Posted on October 7, 2016 by Soren Dreier
Author: Awareness Act
The Federal Trade Commission and many law enforcement partners for each of the 50 states have made statements saying that none of the money raised by charities has gone towards helping people with cancer. He says that all the money being made has solely benefited those who run the charities.
CNN attempted to speak with several of the charities and were unable to get a comment about this matter. CNN has reported:
The Cancer Fund of America is run by James Reynolds Sr. His son James Reynolds Jr. is the CEO of the Breast Cancer Society. Another charity, the Children’s Cancer Fund of America, is run by Rose Perkins, the ex-wife of the elder James Reynolds. He’s also the CEO of the fourth charity, Cancer Support Services.
The government says the charities claimed to provide direct support for cancer patients, breast cancer patients and children with cancer.
“These were lies,” the government’s complaint says.
Jessica Rich, chief of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, says that in all, the charities spent about 97% of donations they received either on private fundraisers or on themselves. Only 3%, she says, went to help actual cancer patients.
According to the complaint, funds donated to help cancer patients instead went for personal use, in often lavish ways.
“Donated funds were used to pay for vehicles, personal consumer goods, college tuition, gym memberships, Jet Ski outings, dating website subscriptions, luxury cruises, and tickets to concerts and professional sporting events,” the complaint says.
“Most of what we are doing is bringing actions against fraud,” says Rich. “And this is as about as bad as it can get: taking money away from cancer victims.”
There was also what the FTC calls “rampant nepotism” at play in all of the charities. For instance, at the Breast Cancer Society, James Reynolds Jr. hired his wife, Kristina Hixson, to be his public relations manager. The complaint states that he also hired Hixson’s two sisters, her son by a previous marriage, her mother and her step-nephew. According to the complaint, Hixson’s mother had been a caterer. At the Breast Cancer Society, she was hired to write grant applications.
Moreover,on their tax returns, each charity claimed millions of dollars in donated goods shipped to overseas locations on behalf of cancer patients. The complaint says the charities never owned any of the goods in question and simply paid a fee to a private firm in South Carolina to ship the goods, called gifts-in-kind. CNN went to Guatemala in early 2014 to investigate anyone who may have received those gifts and could find no evidence that they even existed.
As a result of the complaint, two of the charities say they will close their doors. Both the Breast Cancer Society and the Children’s Cancer Fund of America are being dissolved, according to the complaint. James Reynolds Jr. faces a judgment of more than $60 million in fines and Rose Perkins, who runs the Children’s Cancer Fund of America, faces a judgment of around $30 million.
Under a proposed final order, the judgment against Reynolds Jr. will be suspended when he pays $75,000. The judgments against Children’s Cancer Fund of America will be partly met upon liquidation of its assets, and the judgment against Perkins will be suspended due to her inability to pay.
The FTC’s Jessica Rich, however, said there are few assets left. Government regulators will be lucky to recover $1 million, she told CNN.
