 'unhappy and irreconcilable differences' when she asked a DC judge to grant her a divorce in May, just days before the anniversary of their 2008 wedding in Naples, Italy. The secret trysts between her and Peter Strzok, one of the Bureau's top counter-intelligence...

COMMENTARY The slow-motion collapse of St. Michael’s Media (a 501(c)3), Church Militant (a 501(c)4) and the quasi-entity known as the Deposit of Faith Coalition is a case study: first, in the kissing cousin dangers between 501(c)3s and 501(c)4s; and second, the risk organizations run when they affiliate, even loosely, with nonprofits run by individuals who are deliberately ignorant of their legal responsibilities. Viva la Différence! Most people are completely unaware of the distinction between various non-profit entities. Donations to some are tax deductible, others are not. Some have to file IRS Form 990 which discloses information about the organization, others...

A Georgia voter registration project founded by failed Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is facing scrutiny for financial corruption, a six-month-long Politico investigation revealed. The New Georgia Project (NGP), once headed by leftist Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), was founded to “build power with and increase the civic participation of the New Georgia Majority—Black, Latinx, AAPI, and young Georgians,” according to their website. Revelations about NGP’s internal investigation into suspected financial mismanagement came from the Politico report that dug into the sudden departure of their longtime director Nsé Ufot, who the group is demanding repay thousands of dollars in “non-work-related” reimbursements.

On Friday June 3, as the Jewish holiday weekend of Shavuot began, an unusual website appeared: It showed a map of Massachusetts chock-full of dots interconnected by multicolored lines, like the corkboard of an overzealous detective or, perhaps, a conspiracy theorist. Each dot represented an institution — a school, a corporation, a police department, a nonprofit — and the lines showed their ties to one another and to Jewish organizations or philanthropists. The institutions and their purported relationships were highlighted, the Mapping Project’s anonymous creators wrote, “so we can dismantle them.” In the Boston-area Jewish community, the Mapping Project has...

Muslim and Jewish groups have filed a legal brief expressing concern about a Michigan law that might be used to force a Christian healthcare provider to hire people outside of their faith. Christian Healthcare Centers, Inc., a network of Christian medical professionals based in Grand Rapids that sued Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and other officials last year, is appealing a lower court decision against them.The Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty and the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team of the Religious Freedom Institute filed a brief last week that, while not in favor of either party in the lawsuit,...

A builder in Colorado owes $6 million to customers who never received their promised tiny homes after he allegedly blew the cash on race cars, real estate and lavish trips, according to new bankruptcy filings. Matthew Sowash, the president and CEO of Holy Ground Tiny Homes, failed to deliver tiny homes to 189 buyers while spending hundreds of thousands on seemingly personal purchases, KDVR reported. The nonprofit company spent more than $400,000 to buy and repair race cars and other vehicles in addition to $35,000 in real estate in Colorado and Alaska, according to an 81-page report filed Friday and...

The Burning Man festival, which attracts 70-80,000 people annually, is over, but not before stranding scores of attendees due to torrential rains that made it impossible to leave the venue. The situation even caught the attention of the Biden White House. Organizers assured the outside world that all was well and appreciated everyone’s concern (via NBC News): Crazy weather and the inability of those to leave or enter the venue are not uncommon. If it’s not rain, then it’s a dust storm. The COVID pandemic also canceled the event twice. And then, there were these far-left climate protesters who blocked...

Perhaps it is a little early for another update here on the “homelessness” situation in San Francisco. (My last update was about six months ago in March 2023.). But there is a good reason for an update now: At least a few people seem finally to be catching on that the basic idea behind “homelessness” advocacy is to exploit an issue that brings forth great human empathy to generate vast taxpayer funds and then to not solve the problem. The spending continues and increases without limit. There is way too much money — for advocates — in “homelessness” for the...